Over at Heart of the Matter, they're asking: what is appropriate sheltering when it comes to homeschooling?

I think of this in two ways:

1. Sheltering from destructive behaviour. My 11-year-old niece was talking around the Christmas table this year about how kids in her class are debating whether or not she is an "emo" or a "goth". And Emo does not mean a cuddly red Muppet character. It means you're emotional.

She says she's a Goth, but other people think she's Emo. But they're the ones who cut themselves, and they just want her to join their group.

I found myself shaking my head at this. Then my 12-year-old nephew joined in and he knew all about this stuff, too.

My daughters know this exists, but they don't need to spend their time worrying about it. Much better to devote their emotional energy to more productive things!

The sheltering, I think, also is important in terms of how schools frame the world. Schools are very left-wing institutions by definition. To the school, the solution to life's problems is found in education. If there are bullies, we need more character classes. If kids are getting pregnant, we need to teach about birth control. There's no acknowledgement that maybe education doesn't work; that some people make bad moral choices and what we need to do is impose consequences for those moral choices.

I don't want my kids growing up in a society where they are constantly bombarded with these sort of wishy-washy ethics that never deal with the heart of the matter.

2. The second kind of sheltering is more how I envision building a hedge of protection around our family. I want our family to be the primary social organization for the kids. Not their peers. Not their teachers. Us. Their parents and their grandparents and each other. When peers take on too important a role, the family can lose its influence and even good kids can go off the rails for a bit.

We need to remember that these are kids, not adults. And we want to create an environment where they can grow, learn the right morals, and concentrate on the good in life, rather than the bad. This doesn't mean we hide the bad from them. They know it exists. But they don't need to be a part of it. Instead, they can learn to rise above it.

Right now, my kids are constantly telling their peers how stupid it is to talk about having a boyfriend or a girlfriend at 12. They know it's not appropriate and not important.  And they go around spreading that news. I don't think they could be so secure in their beliefs if they were not in a safe family environment. So that's why we shelter, and I think it's working out pretty well!

Check out my parenting blog at To Love, Honor and Vacuum!

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Amy over at Heart of the Matter has a great post on why socialization at public schools is ridiculous anyway. Why would we want our kids to be socialized that way?

It got me thinking about how I answer that question. I think maybe I'm being too defensive.

I usually rattle off all the kids do with other kids during the week to show what an active life they have.

But instead maybe I should challenge the basic assumption that socialization at school is actually good! I guess I don't want to embarrass people or cause a ruckus, but really, isn't that the main issue? That we don't want the kids to learn the negative behaviour that's present at schools?

One woman once remarked that she didn't think my kids would learn how to deal with people who were dififcult or stupid. That's why we need school. But kids can learn that later. Why should we subject them to it now? And as an adult, they can learn to treat people with Christlike love, even if they aren't forced to sit next to an idiot every day of their grade 5 life.

Anyway, I like the socialization they're getting at home, and I like the fact that they're not being socialized at school. So next time someone asks me, "What about socialization!?" , I'll reply, "Exactly! That's why we homeschool!", and then wait for the puzzled look to appear.

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One of the amazing things about homeschooling is that we get opportunities that schooled kids would never get.

My kids took swimming lessons at the YMCA for years with the homeschooler swim, and got quite good.

So this fall, they were invited by the woman in charge of the swimming department to come in on Tuesday mornings and teach when the school groups come in for lessons. I was a little confused. Katie is only 10. What age would they be teaching? Anyone from kindergarten to grade 6, apparently.

What would they be doing? Helping with the young ones who couldn't swim at all and needed an extra pair of hands, and demonstrating for the older classes. They wouldn't have a class to themselves, but they'd be helping the teachers.

Sounded good to me. So they launched right in.

Has it ever been good! And now that the kids are in lessons preparing to be lifeguards, I know they'll likely be able to get jobs at the Y teaching swimming lessons officially, because they've already been doing it!

It also gives me a great chance to work out, which is something that I've been wanting to do. I'm now able to jog for half an hour without stopping! When I started in the fall I could only do five minutes. So it's a win-win for everybody! And my kids learn leadership skills.

I'm a very proud mother.

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Over at The Heart of the Matter they're asking what do you wish you had known?

Here's my quick answer:

Don't answer the phone in the mornings! Since we have stopped answering the telephone during homeschooling hours life has gone much more smoothly.

When you answer the phone, you lose their attention. And it's rude to the kids. They're supposed to be your first priority, and you're letting someone interrupt you.

The number of times we'd be in the middle of a history lesson, discussing something interesting, and a friend would call, and twenty minutes later I'd look for the kids and they would have scattered. Not a good thing.

I'm still not perfect. I still answer the phone too much. But I try to let the machine get it and then check messages intermittently. And I let my friends know, don't call me in the morning!

What about you? What are your tips? Go leave them here.

Read my parenting blog at To Love, Honor and Vacuum. I've got some great posts up about Easter!

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We've been studying logical fallacies in our little homeschool this year, and Obama gave us a great example to look at some of them up close.

In his speech on race, he had a paragraph that is now being called the "throw grandma under the bus" argument. Basically, he said he realized that what Pastor Wright said was wrong, but he could no more dismiss Wright than he could his grandmother, who, when Obama was a child, said that she was scared to walk outside near black men.

This is what is termed the "Red Herring" fallacy. It really makes no difference whether Grandma was a racist or not (and from what I knew of her, she definitely was not). What matters is whether or not Pastor Wright is racist and someone whom a presidential candidate should align himself with.

By introducing Grandma, he's trying to deflect attention. It's a fallacy of relevance. Grandma has no bearing on Pastor Wright.

But there's something else going on here.

In the Grandma analogy, Obama is implying that she is wrong. But was she? Jesse Jackson said the same thing at one point. And in his book Dreams of My Father, Obama tells the story a little bit differently. It turns out that Grandma was being aggressively panhandled by an Africa American. Her fear, then, seems justified. I'm certainly scared of walking in some urban areas at night. Aren't you?

But if Grandma's feelings were justified, and Obama is equating Grandma with Wright, then is he also saying that Wright's feelings are justified? That one really can say God **** America? That whites really are all evil? That's the subtext here.

Anyway, I had fun going through all this with the girls. They got it all on their own, too. I know Obama speaks well, but the benefit of homeschooling is that we get to see beyond the words and the style to the argument. Can you take apart his argument? What is he really saying? And is this justified? It's a good real-life example in logic.

Why don't you try it with your kids?

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There's some debate going on about Obama across the web and whether what he advocates is really best for America.

On the education front, Victor David Hanson said this, first quoting Obama:

“He said schools should do a better job of teaching all students African-American history "because that's part of American history," as well as women's struggle for equality, the history of unions, the role of Hispanics in U.S. and other matters that he suggested aren't given enough attention.”

"I want us to have a broad-based history" taught in schools, he said, even including more on "the Holocaust as well as other issues of oppression" around the world.”

But anyone familiar with the historical illiteracy of today’s college student understands that more of the “oppression” history that Sen. Obama is advocating is precisely the problem, not the solution. Our high school students already know who Harriet Tubman is, but not U.S. Grant or Shiloh. They have been introduced to Crispus Attucks, but not Alexander Hamilton. They know World War II largely as the Japanese internment and Hiroshima (cf. Reverend Wright on that), but have not a clue about the Bulge or Okinawa or the Munich travesty.

In other words, it is precisely this pick-and-choose therapeutic curriculum of "oppression" history presented as a melodrama of winners (white male Christian capitalists) and losers (women, people of color, the working classes) that has ensured an entire generation of historical illiterates, who can’t distinguish between the profound and trivial, or identify basic names, dates, and places to ground even their politically-correct views. They are told to remember and repeat that Hiroshima is bad, but not why or how it occurred, what were the alternatives, and what were the consequences in a war of bad and worse choices.

Instead the sins innate to mankind—war, oppression, slavery, bias, etc.—are nearly always presented as sins unique to the West in general, or to America in particular. We hear always of commission, never of the remediation, always of our terrible past, never of the pretty awful present that goes on outside the United States.

What we need from a healer at this late date is not advocacy for more gripe-history that tries to portion out equal victim status to various competing constituencies under the guise of multicultural brotherhood, but rather tries, in holistic and inclusive fashion, to explain both the noble and tragic history of the United States, an experiment that was and is not perfect, but still very good and preferable to all the alternatives.

Now I'm only an American by fluke of birth (my parents were at Harvard when I was born). Really my whole family is Canadian, and we live in Canada and homeschool in Canada. But my girls know a ton of American history because IT IS IMPORTANT. It is key to understanding the West, to understanding human rights, to understanding liberty and even classic liberalism.

This pick and choose history that so many advocate is not really history at all. It doesn't teach the kids to see things in its context. My kids know the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence and the preamble to the Constitution and the Federalist - Anti-Federalist debate. And they're only 10 and 13! They also know about the Holocaust and women's suffrage and slavery. But they know it in context. If all you teach is oppression, how will kids ever learn how unique America is?

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I just watched a video from Ornament of Grace that reminds us why we homeschool!

Ironically, last week we were studying women's suffrage in our homeschool, and my 10-year-old wrote a research paper on Susan B. Anthony.

In this video, a guy with a clipboard visits an elite private school and gets college prep girls to sign a petition to "end women's suffrage". All but one do. They even chant! It's just unbelievable.

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I find it so frustrating that so many schools won't teach phonics, even though it's been proven to be the most basic way to teach reading. After all, reading is simply deciphering a code, in letters, and that's what phonics is.

Anyway, the education schools don't believe in phonics because it's boring and it could turn kids off. So they try all these other things that don't work. And then, when kids don't read, they turn around and say it's not their fault. Some kids won't ever read.

Even though a century ago everybody who was taught to did, more or less.

Here's a classic quote from an education textbook used in teacher training:

'Saying that we are determined to teach every child to read does not mean that we will teach every child to read....The best we can do ... is ... to ensure that, if not every child lives up to our hopes, there is a minimum of guilt and anguish on the part of teachers, students, and parents. (p.441) Smith, F. (1992). Learning to read: the never-ending debate. Phi Delta Kappan, 74, 432-441.

So don't expect every kid to read! That's ridiculous.

We, who teach at home, know that every child can read, though they will do it on their own developmental schedule. Some read at 4. Some at 8. In the end it doesn't matter much. But they should all learn to decipher the code. Too bad schools can't figure that out. The number of kids I know in school who can't read is just sad.

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So I joined the YMCA to try to get in shape (not lose weight; get in shape! We're going to focus on health, not looks!).

Anyway, I've been jogging around the track, and I find it really boring. I can't listen to music because that doesn't keep me going.

So I've found a new solution. I recite Bible passages that I know. I can do Isaiah 53, Philippians 4, Matthew 28:18-20, Psalm 23, 1 Corinthians 13, and some others. I cycle through them twice, and that takes me to 20 minutes. So then I feel like the time is flying by better, and I get to meditate on Scripture!

My oldest daughter is doing Bible quizzing this year and I'm studying with her, so I'm going to start trying to memorize her passages, too, and say them. Maybe I'll even get up to half an hour soon!

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I'm just finished reading the Railway Children to my 10-year-old, and it is such a great read!

I loved it as a child, and this is my second time reading it aloud. I can't recommend it enough.

It's just a nice story. Set at the turn of the century, three children are forced to leave their comfortable life in London and go live in a smaller house near a railway when their father is mysteriously taken away from them. They don't know why; we don't find out until the end of the book. In the meantime, their mother is very brave, earning money by writing, and they try not to bother her by getting to know the railway and getting involved in everybody's lives all around them.

The children are very sweet, and there's a thread of definite morality throughout the book.

At one point, Peter has acted beastly towards his sisters and the local doctor notices. He takes Peter aside and gives him quite a nice talk. He says;

"You know men have to do the work of the world and not be afraid of anything--so they have to be hardy and brave. But women have to take care of their babies and cuddle them and nurse them and be very patient and gentle."

He then goes into a wonderful description of chivalry which is still so true but sounds so anachronistic now.

Another paragraph I love:

"Don't you think it's rather nice to think that we're in a book that God's writing? If I were writing the book, I might make mistakes. But God knows how to make the story end just right--in the way that's best for us."

Anyway, a wonderful book. Don't miss it with your kids!

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I know a lot of parents are panicking about the California ruling that appears to outlaw homeschooling if the parents are not credited teachers.

Ace of Spades thinks that might be reading too much into the ruling, which he thinks is very narrow.

I don't know what I think, since I'm not a lawyer, but I hope he's right.

In the meantime, this comment by Sunniemom on his post seemed apt:

Are we supposed to believe that families must have the state's permission to direct and determine the education of their children (uhm.. does this count potty training?), or practice their religion, or limit television viewing and computer games, or eat Fruit Loops for breakfast (considering the state does have a vested interest in the health of its citizens)?

BTW- when were judges granted the power to invent laws? Can we get Judge Croskey to do something about menopause and cellulite?

Anyone want to take a ride down this slippery slope?

In the meantime, come visit my new mom blog at To Love, Honor and Vacuum!

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Hi to all my friends!

I'll still be blogging here about homeschool related issues, but in the meantime, please check out my new blog at http://toloveandhonorandvacuum.blogspot.com.

Hope to see you there!

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If you've never read Uncle Tom's Cabin, you should. It is simply one of the best novels I've ever read, and certainly the most Christian.

We're studying history and literature this year with my grade 8 daughter using Veritas Press' Omnibus III curriculum, which is wonderful. Basically, you read original sources from the time period and then do cultural and biblical analysis on them. We're doing the civil war right now, so Uncle Tom's Cabin was one source they used.

I always shied away from it because I thought it would be much more graphic and disturbing than it was. Instead, you invariably cry at the end, but it's a good cry, like you're climbing out of a nice, warm bath. (Actually, I was. I always read in the bath. But that's another story!).

You feel as if you have touched a piece of Jesus in the character of Tom, but also in the other characters.

And what I love about Harriet Beecher Stowe is that she tells it like it is. Not all blacks are good and not all whites are evil. Not all women are good, and not all women are evil. Some men are bad, some are good. She's equal opportunity, which is the way it is in life! We can respond to difficult circumstances (in this case, slavery) by becoming like Christ, or we can become bitter and persecute others. And I think because it was written in the 1850s children today can handle it. They just weren't as graphic about violence and sex as they would have been today writing the same novel, so it's wonderful.

The two questions Rebecca and I have both enjoyed are: how is Tom a Christ figure? It's the first time we've looked at Christ figures in literature, and it led to discussions of Lord of the Rings as well. And secondly, who is in slavery? And how? What she realized is that the white slave owners were in slavery as well, just of a different sort. They were enslaved spiritually, but also physically, because they could not extricate themselves from the evil system.

Anyway, a great book. Rebecca couldn't put it down and read it in one day. So read it, even if you're not studying the civil war! It will bring you closer to Christ.

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I have a dear friend who withdrew her second grade daughter from school this year because the little girl hadn't learned to read, and the school wanted to stick her in the reading group with the first grade teacher. My friend thought this would be devastating to the child's confidence, and decided to teach her herself, since the school had never used phonics.

She's done a good job the last three months, using the Hooked on Phonics program, and I've noticed a big improvement. But my friend's husband believes the child should be in school, and they agreed to have her tested in January to see whether she was at grade level or not.

So my friend received a phone call to say that the little girl was actually worse (yeah, right). The school has big concerns with her homeschooling and wants a meeting with the mom next week. I'm insisting I go with her, because these are the questions I'd like to ask the principal and other teachers:

1. How come when you had this child for three years and a bit (kindergartens plus grade one), and she didn't learn, it was her fault?

2. Now, when her mother has had her for three months, it's her mother's fault. When does it get to be your fault?

3. Why does she read fine in every other situation but school? What does this tell you about school?

4. Why do you expect every child to read at the same level all the time, despite the fact that the children could be separated by a year in age? Why are kids not given room to develop at different ages?

5. Why did this little girl get an A in math when she can't do plus ones in her head and counts on her fingers? What exactly did you teach her?

I think I'll go to this meeting, as will my husband, who's a pediatrician, just so that he she won't be intimidated. But the whole thing makes me sick.

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I have just returned from a junior high retreat with my daughter.

OH. MY. GOODNESS.

The good thing was that it reinforced for both of us that homeschooling is a good thing. The other kids (not the ones from our church) were almost uniformly crazy. I don't know where we got this idea that FUN=CRAZY when kids are young. Why can't fun just be fun? Why does it have to involve doing dangerous things, or running around at 1:30 in the morning, or eating 6 candybars at once?

I was just really unimpressed with a lot of the kids I met, which I know is a terrible thing to say. But the maturity level wasn't there. Our kids from our church, who tend to come from strong families, were the exception, I thought.

But the pandering, even from some youth leaders, to this craziness I find difficult to handle. Perhaps I'm a fuddy-duddy, but I don't think so.

Junior high is also a difficult age. A lot of kids are going through things they shouldn't be: pressure to smoke, drink, use drugs, or watch pornography. For those kids, we need youth retreats that will tell it like it is and encourage them to stick with God.

But a lot of our kids (mine included) are experiencing nothing like that, and are still beautifully innocent. If speakers start going on about pornography, we could easily ruin that. So it's a hard line to find when you're ministering to this group, and I don't envy those who try. I just wish that it could be done in a little less crazy a way, so that at least we could get a little bit of sleep!

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I know it's not fun. I know it's hard work. I know it stretches the brain.

But there really is no substitute.

My best friend pulled her daughter out of school this year because she was in second grade and she hadn't learned to read. She's going through Hooked on Phonics with her and the little girl is progressing well.

But I'm really disappointed in the math aspect of her education up to now as well. It seems that the schools just don't like forcing anyone to memorize anything anymore. They just want the kids to "understand the concepts". But as far as I'm concerned, if the only math a child does before grade 6 is getting the math facts down cold and understanding fractions, they'll be fine. The rest they can pick up really quickly later. The reason that math often goes so slowly is because they haven't memorized the facts. When kids know what 5 * 6 is or what 7 * 8 is without thinking, then doing 5678 * 85 becomes just routine. It's not scary. But when each time they're confronted with a simple multiplication problem like 8 * 5 they have to think about it, math is going to be hard.

She is still counting out all her plus 2's on her hand. She knows how to line up double digit addition and figure it out, but it takes her a long time to do it because she doesn't know these facts. She'll learn them all right, but I think it's tragic that we don't stress this enough in our schools.

Here's a great link to a Michelle Malkin column about the problem with "Fuzzy Math" and "New Math". It has a 15 minute video embedded in it that is fascinating. Even my 10-year-old was glued to watching it. So check it out!

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  Here's my column for this week--what are we actually eating? Enjoy!

            When I was in grade four I felt immensely sorry for Edmund and Lisa, the two fat kids in our class. I remember them as being simply enormous. Recently, though, I had a chance to challenge my recollections. As I was rearranging my photo albums, my old class picture fluttered onto the floor. It was probably the first time I had gazed at it since 1979. And there were Edmund and Lisa, looking exactly the same as most kids do today. They wouldn’t even count as chubby by our current standards. And that’s only in one generation.

            Now I know we’re a sedentary society, and we don’t use as much energy as we did in the past. That’s certainly a large—if you’ll pardon the pun—factor in this growing epidemic of obesity. I think an even larger factor, though, is that we have completely changed the way we eat.

            When my mother’s generation married, being a good cook meant knowing seven simple recipes that tasted good. No magazine cover gourmet meals, either, just basic food that everybody liked. You would serve spaghetti on Mondays, chicken casserole on Tuesdays, and roast on Sundays. That was it. Menu planning and grocery shopping were remarkably easy. And all meals were cooked from scratch, because that was the cheapest way.

            When women started working in large numbers, though, the time to cook these meals became scarce, and food companies responded. I remember when Swanson TV dinners became popular in the 1970s. It was such a treat to have Mom bring two home and let us eat in front of the TV, something we didn’t do very often.

            But it wasn’t just working moms who discovered TV dinners. Other families found that frozen food was a lot easier when toddlers were squabbling and babies were crying. And when one child has to be dropped off at gymnastics five minutes before another is due to be picked up at karate, that dinner hour becomes awfully rushed. So the frozen food section is now one of the largest in the supermarket. You don’t have to cook anything anymore. And the less frequently people cook, the more the next generation grows up not knowing how to.

            I think that’s our real crisis. My mother-in-law’s family did not eat what we would consider “low-fat” by any stretch of the imagination, but they weren’t big, either. Part of it was because they actually did physical labour, but I think the other part was that the food was real because it was home-cooked. Sure they drank whole milk and put tons of butter on everything, but at least these were real dairy products. And they went along with all the vegetables they consumed. What they ate, in general, had not been processed. Kids weren’t addicted to pop; they drank milk. They didn’t get carried away with Fruit Roll-Ups (which don’t really contain any nutrients); they ate apples. No chicken nuggets, either, whose chicken content is really very suspect.

For that matter, what is actually in margarine? Or Kraft dinner powder? Or even ice cream? It’s not cream. It’s not even milk. It’s “milk solids”, whatever those are, and apparently most of them are imported from the United States so that our own dairy farmers don’t even benefit. If our grandparents were alive today, I doubt they’d consider much of what we consume as real food in the first place.

            Let’s get back to their idea of meal planning. Find seven meals that use fresh ingredients and that are easy to prepare, and then learn to make them really well. That way you never have to wonder what’s for dinner. Your shopping list is always up to date. Give your kids, if they’re old enough, one night of the week to get them cooking, too. Most ten-year-olds can make spaghetti, even from real tomatoes. If you’re frequently rushed, make large batches so you can reheat them. At least you’ll know what you’re eating, and there’s a better chance there will actually be some nutritional value in it.

            I know we’re a fast-paced society, but when it comes to food, we need to settle down. Go out and cook something real. Your tastebuds, and your waistline, will thank you.

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A church I was once very involved in has recently changed their philosophy of ministry for children, and I've never been entirely comfortable with it but I couldn't figure out why. Today it came to me.

Here's what's basically happened: they have a successful youth ministry, and they're taking that model and using it with the kids, too. Each kid will be in a small group with a teen leader and an adult leader (even those as young as Junior Kindergarten). The leaders wil be expected to get to know the kids personally, and send them cards if they miss church, and phone them, and befriend them, and in general help them out and participate in their lives.

Now here's where I have a problem. I think that works great with teens, because teens are trying to separate from their parents (that's the point of adolescence), and having strong Christian mentors is a good thing.

But kids can't be seen as individuals in the same way, and so the ministry should not be to them as individuals. It should be towards families.

Honestly, if someone from the church called and wanted to talk to my 10-year-old, I'd think that was a little creepy. Even if it was a woman I liked. Katie's relationship with God right now is something that I am in charge of, along with my husband, and the church supports us. It doesn't supplant us. And this seems a little strange to me.

In the same way, I don't think that sending a card home to a child who misses church is appropriate or effective. After all, they can only get to church in the first place if their parents drive them or arrange a ride. A teen can take that upon his or herself to arrnage for transportation, but a kid can't. So why write a note telling the kid you missed them? Why not instead design programs for adults to come to as well, so that they'll get to know people in the church and will want to take their kids there?

I think children's ministry should really be family ministry. Sure they may have Sunday School, but the parents have to be involved. Anything that tries to get the child in a mentor relationship with someone outside the immediate family, when the family is a strong Christian one, seems to me to go against what the Bible says is the parents' responsibility towards raising their kids to love God.

I mean, I love a lot of adults in that church, but I don't agree with them on all doctrinal issues or on lots of stuff. It doesn't mean I think they're not Chrisitans; it's just that I want to be the one to influence Katie and point her in the right direction.

I think the trend in Children's Ministry across North America is this kind of thing, and I think it's wrong. Don't come between me and my kid, even if you think you're just helping. It ain't right.

What do you think?

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It shouldn't surprise anyone, but Christians seem to be unique when it comes to charitable giving. A blog post relates the impact of the lack of charity in nations with no Christian past. He says:

The New York Times ran a front-page story recently about an elderly man who starved to death in Japan, having been denied help by the welfare bureaucracy.  The man kept a diary as he died: heartbreaking to read.  The Japanese welfare bureaucracy seems to have been notably heartless, and not only in this case.  There are other, similar cases of starvation in the past year or two in Japan, according to the Times.

There is this brief throwaway in the lengthy Times story:

With no religious tradition of charity, Japan has few soup kitchens or other places for the indigent. Those that exist — run frequently by Christian missionaries from South Korea or Japan’s tiny Christian population — cater mostly to the homeless.

Say what you will about the "Abrahamic" religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - can there be any doubt that they have brought an ethic of charity into a world that would otherwise be a crueler place? 

One of the things I appreciate about homeschooling is the time that it does give you to help others. We spent several weeks at an African orphanage this year, and I'm teaching my girls that we need to be giving a lot of our time every week to help out some single mother families that we know. But in truth, a lot of people just don't act that way in our society.

I think homeschooling gives us a unique chance to volunteer with our kids and make it a habit of theirs. And that is how we change the world. So let's get to it!

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Bill Bennett, on his radio show this morning, went off on quite a funny rant today on creative writing vs. reading, and the necessity of really knowing how to use words properly.

He just gets so angry at schools--it's quite funny and worth a listen. Very short:

Click here.

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