Retaliation Of The Valedictorian

One of our new boat items is an iPad.   We have been delaying the purchase due to cost vs need and the desire to go cruising instead of surfing the internet.  With the delay of our next Bahamas cruise until next year we decided to take the overly priced "Cheeseburger in paradise" budget and jump a little deeper into the Apple Barrel. One of our favorites on the iPad so far has been Flipbook.  Flipbook allows us to see most of our favorite content from the web and some it thinks we want.  One of the items it (Mental Floss) thought we wanted lead us to this post.

The purchase of this book, or the previous one, could lead to Schadenfreude.

Have you ever noticed that an 0 is an 0 and a 1 is a 1 but a word is a chameleon?   Read is read, and knot is naught.  "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo"  screeched the Valedictorian.  With numbers we don't have to trace the "root" back to another civilization that has failed.  We don't have to diagram the number to make sure it states what we mean.  If you have 5 you have 5.  But if you does run.  Are you running?  Have you ran? Are you going to Run?  Or does it cease to be relevant due to improper use of does?  We accept math as intelligence and look for reason.  Prime has been sent into the depths of space with hope that we will be perceived as intelligent.  We took simple sticks and beads and made an Abacus because it was truth.

We were taught to disrespect the Clampetts and Kettles.  That the wrong word based on the doctrine of learned quantifies the perpetrator as imbecile.  That perceived grammatical correctness of the ever changing language is more important than the thought.  Within our own language we condemn.  Those that speak in other tongues must of course be less than imbecile.  After all why are they not using such a simple, never contradicting,  never changing, always predictable language where each thought has it's own word:s)  Why do they think they can get away without plurals?  Why do they put the verb first?  So condescending are those that have memorized the illogical.  So forgiving are those that understand the logical.  After all naught and naught is naught.  But, knot and knot is not.

Roman Holiday and travesties sought for personal gains by the simplistic valedictorians assuming their understanding of communication is critical to the advancement of humanity.  For if we had such an atrocity as 1+1=3 we would have reason to care.

W

Wit Is Educated Insolence, pt 2 Saving The Kitty

So I was rambling on trying to get to the point that our epiphany of Boatschooling revolved around handwriting.  Something that over time has burdened me to the point I actually hate to write. Sometime around my mid twenties the time it takes to even write my signature compared to the time it takes me to think about it and why do I actually have to write it down are not uniform lengths of time.  I actually get bored while writing.  Allowing time for the hand to keep up with the brain.  If I'm in a hurry I even slur words together on paper trying to complete that latter parts of sentences before I am finished with the beginning.  All this leaving us in a precarious part of history.  Not since the invention of the printing press has such a revolution happened.  Our only question is... how many Monks do we need just in case the system goes down?  

Boo Boo Hill overlooking Exuma sound

Saving the boat kitty while trying to cruise on a budget is of utmost importance.  Below is a listing of sources and ideas we have to keep the kitty purring.

First we have chosen to stay with Teaching Textbooks Math.  Teaching Textbooks as a company has been wonderful about reissuing product keys for Homeschool resale.  Actually TT Pre-Algebra for the upcoming year.  He will soon be completing TTmath7.  During his first two years of Boatschool The Fisher King will have completed TT5-7.  I had hoped he would make if partially through the pre-algebra but I haven't pushed.  Our source for this item has always be eBay!  If you play the eBay game well you can actually come out ahead financially on this.  Even after the fees from eBay and Paypal.  We are possibly going to be around $30 ahead depending on the sale price of TTmath7 next month.  Hint: Do not buy during the back to school period! 

Second we will once again use Saxon Grammar.  We have no positives or negatives about the course.  Indifference is the winner here. Compare the online costs from retailers and eBay before you make a decision where to spend the money.  Our biggest complaint is that in the marine environmental the newsprint books are destined to swell and become unsaleable. They are treated as disposable so we just write in the student book and keep it as a record. 

Third brings us to used text books.  This is our disclaimer on used textbooks "You don't want to send your kids to public school but you want to use a public textbook?  You know it was out of date when it was published right?  You know it was published 10+ years ago right?  You know none of the previous questions mater if you are in grade 8 or less, right? Why? The reason being in the next 4 years everything you learn will be out of date other than the basics anyway.  So why not use a text book?  They cover the whole year in a 3 pound package"  You can buy textbooks on eBay for cheap!  Way cheap!  So cheap we don't even resale them because the time it takes to box it, label it, go to the post office and ship it out weighs the couple bucks we make after eBay and Paypal fees.  Take them to Goodwill.

Fourth is the on board library.  You can take two routes here.  The two hundred and fifty
pound trunk with 250 books in the valuable storage compartment or the eReader and hard drive with 30,000 books and weighs 2.5 pounds.  If your budget allows we vote iPad with a Lifeproof case here but the other eReaders work almost as good.  Make sure you get a waterproof case.  The Fisher Kings early Pandigital is a simple mp3 player and eReader with terrible WIFI capabilities that is not capable of  playing decent video (see "Fifth" and "Seventh" below)!  You can go to Project Gutenberg or other online sources for FREE classical literature.  Barnes and Nobel gives you FREE Fridays that offer other authors.  File sharing opens up other doors also.     

Fifth brings us to Time Displacement Videos.  Sites like the History Channel allow watching select episodes while you have a good WIFI connection.  Sites like HULU let you watch the shows for a couple bucks.  Sites like Netflix allow you to down load for later and are only a few bucks a month.  Then there are file sharing sites that allow you to pack it all up on a hard drive and watch it at your convenience when you are at anchor in a beautiful bay.

Sixth gets you into the fury of the wide eyed crazed shopper.  The back to school, no tax weekend.  Buy all your misc supplies at this time if you are brave and strong.  Check all the fliers for the price on laptops if you need one also.  Even some clothing qualifies.  If you have storage and zip lock bags stuff them full.  Paper and pencils are at least a mile walk all across the keys and a farther sail in the Bahamas.  When your artist is inspired by the top of Boo Boo Hill and it's view you would hate not to have the heavy art paper and the memories be riddled with lines from the notebook.

Seventh gets them a laptop.  They really do need a laptop.  It keeps them off the main boat computer and/or your laptop while giving them a sense of freedom.  We have gone through 5 laptops on the boat so we hate this thought!  While we love TTmath it makes us keep a windows based computer available.  There isn't another application that we have found that fits the bill for us.  With a lap top the can access all the programs written for windows and it's bittersweet glory.  They can read all the Gutenberg books in multiple formats, watch all the relevant time shift videos in formats other than mp4, all while multitasking backups and downloads.  With programs creating virtual DVD's the netbook was the ultimate Boatschool device.  With the explosion of tablets in the market the netbook has been the casualty.  We recently tried to find a new one for an affordable price but even the used ones on eBay were more than I paid two years ago.  We would love a donation to the boat if you have a netbook you have outgrown or replace with a tablet.   When offered a full size economy laptop as the Boatschool computer the Fisher King stood his ground wanting the smaller netbook.

Eighth brings us to a grand day out.  Play "El Tourista" for a day!  We recently took a day trip across town, way across town to the Renaissance Fair. Just check for discounted and free educational destinations.  An example would be the "Donate blood for free entry" option at the Renaissance Fair.  Volunteer at (insert name of place) instead of paying the $18.95 to get in.  Never turn down a free fishing trip.  Seeing a shark or ray and learning about tides first hand can not be replaced by a book.  A Field trip is what you make of it.  A picnic is a picnic unless it is an exploration into the millions of years of evolution.  

Ninth takes you out on a limb, meeting new people in local homeschool groups.  With continuous relocation and travel always just a moment away this may prove difficult for the cruising life style.  Google does wonders providing you know the correct key words.  Online dating of these groups will prove necessary in avoiding the ...(deleted the pessimistic rant on offering children to strangers on Sundays).  

Tenth are the basics.  If you are always frugal you have more for the critical issues.  Designer pasta gets you a pretty plate but 3 designer pasta dishes cost you an entry into the next field trip.  After all rice and beans goes well with fresh caught fish.  

The Great Charcoal Pencil Escapade

Not that we have a couple of foundation posts setting the mood for this partially incoherent rambling of a blog about a father and son I will try to make an "about us page".   For those that are suffering from chronic impatience here is the short version.  We live on a sailboat and my son is homeschooled (Boatschooled).  I will try to convey important information relating to struggles and achievements in this micro vessel we call home.  For being ever so much similar to homeschooling, Boatschool has even more rewards and challenges.

An example would be our current escapades into the realm of charcoal art pencils.

Most of those living on land and owning a car would simply jump in and head down to Michael's.   But for us it is a little more involved.  The first thing you realize is the dyslexic cookie cutter society we are living in.  Every company has decided that Hell-mart is the supreme being.  "We'll just do it a little different."  is their internal marketing slogans.  As grocers become more like department stores, department stores become more like drug stores, and the drug store becomes more like everything you ever wanted but not what you need we are returning to the general store approach.  Whether it is box "A" or box "B" or even the box "C" store they are gradually containing the same items.  Only the names have changed.  Cheese Puffs, Corn Puffs, or Puffy Orange things they are in all the stores taking up space that may be better served by offering something the guy on the other side of the wall does not.  They are all falling for the greener grass.

If you haven't realized the transformation of what used to be specific identity within the retail market to repetitious wannabees you soon will when needing that last forgotten item for Boatschool.  First you take a dinghy ride to Publix and Walgreens, no luck.  Then a dinghy and walk to Win-Dixie and CVS.  Then a bus ride to Target.  Then you resort to, what address could I use for the next week to get a four dollar pencil delivered.  Then it sinks in the shipping fees.  How can the post office be going broke as much as they charge?  No wonder FedEx and UPS have grown so rampantly.  Then you go to the optional delegation of duty.  You need to find someone that is going to an art supply store sometime soon.  No luck.  Do you take the bus ride 63 miles north to Hell-mart or 50 miles south to Key West and hope to find and art store.  Oh, you need internet to make the decision.  So you spend part of the day dinghying back and forth trying to find an art store in another city on line.

By now you think you should have just spent $20 bucks to have the damn pencil delivered.  You are aggravated that in a land of artists that you must do so much to find such a simple little item.  While hanging on to your new found desperation the (modern LED low amperage of course) light bulb comes on.  Home Depot carpenters pencil will work for the time being and we have walked by it 10 times in the last 3 days.

As a Boatschool parent you must foresee the future needs of your child through out the cruise.  You must have a plan B and most of all...  be flexible.

W

Wit Is Educated Insolence

"Wit is educated insolence."

  --  Aristotle
no not the pelican

Sometimes you never know the exact moment a casual thought becomes reality within your consciousness.  Then there are times catastrophic surrealism just slaps you in the face.  My decision to Boatschool The Fisher King received one of those not so gentile slaps when we caravanned from the mountains to the sea.  Leading to the resulting turmoil and agonizing decisions over the following months.  (His sister tried the FVS for a coupe weeks but hated it)  Before all the internet searches, course summaries, state expectations, and the nuts and bolts of making it work there was that epiphany.  The moment The Fisher King came home and said, "They don't want me to write in cursive.  They are not there yet."

I spent my whole life in high school looking like the left handed right handed kid with my paper turned 120 degrees counter clockwise.  Scratching flowing streaks made artistic transformations of the alphabet.  More like a flamboyant cardiograph print out, my signature style was just that, my style.  Difficult to read until you mastered the abstract capitals.  I'm sure I would have scored better in Language arts if I just cared more about a participle than my N's.

So that one moment in time and a thousand others led us sail off together.  Over the last two years we have battled and strought.  Stretched our relationship.  Tested the nerves.  Learned somethings and have forgotten others.  Achieved more than we expected while falling short on what we assumed.  Have we progressed The Fisher King into his version of cursive style?  Not really, but at least it has given myself one positive attribute of the public system.  The ability to eventually, possibly, maybe force you to learn something you don't really care about even if they don't mean to.  After all, Carnegie and the boys wanted to keep most of us flipping burgers, before it was a burger we were flipping.

What we have found in this rapidly progressing digital civilization is language evolving ever so rapidly making the world ONE.  As we move closer and closer to neural implants communicating with Bits and Bytes at the speed of the human brain no one will care about my N's.  We have failed to even type in complete words and sentences.  Although archaic and ludicrous the upcoming days will once again work toward proficient cursive.  For as the machines rise we will need John Connor to be able to write.

Just curious where do the 4 states under $8,000 rank?

There I've gone wandering rampantly off on a tangent when I originally intended this post to be about assessing the near completion on our second year in Boatschool.  Recapping things from the last year and posting thoughts that have changed.  Posting ways to save on the high cost of education, LOL, that is a damn joke!  Florida spends about $9,000 (DC is about $19,000) per year on each student but needs the parents to pay for field trips, supplies, and even bring the mandated tissue boxes.  If we could get a $9,000 homeschool credit/refund on our taxes since we didn't use the system I think that would be awesome.

Damn another tangent!  Oh well looks like this post is going to be broken into smaller posts about Boatschool.  I'll try to post the money savings stuff first.

Wes

The Fisher King is currently completing Book Four of the HP series, Goblet Of Fire

The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

I originally posted this subject early this school year on our cruising blog.  Although slightly different.

I, being a rebellious student my whole public school career understand what Mr. Gatto is trying to express.  Our problem as students comes with the constraint of time.  For as we understand completely what is suppressing our learning and achievements  We do not understand that we are the correct ones and the system is incorrect.  That how we are trying to learn is the way we should be learning.  That life is real and the class room is a stage.  The school is systematically abusing our children no differently than a drunken verbally abusive parent.  But as within all prisons of political prisoners there are glimpses of hope.  Are you willing to hope for your child or are you ready to make a break?

Public school is what happens when the wolf learns of the "old wives' tale" and manipulates little red ridding hood into becoming sheep.  Your children are being systematically slaughtered in the mind by those you entrust to educate them.  They are being taught it is more important to be a sheep, roam endlessly in the herd and wait until the big bad wolf comes to dinner.

Below sums up my experience with NC, including the Gifted and Talented program during late 70's and early 80's.

If you need one sentence to summarize the following observation

Call me Mr. Gatto, please. Twenty-six years ago, having nothing better to do at the time, I tried my hand at schoolteaching. The license I hold certifies that I am an instructor of English language and English literature, but that isn't what I do at all. I don't teach English, I teach school -- and I win awards doing it.

Teaching means different things in different places, but seven lessons are universally taught from Harlem to Hollywood Hills. They constitute a national curriculum you pay for in more ways than you can imagine, so you might as well know what it is. You are at liberty, of course, to regard these lessons any way you like, but believe me when I say I intend no irony in this presentation. These are the things I teach, these are the things you pay me to teach. Make of them what you will.

1. CONFUSION

A lady named Kathy wrote this to me from Dubois, Indiana the other day:
"What big ideas are important to little kids? Well, the biggest idea I think they need is that what they are learning isn't idiosyncratic -- that there is some system to it all and it's not just raining down on them as they helplessly absorb. That's the task, to understand, to make coherent."
Kathy has it wrong. The first lesson I teach is confusion. Everything I teach is out of context. I teach the un-relating of everything. I teach disconnections. I teach too much: the orbiting of planets, the law of large numbers, slavery, adjectives, architectural drawing, dance, gymnasium, choral singing, assemblies, surprise guests, fire drills, computer languages, parents' nights, staff-development days, pull-out programs, guidance with strangers my students may never see again, standardized tests, age-segregation unlike anything seen in the outside world....What do any of these things have to do with each other?

Even in the best schools a close examination of curriculum and its sequences turns up a lack of coherence, full of internal contradictions. Fortunately the children have no words to define the panic and anger they feel at constant violations of natural order and sequence fobbed off on them as quality in education. The logic of the school-mind is that it is better to leave school with a tool kit of superficial jargon derived from economics, sociology, natural science and so on than to leave with one genuine enthusiasm. But quality in education entails learning about something in depth. Confusion is thrust upon kids by too many strange adults, each working alone with only the thinnest relationship with each other, pretending for the most part, to an expertise they do not possess.

Meaning, not disconnected facts, is what sane human beings seek, and education is a set of codes for processing raw facts into meaning. Behind the patchwork quilt of school sequences and the school obsession with facts and theories, the age-old human search lies well concealed. This is harder to see in elementary school where the hierarchy of school experience seems to make better sense because the good-natured simple relationship of "let's do this" and "let's do that" is just assumed to mean something and the clientele has not yet consciously discerned how little substance is behind the play and pretense.

Think of the great natural sequences like learning to walk and learning to talk; following the progression of light from sunrise to sunset; witnessing the ancient procedures of a farmer, a smithy, or a shoemaker; watching your mother prepare a Thanksgiving feast -- all of the parts are in perfect harmony with each other, each action justifies itself and illuminates the past and the future. School sequences aren't like that, not inside a single class and not among the total menu of daily classes. School sequences are crazy. There is no particular reason for any of them, nothing that bears close scrutiny. Few teachers would dare to teach the tools whereby dogmas of a school or a teacher could be criticized since everything must be accepted. School subjects are learned, if they can be learned, like children learn the catechism or memorize the Thirty-nine Articles of Anglicanism.

I teach the un-relating of everything, an infinite fragmentation the opposite of cohesion; what I do is more related to television programming than to making a scheme of order. In a world where home is only a ghost, because both parents work, or because too many moves or too many job changes or too much ambition, or because something else has left everybody too confused to maintain a family relation, I teach you how to accept confusion as your destiny. That's the first lesson I teach.

2. CLASS POSITION

The second lesson I teach is class position. I teach that students must stay in the class where they belong. I don't know who decides my kids belong there but that's not my business. The children are numbered so that if any get away they can be returned to the right class. Over the years the variety of ways children are numbered by schools has increased dramatically, until it is hard to see the human beings plainly under the weight of numbers they carry. Numbering children is a big and very profitable undertaking, though what the strategy is designed to accomplish is elusive. I don't even know why parents would, without a fight, allow it to be done to their kids.

In any case, again, that's not my business. My job is to make them like it, being locked in together with children who bear numbers like their own. Or at the least to endure it like good sports. If I do my job well, the kids can't even imagine themselves somewhere else, because I've shown them how to envy and fear the better classes and how to have contempt for the dumb classes. Under this efficient discipline the class mostly polices itself into good marching order. That's the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place.

In spite of the overall class blueprint, which assumes that ninety-nine percent of the kids are in their class to stay, I nevertheless make a public effort to exhort children to higher levels of test success, hinting at eventual transfer from the lower class as a reward. I frequently insinuate that the day will come when an employer will hire them on the basis of test scores and grades, even though my own experience is that employers are rightly indifferent to such things. I never lie outright, but I've come to see that truth and schoolteaching are, at bottom, incompatible just as Socrates said they were thousands of years ago. The lesson of numbered classes is that everyone has a proper place in the pyramid and that there is no way out of your class except by number magic. Failing that, you must stay where you are put.

3. INDIFFERENCE

The third lesson I teach kids is indifference. I teach children not to care about anything too much, even though they want to make it appear that they do. How I do this is very subtle. I do it by demanding that they become totally involved in my lessons, jumping up and down in their seats with anticipation, competing vigorously with each other for my favor. It's heartwarming when they do that; it impresses everyone, even me. When I'm at my best I plan lessons very carefully in order to produce this show of enthusiasm. But when the bell rings I insist that they stop whatever it is that we've been working on and proceed quickly to the next work station. They must turn on and off like a light switch. Nothing important is ever finished in my class, nor in any other class I know of. Students never have a complete experience except on the installment plan.

Indeed, the lesson of the bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything? Years of bells will condition all but the strongest to a world that can no longer offer important work to do. Bells are the secret logic of schooltime; their logic is inexorable. Bells destroy the past and future, converting every interval into a sameness, as the abstraction of a map renders every living mountain and river the same, even though they are not. Bells inoculate each undertaking with indifference.

4. EMOTIONAL DEPENDENCY

The fourth lesson I teach is emotional dependency. By stars and red checks, smiles and frowns, prizes, honors and disgraces I teach kids to surrender their will to the predestined chain of command. Rights may be granted or withheld by any authority without appeal, because rights do not exist inside a school -- not even the right of free speech, as the Supreme Court has ruled -- unless school authorities say they do. As a schoolteacher, I intervene in many personal decisions, issuing a pass for those I deem legitimate, or initiating a disciplinary confrontation for behavior that threatens my control. Individuality is constantly trying to assert itself among children and teenagers, so my judgments come thick and fast. Individuality is a contradiction of class theory, a curse to all systems of classification.

Here are some common ways it shows up: children sneak away for a private moment in the toilet on the pretext of moving their bowels, or they steal a private instant in the hallway on the grounds they need water. I know they don't, but I allow them to deceive me because this conditions them to depend on my favors. Sometimes free will appears right in front of me in children angry, depressed or happy about things outside my ken; rights in such matters cannot be recognized by schoolteachers, only privileges that can be withdrawn, hostages to good behavior.

5. INTELLECTUAL DEPENDENCY

The fifth lesson I teach is intellectual dependency. Good people wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. It is the most important lesson, that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives. The expert makes all the important choices; only I, the teacher, can determine what you must study, or rather, only the people who pay me can make those decisions which I then enforce. If I'm told that evolution is a fact instead of a theory, I transmit that as ordered, punishing deviants who resist what I have been told to tell them to think. This power to control what children will think lets me separate successful students from failures very easily.

Successful children do the thinking I appoint them with a minimum of resistance and a decent show of enthusiasm. Of the millions of things of value to study, I decide what few we have time for, or actually it is decided by my faceless employers. The choices are theirs, why should I argue? Curiosity has no important place in my work, only conformity.

Bad kids fight this, of course, even though they lack the concepts to know what they are fighting, struggling to make decisions for themselves about what they will learn and when they will learn it. How can we allow that and survive as schoolteachers? Fortunately there are procedures to break the will of those who resist; it is more difficult, naturally, if the kid has respectable parents who come to his aid, but that happens less and less in spite of the bad reputation of schools. No middle-class parents I have ever met actually believe that their kid's school is one of the bad ones. Not one single parent in twenty-six years of teaching. That's amazing and probably the best testimony to what happens to families when mother and father have been well-schooled themselves, learning the seven lessons.

Good people wait for an expert to tell them what to do. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that our entire economy depends upon this lesson being learned. Think of what would fall apart if kids weren't trained to be dependent: the social-service businesses could hardly survive; they would vanish, I think, into the recent historical limbo out of which they arose. Counselors and therapists would look on in horror as the supply of psychic invalids vanished. Commercial entertainment of all sorts, including television, would wither as people learned again how to make their own fun. Restaurants, prepared-food and a whole host of other assorted food services would be drastically down-sized if people returned to making their own meals rather than depending on strangers to plant, pick, chop, and cook for them. Much of modern law, medicine, and engineering would go too, the clothing business and schoolteaching as well, unless a guaranteed supply of helpless people continued to pour out of our schools each year.

Don't be too quick to vote for radical school reform if you want to continue getting a paycheck. We've built a way of life that depends on people doing what they are told because they don't know how to tell themselves what to do. It's one of the biggest lessons I teach.

6. PROVISIONAL SELF-ESTEEM

The sixth lesson I teach is provisional self-esteem. If you've ever tried to wrestle a kid into line whose parents have convinced him to believe they'll love him in spite of anything, you know how impossible it is to make self-confident spirits conform. Our world wouldn't survive a flood of confident people very long, so I teach that your self-respect should depend on expert opinion. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged.

A monthly report, impressive in its provision, is sent into students' homes to signal approval or to mark exactly, down to a single percentage point, how dissatisfied with their children parents should be. The ecology of "good" schooling depends upon perpetuating dissatisfaction just as much as the commercial economy depends on the same fertilizer. Although some people might be surprised how little time or reflection goes into making up these mathematical records, the cumulative weight of the objective-seeming documents establishes a profile that compels children to arrive at certain decisions about themselves and their futures based on the casual judgment of strangers. Self-evaluation, the staple of every major philosophical system that ever appeared on the planet, is never considered a factor. The lesson of report cards, grades, and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents but should instead rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to be told what they are worth.

7. ONE CAN'T HIDE

The seventh lesson I teach is that one can't hide. I teach children they are always watched, that each is under constant surveillance by myself and my colleagues. There are no private spaces for children, there is no private time. Class change lasts three hundred seconds to keep promiscuous fraternization at low levels. Students are encouraged to tattle on each other or even to tattle on their own parents. Of course, I encourage parents to file their own child's waywardness too. A family trained to snitch on itself isn't likely to conceal any dangerous secrets.

I assign a type of extended schooling called "homework," so that the effect of surveillance, if not that surveillance itself, travels into private households, where students might otherwise use free time to learn something unauthorized from a father or mother, by exploration, or by apprenticing to some wise person in the neighborhood. Disloyalty to the idea of schooling is a Devil always ready to find work for idle hands.

The meaning of constant surveillance and denial of privacy is that no one can be trusted, that privacy is not legitimate. Surveillance is an ancient imperative, espoused by certain influential thinkers, a central prescription set down in The Republic, in The City of God, in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, in New Atlantis, in Leviathan, and in a host of other places. All these childless men who wrote these books discovered the same thing: children must be closely watched if you want to keep a society under tight central control. Children will follow a private drummer if you can't get them into a uniformed marching band.

The continued post and credits can be found here....informationliberation.com

w

One day the world stood still, as it passed you by

Giftedness and Non-conformity

“I know I’m never going to fit in,” he remarked casually. “And, you know, I’m actually OK with that.” Many gifted adolescents and adults have recognized from an early age that they differed from their peers. Their intellectual skills, ability to easily grasp complex information, rapid pace of learning, emotional intensity and preoccupation with fairness and justice, to name a few, may create a barrier in relationships. But some gifted individuals have been able to accept their differences without embarrassment or succumbing to pressure to conform. They actually embrace their unique qualities, are unapologetically non-conformist, and cannot imagine joining the crowd just to fit in.

When describing gifted adolescents and adults, conformity is rarely a term that comes to mind. Compliments might include “quirky and independent,” “one of a kind,” or “brilliant and unique.”  Less endearing comments are also frequently expressed. “Encouraging him to fit in is like forcing a square peg into a round hole.” "Getting this class of gifted students to cooperate is like trying to herd cats.” The outside world looks on with curiosity and occasional frustration, often questioning how “someone so smart could be so stubborn.” But this non-conformist stance is not typically borne out of resentment or a desire for conflict. Rather, it develops in response to a combination of characteristics most gifted individuals share, including:

A drive toward fairness and justice - Gifted children abhor injustice in any form, stand up to bullies, question unfair rules, and challenge undeserved authority. Some gifted individuals would rather fail a class, lose a job, or get knocked down in a fight than compromise their values. Although championing the underdog may be admirable at times, it can certainly irritate teachers, bosses, and other authority figures who don’t appreciate having their rules challenged or their weaknesses exposed. 

High expectations for self and others – While some gifted individuals may be underachievers, most maintain high expectations for themselves, sometimes manifest as perfectionism. Along with this, they expect others to hold these same high standards. When they encounter unethical behavior, suboptimal performance, or inadequacies that can be corrected, they find it almost impossible to maintain respect or comply with what is expected of them.

Creative and inquisitive – Gifted individuals thrive on learning, engaging in creative pursuits, exploring new ideas, developing new concepts and inventions, and seeking the meaning of life. They shun rote learning, routine explanations, and simplistic ideas. Slowly paced instruction and boring, routine activities are torture for them. They challenge traditional explanations and concepts, and find new, inventive approaches to solve problems. While innovative and ground-breaking discoveries develop as a result of such creativity, bold challenges to the status quo can ruffle feathers and fuel conflict.

Greater sensitivity – Many gifted individuals possess heightened emotional sensitivities that result in stronger reactions to events and greater empathy for others. They are often strong-willed and strive for autonomy. These emotional characteristics, coupled with the likelihood that they have felt out of sync with their peers throughout much of their academic career, all contribute to the development of a non-conformist style. 

Gifted individuals of all ages have to grapple with the implications of their non-conformity on a regular basis. Unique, different and quirky, gifted individuals’ behaviors can be confusing, off-putting, exilherating, a welcome relief from the norm, a target for bullying, or a model to be emulated. They may be viewed as opinionated and controversial, and may be misunderstood, envied, or perceived as a threat by those around them.  Gifted individuals benefit from learning how and when to best assert their views so that they can have the greatest impact, create the outcome they desire, and form healthy and meaningful relationships. Learning to harness their creative energy and non-conformist spirit with patience and compromise may help them to reach their goals. 

Most important, though, is self-acceptance. When you already know you are different, it is healthier to embrace the positive aspects of this fact, than to bemoan it and wish you could be someone else. Gifted individuals can express their unique talents and maintain healthy relationships when they learn to accept and appreciate their differences."

taken from giftedchallenges.blogspot.com  Gail Post, Ph.D.

One day the world stood still , as it passed you by

You forgot to be curious and inquisitive.

You forgot that imagination is the basis for reality.

Wes