SCHOLA: Homeschooling?

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Homeschooling?

Homeschooling thus fas has involved the purchase of bird and plant identification books and a visit to an aborigine cultural center. That’s it. I am the only one reading the classics right now, and am surprised to discover that I am actually enjoying them. That’s not to say the kids haven’t discovered Homer, it’s just a different one: Homer Simpson. The girls eagerly tune in every evening (if we are home) at 6:00 PM to catch this little taste of home.

I began The Norton Book of Classical Literature figuring I should get ahead of the kids and at least familiarize myself with some of the works before I try to get them interested. At this point I’m way ahead. The excerpts of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey by different translators hooked me, though I brought Fagles translations and have now discovered that contrary to my last impression, made one afternoon just prior to our departure, comparing versions on the floor of Books-A-Million, that I really prefer Lattimore’s. I’ll just have to read them both then, won’t I?

In addition to the gripping battlescenes and touching dialogue, I’ve noticed an awful lot of bathing and annointing of bodies with olive oil going on. This inspired me to pick up a bottle of freshly pressed coconut oil at the Sunday market. Now I bathe, annoint myself with oil, and settle into the hammock with Homer and company.

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SCHOLA 101

schol' a: 1) An intermission of work, leisure for learning, learned conversation, debate, disputation, lecture, dissertation. 2) A meeting place for teachers and pupils, place for instruction, place of learning, school. 3) The disciples of a teacher, body of followers, school, sect. 4) An acronym for my tortuous blog title "Secular Classical Homeschoolers' Odyssean Learning Adventure." 5) How my Boston cousins pronounce "scholar." 6) Someone who studies at 10 o'clock for a dilla or a dolla.

These are the blatherings of an introverted, autodidactic, champion of The Enlightenment raising three daughters. At one time or another we have homeschooled, public-schooled, Catholic-schooled, cyber-schooled, unschooled, and even threatened boarding school. We have been inspired variously by The Well-Trained Mind, A Thomas Jefferson Education, and Climbing Parnassus, tempered by the writings and wisdom of Charlotte Mason, John Holt, Benjamin Franklin and Michel de Montaigne.

I try not to get wrapped up in labels, but we are secular and we are classical-ish.

We travel. A lot. Sometimes to the other side of the state and sometimes to the other side of the planet. Join us on our journey as we search for our home, navigate the waters of self-education, lounge with the lotus-eaters, and bash a Cyclops or two.