7 Viruses of Modern Education

This is a really interesting reminder of our need to keep things in balance. (hat tip Every Waking Hour)

Sherlock Holmes - Free in Your Mailbox

Stanford University has a Community Reading Program that offers free pamphlet-sized reproductions of classic stories. The current program is a number of Sherlock Holmes stories. It's not too late to sign up for this January through April 2006 program. If you sign up now, they'll still send you the previous issues as well.

Here is the link

We've really been enjoying this series. Our 10 year old son, who has been somewhat reading-reluctant for various reasons (particularly fiction) is really enjoying reading these great classics! Thanks Stanford!

Understanding Terms: "Formation vs. Information"

In a nutshell, it means that spiritual and intellectual formation is more important than the material that you learn and remember.

Here's what Laura Berquist had to say about it in Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum (referring to Dorothy Sayer's article "The Lost Tools of Learning" click here to read Sayers' article)...

The most impressive of the many things Miss Sayers said was that the goal of education should be to teach children how to think; we want them to learn the art of learning. Then they will be equipped for life; whether or not they learn all the subjects possible in school, they will be able to learn any subject when it becomes necessary or desirable, if they know how to learn...In fact, she goes on to say, learning subjects in school is of very secondary importance. (pg. 13)

You can read the rest of the Introduction to Laura Berquist's Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum here.

Fran Crotty of Kolbe Academy has a beautiful quote that ties in the spiritual side of education as formation (from Implementation of Ignatian Education in the Home)...

It should be the objective and is definitely the responsibility of every rational Catholic mother and father to see that the child is educated, so that he can be truly Catholic with the consent of all his faculties.

It's not hard to see that this makes sense on a practical level, even if our 20th-century-conventional-school-trained brains want to fight against it on some level. If our children learn to love learning, develop habits helpful to learning and practice virtues like patience and perseverance; if their education helps them develop problem-solving skills, critical thinking skills and the confidence to overcome "road-blocks" that they encounter...these things will help them succeed in life in practical and spiritual matters. This philosophy looks at the child as one whole being with intellect, will, memory, imagination and conscience all working together.

It has rather delightful consequences too, for stressed-out homeschooling moms. What stresses us out most? It's "filling in the gaps" - making sure they have (figuratively speaking) all their i's dotted and their t's crossed. The good news is that, if they're working on developing these habits (sometimes of their own initiative, sometimes because they "have" to - ideally a little each day), if they are learning things and progressing and practicing virtues and all that (even if it be in their own seemingly snail's paced way) - then you are helping them do what they should be doing, even if you don't finish every book or meet everyone else's expectations for your child.

I don't know why it is predominantly "classical educators" that talk about this concept (although it is certainly hinted at in other methods such as Charlotte Mason, Montessori and unschooling). For me, the idea of formation as the primary goal of education is common sense, it is Catholic, it is true.
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Please feel free to comment with additional ideas and clarifications. It seems that I should include more caveats and explanations, but I'm not sure that these wouldn't confuse the matter further.

Geography days

One week away from the National Geographic Society’s Geo Bee state competition in South Dakota, our family is enjoying its annual geography days.

Besides going online to do daily quizzes on several sites (see previous love2learn blog post), we have been doing some family encompassing activities as well. Our old favorite is a National Geographic board game dh and I bought almost 20 years ago, National Geographic's Global Pursuit. The world has changed so much since then that half the cards contain outdated information--which of course dh turns into teaching tools. (Our kids are fascinated by the Soviet Union and how all those countries were outlined as one in older maps!). While this old family favorite has long been out of print, National Geographic does have a newer, smaller board game that is simple and fun to play, the GeoBee Challenge game. Their kids' store website has many others items as well, http://shop.nationalgeographic.com/

We have enjoyed and fostered the learning of geography through the years as a family. It goes without saying that being an international family and having traveled abroad together has helped immensely. Dad's reports on his many travels are also living world eye openers for the kids, and the digital camera has been so handy here. Dad has extensive slides shows to entertain and educate us upon arrival from a new place visited. Last month we were delighted by his pictures from Vienna. Especially so because he was allowed to take pictures inside theKunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna's outstanding Art History Museum!

Another way we have been learning together is by watching the National Geographic Specials we check out from the local library. We choose titles and themes that will take the viewer to many places of the world. Some of our latest picks include 30 Years of National Geographic Specials, Lewis and Clark and a special on daring photographic moments.

Two nights ago we watched Inside the Vatican and we found it absolutely outstanding! Produced during the later years of the reign of our beloved Holy Father John Paul II, the DVD has lost nothing of its contemporary aspect. The viewer is taken behind and below the walls of the Vatican. It is a sort of "day-in-the-life" format as it succeeds in portraying things that happen simultaneously inside the Vatican: the sacristan sisters, the archivists, the art restoration projects, the Swiss Guard training for an upcoming oath ceremony, the ordination of new bishops, and finally the pope receiving an international delegation. (The Swiss Guard vignette alone was so interesting: they even interview the tailor responsible for producing their Michelangelo-designed uniforms!) Interviews with the pope's photographer and with two monsignors are excellent as they express such faith and love for the Church. The last highlighted event in the DVD is the beatification of five new saints, including Charlie, a native of Puerto Rico, and his saintly background story. We were entirely impressed on how respectful National Geographic was about things Catholic in this production!

Two from other publishers: the story of the British mariner Shackelton and his expedition do Antarctica on the Endurance is always a fascinating one to revisit as well, and two videos we enjoyed recently about it are Shackelton and The Endurance.

Last but not least, our family has very recently purchased a new set of the board game Risk during per son #1's request, himself a two-time GeoBee winner. He was home for spring break last week and hours were spent by old and young enjoying the game. They exchanged comments comparing the geographical divisions in the new version with their old version, destroyed to pieces by years of playing and out-of-state moves. I was amused to hear the conversation: "This is not even a province, it is just a subregion of another region of a country, and look, they made it a huge country", and so forth. I was also sure to bring to the table our copy of The Geography Bee Complete Preparation Handbook: 1,001 Questions & Answers to Help You Win Again and Again!

Just so they could quiz our #4, this year's competitor, between turns....

Unity of Truth

Unity of Truth, our science and math blog for Catholic homeschoolers, is really getting off the ground. Please drop by and read some interesting articles, leave a comment and check out the fun links!

Growing in the Virtues of Jesus

The Marianist Method of Virtues for use in groups
by Quentin Hakenewerth, S.M.
Published by North American Center for Marianist Studies, 2004
188 pages, softcover

When picking up this book, my first question, since I had never heard of it, was: what is the Marianist Method of Virtues? A footnote in the introduction answered this question. It is inspired by the teaching of Marianist founder, Father William Joseph Chaminade and is proposed not to be an imitation of Christ’s virtues so much as a union with Him through the virtues. The participant works in collaboration with the Holy Spirit and Mary to follow a three-fold plan of growing in virtue: preparation, purification and consummation.

In the preparation segment, the participant is made aware of places in life where virtue may be lacking, places that need to be cleaned up before real progress can be made. These areas are words, signs, mind, passions, imagination, recollection, obedience and mortification. The author makes use of psychological understanding of the ego to explain how we must root out our sense of self to “put on the new self” as St. Paul instructs. The ego, or our need to have the world see us in a certain way, gets in the way of a true self in tune with God. The instructions and meditations in this segment ask the participant to do things like moderate use of speech, fill the mind with truth, recognize negative passions, and discipline imagination. The author calls these the “silences.”

In the purification segment, the author explains that there are some obstacles that cannot be overcome and must be attacked differently than the preparation virtues. It is explained like this in the book:

“In preparation we dominate obstacles or get rid of them; in purification we live through them and grow into new life and achievement. Trying to get rid of unavoidable obstacles ends up in frustration or giving in to defeat. The work of purification accepts the obstacle, but strips them of their negative influence and, in fact, makes them work for our good (page 98).”

In this method, six obstacles are presented, three that come from within (limitations, tendencies to evil, doubts), and three that come from outside (opposition, suggestions to give up, temptations). The corresponding virtues that work on these obstacles are reliance on God, confiding everything to God, and taking recourse to counsel; and, developing enduring patience, perseverance, and performing acts opposed to the temptations. When I started this section I was skeptical, thinking that we should not stop trying to overcome obstacles. But this little treatise shows how that ends in defeat; there are so many things out of our control. This section became the most insightful to my own personal situation.

In the last segment, consummation, the participant, having prepared and been purified, at last shuts the ego completely out of the picture and arrives at a new level of spiritual life. The virtues at this level include humility, modesty, total abnegation of self, and complete detachment from things of this world. It seems to me that this may be a lifelong process, one that we are closer to or more distant from at different points in our lives. They are the kind of things that are not attained by merely reading this book, or any book. The author claims that you must be ready to live on this level to achieve these virtues, but even if you feel you are not ready, you can still gain a lot by going through them in this book. The book ends with a list of things to remember while trying to make progress in the life of virtue.

The book is intended to be used in “faith sharing” groups. Each chapter includes themes for meditation and questions for group sharing. I have never been very comfortable with those kinds of group sharing situations, but did gain quite a bit from pondering the questions myself. Personal narratives giving real-life examples of the kind of sharing that could happen using this book are sprinkled throughout the text. Also, at the beginning of each chapter there are introductory remarks from “Mary” as the mother of Jesus and your guide to this method. These could easily be skipped and still get the full effect of the method.

Our final goal in Christian virtue development, the author asserts, is to act “habitually with the faith, hope, and love of Jesus.” While this book doesn’t have all the answers, it is good starting place and full of fruitful themes.

This book is also the basis for “The Virtue Tree” by Sandra Garant which is included in the Middle School Lessons Plans from Catholic Heritage Curriculum. It is not necessary to read this book in order to use the “The Virtue Tree,” but it does help to understand the author’s purpose and frame of reference. Each level, preparation, purification, and consummation, is presented in a format deigned for children. The virtue is explained and then there is a list of suggested activities to engage the student in the topic. It is written for and placed in the 7th grade section of the Plans, but could easily be used by younger children. In fact, we are using it with a group of 4th and 5th graders. A parent will want to supplement this with other things, perhaps making the analogy of growing a tree more vivid, for example, using some graphic illustrations. Draw the ground with mulched soil (preparation virtues), put in the roots (the sacraments); draw a trunk and branches on which to hang the virtues. You may also want to combine it with the reading of stories on the virtues or lives of saints who have achieved the consummation virtues. For my older students, we are referring back to Growing in the Virtues of Jesus quite a bit for a more in-depth look at the process. “The Virtue Tree” gives you the framework for a program of virtues.

Growing in the Virtues of Jesus available from Marianist Publications and Catholic Heritage Curricula
“The Virtue Tree” available by purchasing the Middle School Lesson Plans from Catholic Heritage Curricula

Great Post on anti-Homeschool fallacies

from Here in the Bonny Glen - click here to read the post

This post echoes a number of things I've discovered over the years about homeschooling - particularly things about homeschooled "geeks" and things like having your children get used to living with difficult people. Reminds me of a quote by Chesterton that Nancy Brown shared with our homeschool group earlier this year...

It is a good thing for a man to live in a family for the same reason that it is a good thing for a man to be besieged in a city. It is a good thing for a man to live in a family in the same sense that it is a beautiful and delightful thing for a man to be snowed up in a street. They all force him to realize that life is not a thing from outside, but a thing from inside. Above all, they all insist upon the fact that life, if it be a truly stimulating and fascinating life, is a thing which, of its nature, exists in spite of ourselves.

The modern writers who have suggested, in a more or less open manner, that the family is a bad institution, have generally confined themselves to suggesting, with much sharpness, bitterness, or pathos, that perhaps the family is not always very congenial. Of course the family is a good institution because it is uncongenial. It is wholesome precisely because it contains so many divergencies and varieties. It is, as the sentimentalists say, like a little kingdom, and, like most other little kingdoms, is generally in a state of something resembling anarchy. It is exactly because our brother George is not interested in our religious difficulties, but is interested in the Trocadero Restaurant, that the family has some of the bracing qualities of the commonwealth. It is precisely because our uncle Henry does not approve of the theatrical ambitions of our sister Sarah that the family is like humanity. The men and women who, for good reasons and bad, revolt against the family, are, for good reasons and bad, simply revolting against mankind. Aunt Elizabeth is unreasonable, like mankind. Papa is excitable, like mankind. Our youngest brother is mischievous, like mankind.Grandpapa is stupid, like the world; he is old, like the world.

Those who wish, rightly or wrongly, to step out of all this, do definitely wish to step into a narrower world. They are dismayed and terrified by the largeness and variety of the family. Sarah wishes to find a world wholly consisting of private theatricals; George wishes to think the Trocadero a cosmos. I do not say, for a moment, that the flight to this narrower life may not be the right thing for the individual, any more than I say the same thing about flight into a monastery. But I do say that anything is bad and artificial which tends to make these people succumb to the strange delusion that they are stepping into a world which is actually larger and more varied than their own.

The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside.And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day that he was born.

From Heretics, by G.K. Chesterton, in the Collected Works, published by Ignatius, Volume 1:41-42 (pages 41-42).

Everything Old is New Again!

A review of: Hillside Education’s Primary Language Lessons by Emma Serl (updated by Margot Davidson)

Review by Mary C. Gildersleeve

There is something very elegant about children’s books from the late 1800s and early 1900s – a certain je ne sais quois that imbues the materials with a grace and a polish that is absent from many of today’s books. This elegance is particularly true when looking at textbooks of bygone eras – they are beautiful.

But, these elegant texts are also hard for a modern child to appreciate. Often reprinted as facsimile editions, these textbooks don’t grab the average child’s attention. Text is hard to read, examples don’t make sense in light of today’s realities and the color scheme is usually off-white with heavy black text and hard-to-see pictures.

Enter Margot Davidson and her reprint of the 1911 classic grammar book for children – Primary Language Lessons (PLL). Davidson has taken the good from the past. PLL by Emma Serl beautifully weaves art appreciation, dictation exercises, copywork and grammar lessons into a cohesive whole to teach children about our native language, English. The original is a beautiful language arts text for third graders (or a two-year course for second through third graders).

However, Davidson has taken this old text and renovated to create a new, very usable text for today’s student. She’s added color prints to the book to make the appreciation of art that much more enjoyable. She’s changed the font to a very readable “Times New Roman” and printed the book on standard-sized heavy bond paper. The exercises and examples have been modernized a bit to reflect common practices. Also, the book has a bit of Catholic flavor in some of the new memorization pieces. A spiral binding aids in really using this revised edition.

As the saying goes, “everything old is new again” and Davidson’s PLL certainly reflects that saying!

Hillside Education, 475 Bidwell Hill Road, Lake Ariel, PA 18436 (http://www.hillsideeducation.com/) publishes this and many other wonderful language arts resources for homeschoolers.

A Very Liberating Volume

A review of: CHC’s New High School of Your Dreams by Nancy Nicholson

Review by Mary C. Gildersleeve

Nancy Nicholson has just finished High School of Your Dreams – a long-anticipated 200-plus spiral bound pages of information for your high schooler. Nicholson has created a curriculum that’s flexible and fits the needs of different kinds of students. In fact, based on the information and advice in this book, I have decided to build my own high schoolers’ curriculum rather than relying on a canned curriculum!

This volume is very liberating to a homeschooling mom who believes in adapting the coursework to the student, focusing on learning over just passing tests, and still getting the student a good "leg up" on post high school living.

The first third of the book discusses developing a record-keeping system so that at the end of the high school time, the student has a valid transcript that would be accepted at most school and work places. She shows you how to transfer volunteer, internship or work hours into credit hours applied to the transcript.

This is NOT a book for those who need everything clearly scheduled and organized. This is a book for those who like to do their own searching and finding the best resources. Nicholson gives lists of suggested books, websites, essay topics and Church teachings. But it’s all up to the student and her parents to develop the individual “High School of Your Dreams”.

This book teaches the parent and student how to look for and find options to traditional subjects and ways of doing high school. She stresses that the student should be doing this resource work WITH the parent. The student needs to have buy-in with the plan throughout.

I love the way it embraces Catholicism (which you can use or not depending on your own household) through links to Catholic teachings on the various subjects. I also really appreciate the way she encourages the student to LEARN, not just study for tests.

In the back of the book there are sample charts including lesson planning forms, monthly hours’ charts, transcripts and a sample diploma. I would like CHC to have these available on-line – so you could download them right into your computer.

There are a few downsides to this book. I think to fully benefit from this “program”, you need to buy it and digest it while your student is a 7^th or early 8^th grader – possibly much earlier than a parent is ready to start discussing! That said, I think there is still great value to this book even if your children are already in high school.

I also found that some of the subjects are a bit deficient in their coverage of what the student should do (lack of links or creative suggestions). But, again, she has given you so many great examples that the savvy parent and teen could easily ferret out the information they need.

There is a lack of emphasis on the standardized tests. Nicholson implies that the SATs and ACTs are not as important as the portfolio and transcript. While this may be true for some schools, I would have liked more explanation of prepping the kids to take these standardized tests. From all that I have read, the test scores are often the “first” cut for applicants to most colleges and universities.

Those deficiencies aside, I was amazed at the scope of the solutions that Nicholson and CHC have created here. This answers so many questions parents have trying to get their children through and beyond high school. It’s a wonderful resource and well-worth the purchase price. It opens so many doors and helps parents and students go beyond the traditional high school experience.

Catholic Heritage Curriculum publishes this high school resource – as well as many other excellent Catholic homeschooling products. CHC is available on the Web at: http://www.chcweb.com/catalog/index.html or by calling 1-800-490-7713.

More About the Monks

It turns out Thomas Woods has made his chapter, from How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization on "What We Owe the Monks" available online! You can read it here.

History Antidote I: Give the Monks a Break!

The problem:

Some people who don't understand the concept of monastic life, religious life, cloisters, etc., assume that cloistered religious are selfish, unsociable people who are concerned only with saving their own souls. When they credit the monks for some degree of scholarship, it is often linked with blame for keeping books away from ordinary people. Here are some examples from one book (these are relatively mild examples, generally more frustrating in their implications and what the author fails to credit the monks for, than outright attacks on the Church)...

From The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way by Joy Hakim (2004, Smithsonian Books, 282 pages, hardcover)...

In 529, the Christian Roman emperor Justinian closed the last of the traditional Greek schools. In Athens, the academy that Plato had founded almost 900 years earlier was shut down. Hardly anyone in the Christian world read the Greek philosophers anymore; they were labeled pagans (nonbelievers). Some of Plato's ideas did get incorporated in Augustine's philosophy, but the science of Aristotle and Ptolemy was now off-limits. These scientific ideas were thought to be dangerous...The Greek thinkers would soon be almost forgotten, except by a very few scholars - such as a learned Roman statesman named Boethius who translated Aristotle's writings on logic (but not science) into Latin and kept them from disappearing altogether. (pg. 201)

The first abbey founded by St. Benedict (Monte Cassino, in 529) started a European trend toward keeping knowledge behind closed doors. (pg. 201)

In Europe, for a few monks, there was a challenging life of the mind. Aristotle was responsible for that. His ideas on logic set rules for orderly discussions and arguments. Using Aristotle's logic, the monks learned to think analytically. They examined abstract ideas. That skill will be very useful in later centuries when science makes a comeback (pg. 203)

In the monasteries, clerics are focused on saving their souls through prayer, study, and isolation. When it comes to science, they quote Pythagoras, Plato, and Augustine. That trio all concentrated, on one way or another, on ideal forms in nature, which often kept them from considering the real world. (pg. 230)

The antidote:

How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. (2005, Regnery Publishing, 280 pages, hardcover) has an amazing chapter called "How the Monks Saved Civilization." To backtrack just a little, though, I want to point out that Woods doesn't whitewash faults of the church or pretend that every Catholic was a saint. Here is how he put it...

"No serious Catholic would contend that churchmen were right in every decision they made. While Catholics believe that the Church will maintain the faith in its integrity until the end of time, that spiritual guarantee in now way implies that every action of the popes and the episcopate is beyond reproach. To the contrary, Catholics distinguish between the holiness of the Church as an institution guided by the Holy Spirit and the inevitable sinful nature of men, including the men who serve the Church." (pg. 2)

Modern man, particularly in the past few years, has become painfully aware of sinners in the Church, but has forgotten many wonderful contributions made by Catholics to civilization. This book seeks to remedy that through careful research, often citing non-Catholic sources who have documented these contributions.

Back to the monks...

The truth is that, even on a spiritual level, monks (on the whole) - and cloistered nuns for that matter - aren't just trying to save their own souls, but setting their lives aside for God to pray for others. The Poor Clare Monastery of the Sacred Heart of Mary, in Los Altos Hills, California (who we were priviledged to see a video about) live a life of work, prayer and poverty. They live away from the "real world", but one of the sisters has the job of keeping up with the news in order to have the sisters pray for problems in the world. I've had the privilege of meeting cloistered nuns on a few occasion through their "screen" (Carmelites in both instances) and was overwhelmed with the peace and beauty of their vocation. This isn't something "the world" will understand or appreciate.

But even on practical levels (ranging from preservation of ancient scholarship to the advent of a wide variety of practical technologies), as evidenced by Woods' book, the monks made amazing contributions throughout history - especially during the "Dark Ages." Here are a few samples (but you should get the book - it is well footnoted besides!)...

...there can be little doubt that the sixth and seventh centuries were marked by cultural and intellectual retrogression, in terms of education, literary output, and similar indicators. Was that the Church's fault? Historian Will Durant - an agnostic - defended the Church against this charge decades ago, placing blame for the decline not on the Church, which did everything it could to reverse it, but on the barbarian invasions of late antiquity. (pg. 9)

When the Mycenaean Greeks suffered a catastrophe in the twelfth century B.C. - an invasion by the Dorians, say some scholars - the result was three centuries of complete illiteracy known as the Greek Dark Ages. Writing simply disappeared amid the chaos and disorder. But the monks' commitment to reading, writing, and education ensured that the same terrible fate that had befallen the Mycenaean Greeks would not be visited upon Europeans after the fall of the Roman Empire. This time, thanks to the monks, literacy would survive political and social catastrophe. (pg. 44)

The oldest surviving copies of the most ancient Roman literature date back to the ninth century, when Carolingian scholars rescued them from oblivion..." (pg. 17)

... almost any classical text that survived until the eighth century has survived until today." (pg. 17)

Gerbert of Aurillac, who later became Pope Sylvester II (r. 999-1003) [said] "The just man lives by faith but it is good that he should combine science with his faith." Gerbert placed great emphasis on the cultivation of man's reasoning faculty, which God had not given him in vain. "The Divinity made a great gift to men in giving them faith while not denying them knowledge," Gerbert wrote. "[T]hose who do not possess it [knowledge] are called fools." (pg. 23)

In the eleventh century, the mother monastery of the Benedictine tradition, Monte Cassino, enjoyed a cultural revival, called "the most dramatic single event in the history of Latin scholarship in the eleventh century." In addition to its outpouring of artistic and intellectual endeavor, Monte Cassino renewed its interest in the texts of classical antiquity: "At one swoop a number of texts were recovered which might otherwise have been lost for ever; to this one monastery in this one period we owe the preservation of the later Annals and Histories of Tacitus ... the Golden Ass of Apuleius, the Dialogues of Seneca, Varro's De lingua latina, Frontinus' De aquis, and thirty-odd lines of Juvenal's sixth satire that are not to be found in any other manuscript." (pg. 42)

Although the extent of the practice varied over the centuries, monks were teachers. Saint John Chrysostom tells us that already in his day (c. 347-407) it was customary for people in Antioch to send their sons to be educated by the monks. (pg. 44)

Monks did more than simply preserve literacy. Even an unsympathetic scholar could write of monastic education: "They studied the songs of heathen poets and the writings of historians and philosophers. Monasteries and monastic schools blossomed forth, and each settlement became a center of religious life as well as of education." Another unsympathetic chronicler wrote of the monks, "They not only established the schools, and were the schoolmasters in them, but also laid the foundations for the universities They were the thinkers and philosphers of the day and shaped the political and religious thought. To them, both collectively and individually, was due the continuity of thought and civilization of the ancient world with the later Middle Ages and with the modern period." (pgs. 44-45)

Antidotes

I'm starting a new "series" of posts on antidotes to common errors found in books and educational materials. This was the original idea behind our Red Flag list (which, I believe needs a lot of editing and revision). The work here is my attempt to update the love2learn site and review some of the objections people bring to me about problematic materials.

Please keep in mind that correcting errors does not necessarily imply judging the intentions of the authors as many errors (like urban legends of today) are so pervasive that it's difficult to determine whose fault it is. The point isn't so much to condemn particular books as to prepare our children to understand confusing issues that come up in our modern culture.

I welcome contributions for the Antidote Series from others as well. Please include examples of errors and solid sources of information that provide the antidote.

Resources for Auditory Learners

Some of these materials would have driven me crazy as a child, because I'm a very visual learner and a poor auditory learner, but my two oldest children are auditory learners and #2 (a 10 year old boy) in particular seems to strongly benefit from audio materials - especially true since he has difficulty focusing on independent reading for a long period of time (most likely Asperger's Syndrome, though he hasn't been formally tested). We've been using audio books for a long time since they have responded so well to them, but have found additional materials recently that may be of interest to others:

The Phonetic Zoo: A Self-Teaching Spelling Program (Institute for Excellence in Writing)
Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization (Institute for Excellence in Writing)
Lyrical Life Science and Lyrical Earth Science (Lyrical Learning)
Power Glide Language Programs (Power Glide)
Lingua Angelica (Memoria Press)
Music Masters CDs
Classical Kids Series
Perpetua's Choice, Enemy Brothers and other audio dramas from Northern Rain Studios
Narnia Audio Dramas
Blackstone Audio Books (I don't like all the narrators that much, but no one else in the family seems to be bothered by this - and they offer a 50% discount to homeschoolers!)
Recorded Books Inc. (these are pricier, we only own one, but we've enjoyed a number of them from the library - I tend to like their narrators better than the Blackstone ones)

Some of our favorite audio books:

101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith
Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink
The Railway Children by E. Nesbit
Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

I haven't tried this one yet, but I know that MacBeth Derham likes audible.com She also has a lot of recommendations for individual audio books on her website.

Perpetua's Choice Audio Drama on EWTN Radio

From Regina Doman, author of Shadow of the Bear and Black as Night (published by Bethlehem Books)...

"The full-cast radio drama "Perpetua's Choice," on the life of St. Perpetua, which I wrote for Northern Rain Studios, will be aired on Sunday evening, March 12, 9 PM eastern time on about 200 stations including affiliates, as well as short wave. Tune in if you can! The whole family can enjoy it. I'm very happy for Northern Rain Studios, which poured a lot of love and care into producing this short drama. They deserve all the publicity that this show might get."

For more info, or to purchase Perpetua's Choice and other Catholic audio dramas, visit...

www.perpetuaschoice.com
www.northernrain.tv
www.reginadoman.com

Caves and Caverns by Gail Gibbons

1993, Voyager Books, 32 pages, softcover
ISBN: 0152013652

This is a terrific children's picture books, with lots of details about different parts and features of caves, how caves form and plants and creatures that can live inside of caves. Gail Gibbons has a nice balance of real information that is presented in an easy-to-understand format.

Here's a little sample of the style and content:

"Next, the cavers carefully enter the variable temperature zone. The temperature doesn't change as much here as it does in the twilight zone. Mushrooms, molds, and other fungi grow here. It is dark!"

Amazing Caves

This weekend we rented Journey into Amazing Caves (an IMAX film). It's a beautifully filmed documentary that traces a group of scientists' explorations into caves in the Grand Canyon, ice caves in Greenland and underwater caves on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. The scientists are searching for "extremophiles" - bacteria and other small creatures that survive extreme conditions and may be useful for medicines.

Just the natural beauty of these remote places is absolutely breathtaking. But watching the "making of" gives you an even greater appreciation as you realize the challenges and dangers of "extreme photography". Wow.

My children saw this before I had a chance to. I heard them from the other room going ... Woah... Woooah.... Wooooooah... as the team kayaked down a beautiful river.

The movie references the website of one of the team members who also works as a teaching assistant and put this website together for her grade school class...Nancy's Expedition Diary (I especially liked the Q & A in the "Ask Nancy" part.)

We love these kinds of documentaries that "work" for a wide age range and help spark an interest in science while providing some real substance. I have to admit that it was quite delightful the next day to see my 8 year old daughter out in our cold, snowy backyard digging into our sandbox and pretending she was a scientist "out exploring."