With a mathematically inclined son, Pi Day has been a big day in our household since we discovered it, but it’s been even more significant once we found a like-minded community with which to celebrate it, such as San Jose State’s Math Department. When I checked in with a professor about this year’s event, I…
Category: Education
My Crappy SAT Essay
Last November, Neil took the SAT for the first time. At least one fellow homeschooler has opined that someone as accomplished as Neil needn’t jump through such a hoop, but the sad fact is that many scholarships are tied directly to having an SAT score, and, after all, it didn’t seem like such a stupid…
In Praise of Hands-On Lab Science
Integrating hands-on lab science is a typical challenge for homeschoolers. Some of the companies providing homeschool instruction have kits with the equipment and materials needed for a lab. Personally, I have bought several excellent science lab books, and hunted around for the equipment and materials myself. We’ve made many a trip to San Jose Scientific…
Online Courses at San Jose State
The New York Times recently reported on the San Jose State’s Philosophy Department’s critique of online courses, as the university considers issuing credit for students who take and pass an edX online course taught by Professor Michael Sandel. However, one thing that’s often been missed in the reporting is that San Jose State is pioneering…
Dismay at the Book Burning Professors
Yesterday, I was dismayed to find out two professors in the meteorology department at San Jose had posted a picture of themselves about to set fire to a book, presumably because they disagreed with its contents. The picture was taken down but not before it was captured, because the idea of professors literally — not…
An Infantilized Society
Comedian John Heffron often compares the independence he had as a child to the way we raise our children today. I told this to a fellow mom at a park as we watched one of our peers go scurrying off in search of her 7-year-old son in the very suburban park. She told me that…
A Visit to UCLA
At the end of our weekend in Los Angeles, and since we’d already visited one college (Caltech), Peter decided an impromptu visit to UCLA might be in order. I mildly discouraged it — some of my friends went to school there in the 1980s, and I once visited it then, but I’d had the impression…
A Visit to Caltech
Like most homeschoolers, I’m just blundering through, hoping for the best, and being as surprised as anyone that it seems to be working out just fine. But as Neil is technically in his high school years, and he likes college, it’s been time for me to take on the role of college counselor. To that…
Martin Gardner Celebration of Mind at Stanford 2012
Ever since Martin Gardner passed away in 2012, his fans have held an annual gathering in various places each year; our local gathering is the one at Stanford, organized by Stan Isaacs. It wasn’t in one of the few places I know on the Stanford campus (such as the art museum, the math building, or…
Neil and the Davidson Young Scholars
Back when I was butting up against teachers and an administration that refused to let Neil work at the level he’d already proven himself capable of, we took him to audition for a television show called Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? More than anything, I was delighted to meet the other families. There…