For dinner tonight I fixed home made link sausage that mom and dad had brought to me. It was delicious! We sliced it and sauteed it with onions and then threw in scrambled eggs, sprinkled with cheese. We had cornbread and a side salad. Yum!

We have a late night tonight, with boy scouts. Savannah, Jack and I will have to take things to do while we wait. Jack has some reading aloud that he will bring, and also his Erragon CD's. Savannah has "her music" and also 2 books that she is currently reading.(One for school and one for fun). I am bringing my next book to tackle, "Gullivers Travels".

I got 'The Old Schoolhouse" magazine the other day, and in it there is an article by Susan Wise Bauer. Her writing on classical education is so articulate and powerful. I wanted to quote just a little tiny piece, of what really jumped out at me.

Excerpts written by Susan Wise Bauer and found in "The Old Schoolhouse" magazine:
"The tragedy of American High school education is two-fold. In the first place, teenagers are not taught rhetoric; they are not given the skills to explain, in speech or in writing, what they believe and WHY. They remain inarticulate, and so they are forced to rely on external means of displaying their individuality-clothes or tattoos or piercings (which make them all look the same)."

"Second, American teenagers are forced to remain generalists for far too long......"

" The neoclassical education seeks to right both of these imbalances. In the classical tradition, the highschool years are a time when the students are encouraged to specialize, to dig deeply into the subjects that interest them most......." "The classical model does not aim to produce a "well-balanced generalist", but rather a student who is passionately interested in and skilled at a particular subject."

"...the classical model focuses on the proper handling of argumentation during the high school years. Teenagers are expected to be opinionated-as long as they are opinionated in an articulate and logical manner. In the rhetoric stage, the student learns how to write and speak with force and originality. The classically trained teenager has a strong sense of her own unique identity because she not only knows her strengths, but can defend her own opinions and beliefs."

Great stuff! Thank-you, The Old Schoolhouse Magazine. And of course thank-you Susan Wise Bauer .

G'night,
Melissa