Re: [seul-edu] Why leave the home schooler community out?

[Ian Bicking <bickiia@earlham.edu>]

On Sun, Nov 21, 1999 at 02:08:48AM -0600, Adam Cody wrote:
>   I've just started my own page/project (meaning I haven't proof read
> anything) at http://linuxlots.com/~ajcody . I started it since I haven't
> found anyone in the educational area doing a project that includes  home
> schoolers. I would like to know if seul-edu can grow it's project goals
> to include the home schooling community. 

This has come up before, and I think that everyone agreed that home
schooling *could* be included, but that there wasn't anyone on the
list who was involved in home schooling, so it was mostly 
speculation.

I think we decided that SEUL/edu should include all education,
except maybe not higher education (some disagreement there).  Home
schooling would definately fit in.

I think SEUL/edu should remain secular -- I'm sure you can see the 
reason for that.  Maybe it would be possible to set up links to a
couple outside resources for religious education, but it would be
good to see what people think about that.  There's a lot of tension
around religion and education, pulling in both directions.


>   If you look at my bookmarks on my page you'll see there is already
> enough "content" for a k-12 education. Authors would need to be
> contacted and educated on open source lic. issues and give us permission
> to use their "content". Look at what Robinson Curriculum has done. (
> http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com/ ) I truly believe something could be
> worked out with them in regards to getting access to their material. I
> do use their materials and find the books are excellent.  

Robinson Curriculum kind of... well... to quote from their website:

  Teach your children to teach themselves and to acquire superior
  knowledge as did many of America's most outstanding citizens in the
  days before socialism in education.

That makes question their philosophy quite a deal -- in part because
I don't think there's much worth praising in the way education used
to be.  At the turn of the century people didn't learn geometry
until college, and it would be disgraceful if this country was as
illiterate as it was 100 years ago.  I think Robinson is looking at
the past through rose-colored glasses.

The "socialism" claim in that quote also makes me think of a bunch 
of right-wing militia-types.  No offense intended.

But SEUL/edu probably isn't the best place to discuss educational
philosophy -- or, at least, philosophy should be associated with
the individuals, not the group.


[...]
> Presentations on
> microscopes and cell biology is on the demo CD. This easily could be
> done with most subjects within a year and presented in a open source
> format if possible. Video could be done in RealVideo but is there an
> open source application for audio/video content like RealVideo? Please
> let me know if your aware of any.

xanim is used for nearly all animation on Linux -- for better or worse.
Anyway, it can play MPEG decently enough.  I think there aren't any
good tools in Linux for making MPEGs though :-(


-- 
Ian Bicking         / 4869 N. Talman Ave. Apt. G, Chicago, IL 60625
bickiia@earlham.edu / http://www.cs.earlham.edu/~bickiia