Friday, January 4, 2008

Evolution, Philosophy, and the Existence of dodecahedrons

A funny post popped up on my Google homeschooling alert today. It comes from Fear of Ignorance and it's a post where the author lets loose his frustration with the Huckabee win and homeschoolers. His perception of homeschoolers is, like a lot of people's, more than a little off but he said something in his post that put a huge smile on my face.

There are dangerous ideas out there that you can’t risk your child being exposed to! Evolution, Philosophy, and the existence of dodecahedrons are all things your child is better off not knowing about.


Now why would that make me smile? Because here's a picture of what Catherine's been doing this week:


Those are the five Platonic solids. The one in the middle is a dodecahedron and it's the one Catherine constructed this morning. While she was putting it together we sort of wandered off topic and Catherine started talking about how words weren't real, just ideas. I mentioned that was true but that they described real things. We were pretty damn close to Platonic dualism! Plato himself also got a mention along the way. So there's philosophy. Evolution hasn't made it into our day yet (Although I was planning to read a post from The Angry Astronomer on Galactic Evolution) but 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

I invited the author over so he could take a peek at what some real homeschoolers do. He admits that he's only known one homeschooled person (that he knows of, of course) so I imagine he'd find a visit eye opening. Here's hoping he takes me up on the invitation and gets acquainted with some of us.

3 comments:

Mitchell said...

Well, here he is, the author of Fear of Ignorance. And I do wish to thank you for teaching me that not all homeschoolers are nut jobs. :-)

I would posit, however, that a significant number are, which is unfortunate. I'm all about children getting the best education, regardless of where it comes from.

Your link to a book about evolution and religion irritates me though - as religion, in any form, should never be a part of any child's education.

thanks for commenting on my blog, and I can safely say that I'll be reading yours!

-Mitchell
http://www.fearofignorance.wordpress.com

Dawn said...

Well now, you can't just say, "as religion, in any form, should never be a part of any child's education", and then not explain why.

Religion plays a huge role in politics, social justice issues and worl events and kids should certainly have at least a basic understanding of the major world religions in order to be able to sort out what's going on in the world today.

Maybe you mean in terms of practicing religion though. Concerns about indoctrination and such? Something akin to why I don't think school should be a part of my child's education? :)

Anyhow, glad to see you came over!

Mitchell said...

You are correct, I mean in terms of practice.