He most certainly does have excellent taste in SF.

And, glad to hear from another homeschooled person. I actually met my first adult unschooled person the other day. She’d been to college and now runs a web design studio, so, I guess, no harm done there, either.

How did you find the transition back to real school?

Well, he wrote that post soon after getting into Israel and before meeting Palestinians, and before reading an Arab perspective on the events of 1948, before 1948 and after 1948.

I would also dispute that the events of 1948 could be classified as pogroms: there were expulsions, but not systematic massacres. I think his point was that the definition of 1948 and subsequent as a “holocaust” and morally equivalent to the systematic massacre of 6 million is more than a little exaggerated: not that 1948 was not a catastrophe.

When you talk about stealing Palestinian land, dating back the theft over a century, I assume you also include the creation of the state of Jordan (or, rather, originally the colonial enclave of TransJordan) as stealing Palestinian land? So you’d be in favour of eliminating Jordan, and reincorporating it into the state of Palestine?

I’m curious as to what point of international law defines the existence of the state of Israel (recognised by most UN member states) as a military occupation, and the events of 1948 as a pogrom. I’d welcome a citation as to this, because if you’re teaching me basic history on this one, you’ve been reading some really odd history books.

Yes, this is what worries me. I’m not sure what it is that he’s currently working on: it’s something to do with square roots in equations but they’re like fractional square roots? But for me it’s not about whether he can handle it when it’s thrown at him with thinking about it. It’s about having the fluency to manipulate them, as you say, WITHOUT THINKING ABOUT IT.

Yeah, the reason it really matters for maths (which I might’ve said before) is you really don’t realize this stuff until several years down the line but you have such a HUGE advantage if you can factor without thinking about it, know what your sines and cosines are etc, and not have to worry about those details. When you’re working on a super hard test these are details you don’t want to be thinking about, and it doesn’t matter if you know how to do the physics if you lose all the points doing stupid mistakes!

I’m sure he’ll be fine though, just definitely have to establish solid foundations and all that. 🙂

A pleasure. I also have another teacher based in northern China who’s on Skype, but I don’t know whether she’s happy with 5-year-olds.

Wow! Thank you for the astronomy stuff. We should be in a good position for the Perseids this year: Turkey or Greece.

I actually know one astrologer who has updated her constellations to the modern day positions, which is interesting.

I’m a bit concerned the algebra’s moving too fast, to be honest. I’ll talk to the teacher about it. Because he seems to be stepping it up a gear each week, and he really doesn’t need to be doing that. I’d much rather have him solid on simultaneous equations than whizzing through to quadratics. I never did trig, myself.

I think it’s not uncommon for boys to hate handwriting. Z’s is because he is left-handed, wrote very early, and started forming his letters his own way: then got hit with right-handed letter formation when he was six and had already been making letters since he was six.

Interesting that a few days’ intensive practice worked out so well. I’m figuring that that might help when Zac decides it’s an issue. We did get a calligraphy set, but then we lost a critical piece of it in Bali. Because we’re loosely unschooling, I don’t want to force him through it (it’s contrary to how we do things), but I will raise it with him at some point soon and see how he feels.