Tricotomania and more

Willa has sent me off to read more interesting things. In addition to the points she drew out of this post at Rational Mathematics Education, I wanted to highlight what seems to me a very sound argument for the negative political consequences of the dominant mode of mathematics education.

The piece starts with a long, and very interesting, quote from Fred Goodman, in which he elaborates on the importance of games (as distinct from puzzles) in mathematics education. It is from this that Willa quoted and pondered. I note particularly his statement:

As the world moves closer and closer to a world where Gods collide and their followers depend with greater and greater certainty on the correctness of their God’s solution, we need to look more closely at the relations that might exist between games, Gods and grades. If learning is conceived primarily as a matter of finding the one correct answer according to the teacher who already knows the answer, and students’ sense of worth is tied to their ability to discover, understand and accept that correct answer, we may be encouraging, even in our secular schools, a tendency towards sectarian thinking.

As I have been reading about mathematics and physics, I am struck by the sense of uncertainty, of working towards better knowledge but of never having the “right” answer. Indeed in First You Build a Cloud, there is a whole chapter on Right and Wrong, which explains the ways that physicists see these questions. And they are very different from dogmatic approaches. She quotes physicist David Bohm:

The notion of absolute truth is shown to be in poor correspondence with the actual development of science. … Scientific truths are better regarded as relationships holding in some limited domain.

I got the same impression from the Keith Devlin book that I reviewed a few weeks ago.

Goldenberg, the author of Rational Mathematics Education, goes on the connect Goldman’s long discussion to the broader issue of democracy:

The mentality that has been used to teach mathematics to the masses in this country (and in many others) has for far too long been grounded in authoritarianism. It cannot be a coincidence that progressive-minded reformers continue to call for approaches to classroom teaching that are more student-centered and which stress communication of mathematical ideas, offering sound reasoning for mathematical answers and procedures, while anti-reformers decry this as “time-wasting,” “fuzzy,” and somehow too “touchy-feely” to matter.

and later

my concern here is for the way that subjects are taught and what the political lessons are that aren’t explicitly stated or acknowledged. And those lessons are fundamentally anti- and undemocratic. The focus upon single right answers that are arrived at by (generally) one approved method speaks volumes towards the underlying values of the teacher, the school, the district, right on up through the state and federal governments. The job of students becomes not learning and thinking, but anticipating what teachers expect exactly as they expect it: no less, and generally no more. And therein lie a host of tragedies, even were there not the anti-democratic issues to consider.

I cannot do justice to the argument with excerpts. The whole piece, basically a long quote from Goodman followed by further discussion by Goldberg, is excellent and raises many important points. As many homeschoolers already know, the idea that learning comes in neatly divided boxes labeled “mathematics”, “civics”, “language”, etc is a fiction. What this article nicely points out is that it is a dangerous fiction.

In the frontispiece of First You Build A Cloud, I find this quote:

Newton himself, as well as those … who attacked him … would have all alike been amazed at the more recent contention that natural science has nothing to do with “values,” that it can and should itself remain “value-free,” and that those seeking a direction for human life have nothing to learn from our best knowledge of the nature of things. Even a little science … is a thing of infinite promise for human values. (John Herman Randall, Jr., Newton’s Philosophy of Nature)

Whatever our values, we need to be aware of how the methods we use to teach are promoting or undermining them.

Things have come in the mail. I am very excited. And I’ve pulled at least one book off the shelf and begun to read it with Tigger. I want to wait until we are finished before reviewing it, but it is making me very happy. It is also making me realize that if I do one thing differently in the coming year, it should be to be more vigilant about always having some good read-alouds on the go. Not bedtime books; in the middle of the day books.

The book I pulled off the shelf is The Road to There: Mapmakers and Their Stories by Val Ross. Excellent. We are really enjoying this. And those of you who are more rigourous in your study of history from the ancients forward, will find in this book some good supplements that specifically focus on mapmaking. One main theme of the book is to examine how maps come to be produced and what that means about how we read them. We’re about half-way through.

Books that have arrived in the mail include the first two books in Joy Hakim’s Story of Science series. These have been recommended by several folks and I confirmed with Becky that they were a good buy. As I said in an earlier post, Tigger is a historian and thus history is a good way to approach any subject with her. Not sure when we will get to them, but there seemed to be an empty shelf in one of our bookcases (how did that happen?) and I’ve decided that it should be for history of science and mathematics.

And then today two more books arrived from Book Closeouts. These were recommended by someone on the Living Math Forum. Well, she posted a list of books that she thought were worthwhile and seemed to be available for a good price from Book Closeouts. Since Book Closeouts have their warehouse in Canada (though they do everything in US dollars), I knew that the postage would be okay so I had a look. (US folks should not find that discouraging. They are set up to serve the American market.) I decided to buy The Parrot’s Theorem, recommended for middle school age kids, and First You Build a Cloud. (I’ve linked to Amazon here because both have the “search inside” feature, which I find useful.)

A quick look at The Parrot’s Theorem suggests that this will be better as a read-aloud than as something for Tigger to read on her own. A review of The Parrot’s Theorem can be found on the Mathematical Association of America website and it confirms that some sections can be heavy going for a non-mathematician. But it also suggests that my instinct based on the description was good. It is quirky and historical and thus likely to appeal to her. There seem to be a few copies left at Book Closeouts as I write.

First You Build a Cloud also seems to still be available at Book Closeouts. I read the introduction while I was eating my dinner and it is fascinating. I love Cole’s writing style and the general approach that this suggests to the topic. Her title comes from a a question posed by artist Bob Miller “How would you hold a hudered tons of water in thin air with no visible means of support? Answer: Build a cloud.” It seems from the introduction that wonder pervades the discussion of physics. I am really looking forward to it. I have no opinion yet if this is just for me or if it will be something I can share with Tigger. But one of the best parts of homeschooling is all the cool stuff you get to learn.

Other stuff is on the way, though not so cheaply, I’m afraid. A discussion on the Living Math Forum convinced me that the best thing Tigger and I could be doing in the next couple of years is lots of problem solving. We have enjoyed the Zaccarro books very much and folks on that forum have recommended others so I have decided to add 25 Real Life Math Investigations and Real World Algebra to the math resources lying around the place. Again, I’m not sure when we’ll get to them but I know that they are likely to be useful for several years. At the moment, she’s been enjoying working through Key to Geometry so we might pick up with that again after Shakespeare camp.

I have just read The Disadvantages of an Elite Education by William Deresiewicz thanks to Willa. Wow. There is so much in there. It is long but worth it.

Some of what he says is not new, but it might be time to hear it again. Particularly the stuff about reproducing class. And about how once you get into an Ivy League you almost automatically get a whole lot of privileges. But that those outcomes (the “good” jobs, etc.) aren’t necessarily based on the quality of the learning.

In short, the way students are treated in college trains them for the social position they will occupy once they get out. At schools like Cleveland State, they’re being trained for positions somewhere in the middle of the class system, in the depths of one bureaucracy or another. They’re being conditioned for lives with few second chances, no extensions, little support, narrow opportunity—lives of subordination, supervision, and control, lives of deadlines, not guidelines. At places like Yale, of course, it’s the reverse. The elite like to think of themselves as belonging to a meritocracy, but that’s true only up to a point. Getting through the gate is very difficult, but once you’re in, there’s almost nothing you can do to get kicked out. Not the most abject academic failure, not the most heinous act of plagiarism, not even threatening a fellow student with bodily harm—I’ve heard of all three—will get you expelled. The feeling is that, by gosh, it just wouldn’t be fair—in other words, the self-protectiveness of the old-boy network, even if it now includes girls. Elite schools nurture excellence, but they also nurture what a former Yale graduate student I know calls “entitled mediocrity.” A is the mark of excellence; A- is the mark of entitled mediocrity. It’s another one of those metaphors, not so much a grade as a promise. It means, don’t worry, we’ll take care of you. You may not be all that good, but you’re good enough.

Here, too, college reflects the way things work in the adult world (unless it’s the other way around). For the elite, there’s always another extension—a bailout, a pardon, a stint in rehab—always plenty of contacts and special stipends—the country club, the conference, the year-end bonus, the dividend. If Al Gore and John Kerry represent one of the characteristic products of an elite education, George W. Bush represents another. It’s no coincidence that our current president, the apotheosis of entitled mediocrity, went to Yale.

I also liked his take on what a “good” post-university job might be.

When parents explain why they work so hard to give their children the best possible education, they invariably say it is because of the opportunities it opens up. But what of the opportunities it shuts down? An elite education gives you the chance to be rich—which is, after all, what we’re talking about—but it takes away the chance not to be. Yet the opportunity not to be rich is one of the greatest opportunities with which young Americans have been blessed. We live in a society that is itself so wealthy that it can afford to provide a decent living to whole classes of people who in other countries exist (or in earlier times existed) on the brink of poverty or, at least, of indignity. You can live comfortably in the United States as a schoolteacher, or a community organizer, or a civil rights lawyer, or an artist—that is, by any reasonable definition of comfort. You have to live in an ordinary house instead of an apartment in Manhattan or a mansion in L.A.; you have to drive a Honda instead of a BMW or a Hummer; you have to vacation in Florida instead of Barbados or Paris, but what are such losses when set against the opportunity to do work you believe in, work you’re suited for, work you love, every day of your life?

Yet it is precisely that opportunity that an elite education takes away. How can I be a schoolteacher—wouldn’t that be a waste of my expensive education? Wouldn’t I be squandering the opportunities my parents worked so hard to provide? What will my friends think? How will I face my classmates at our 20th reunion, when they’re all rich lawyers or important people in New York? And the question that lies behind all these: Isn’t it beneath me? So a whole universe of possibility closes, and you miss your true calling.

When I think of my own criticisms of the public debate about higher education today many of these issues are at the root of it: credentialism, the implicit (and sometimes explicit) hierarchy of possible careers, the implicit (and sometimes explicit) valuing of careers by their earning potential. There is plenty of food for thought in this article and I highly recommend it.

In my ongoing thinking about bringing French back into our learning activities, I keep thinking that what I want is something like the Bravewriter language arts program but in French. Since the practice of copywork and dictation apparently draws on what is normal practice in France, I figured that maybe this shouldn’t be too difficult. The trick, as always, is probably to come up with the right search terms.

A search for “français dictée jeunesse” brought me to a Radio Canada site with online “dictée à trous” for kids age 10 and up. It is in the Extras section for a programme called Virginie. That will be for first language speakers but seems to be very close to what I am looking for. These can be done online and then checked, which is a good feature for Tigger. There is also a summer reading list for older and younger readers. Hmmm. I wonder if I need to copy that somewhere so it doesn’t disappear when the new season starts in the fall.

Looking around on the Radio Canada site led me to other resources including Le français au micro, which contains a database of expressions and discussion of proper usage. Radio Canada International also produces a French as a second language program for children age 7 – 12, Everyday French for Children. Maybe I should consider using these stories as the basis of a dictation and copywork based programme for Tigger.

And then there is a 15 minutes news program for 9-12 year olds — RDI Junior. It looks like it’s on just after 5 p.m. which might be a good time to watch live, though we could always tape it to watch later. As with everything else, it seems to be over for the summer, but some recent programmes are available to listen to again online and it’ll be starting again in the fall. The Guide Pedagogique explains how the program works and there is a list of teaching topics here. I know Tigger reads the news online at the CBBC Newsround site that her friend in England showed her (the “C” before BBC is for Children’s). It is a news program designed for kids and she likes it. So maybe that is a way into the French for her as well.

As with most TV channels these days, there is also a Zone Jeunesse with various activities. If my goal is just to get her using French more, this might be a good resource.

One of my problems with this whole thing is that I’m really not sure what her level is. I know she was more advanced that the rest of her class when she was in school but we haven’t really done any French for the past couple of years and she refuses to speak to us in French. So I went looking for tests that might help me work that out and thus choose appropriate resources.

Is it me or is no one offering assessment tests for French language skills? And why is the Canadian Test Centre not? Seems like French is compulsory in many Canadian provinces. Don’t they test proficiency or achievement or aptitude or anything? I’m not a big fan of tests but sometimes you just want to check out where your kid is so you can figure out where to look for resources and where to go. The Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers seems to have some assessment material, though I’m not sure if it is what I want. It does look like the private school around the corner from me, which offers assessment and tutoring services as well, can do testing in French, though, so maybe I’ll talk to them.

CASLT do have other resources for teaching second language and links to useful resources. That led me to LangCanada.ca which has links to lots of second language teaching resources (French or English). This page of resources organized by theme seems like it might be pretty useful.

Yesterday, we had the first meal of broccoli and beans from our garden. This evening I looked out the kitchen window and saw something furry in that patch. Our cats were both indoors. I went to investigate.

The little varmint rushed back into his (her?) den but peered out at me from the doorway and didn’t seem bothered when I spoke to her. At that point I wished I had brought the camera because I could have got a photo. I went back in and took those shots. I waited for her to appear in the doorway but she didn’t so you will have to imagine her little nose peeking out of here:

I’m not sure what the long term solution is but for now I’ve blocked that particular door (which is less than a metre from the broccoli).

I have no doubt that there is another door to this den. It is under our shed, by the way. I suspect we’ll have to trap her and take her somewhere else. I’m not sure where, though. And I have no idea if groundhogs are tasty. Nor how to kill her if they are. They are certainly not endangered.

I realized a long time ago that I seem to be raising a historian. Tigger is fascinated by history. Luckily, I am not one of those people who thinks that knowledge of a subject is a necessary precursor to the ability to teach it. My own knowledge of history is what most people would describe as woeful. I recall very little of what I was taught in school and took only one history class in university. My historical knowledge is pretty limited to early Canadian history, which means it doesn’t even extend to much knowledge of the opening up of the West. Homeschooling is fixing that, believe me.

With Tigger, finding a history of whatever we are studying is a sure fire way to spark her interest. We have read some history of mathematics, some general history of the world, studied the American Dust Bowl, and the voyages of Captain Cook. She and her father have been studying botany this spring, using Thomas Elpel’s Botany in a Day as a spine. Her dad found The Great Naturalists in the library and they have started expanding their study with historical study.

So when I ran across this article in the Observer about Darwin and the history of how he developed his theory of natural selection and how he came to publish it when he did, I thought I should make a note. One of the nice things about including history in science studies is that it makes that process of doing science clearer. Although there are rigourous methods and fairly strict rules about how you report your findings, the process of doing science can be a bit messy. And science is always done in a particular social and cultural context at a particular historical moment. When a scientist publishes his or her findings and how they choose to publish them is often driven by these concerns.

Thus the theory of natural selection appeared, fever-like, in the mind of one of our greatest naturalists. Wallace wrote up his ideas and sent them to Charles Darwin, already a naturalist of some reputation. His paper arrived on 18 June, 1858 – 150 years ago last week – at Darwin’s estate in Downe, in Kent.

Darwin, in his own words, was ’smashed’. For two decades he had been working on the same idea and now someone else might get the credit for what was later to be described, by palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould, as ‘the greatest ideological revolution in the history of science’ or in the words of Richard Dawkins, ‘the most important idea to occur to a human mind.’ In anguish Darwin wrote to his friends, the botanist Joseph Hooker and the geologist Charles Lyell. What followed has become the stuff of scientific legend.

Darwin had been working on his material for 20 years at this point. But like many of us, he was putting off writing and continuing to research. Unlike 21st century scientists he was under no pressure to publish early and often. But the fear of being scooped pushed him into publishing his findings.

‘Wallace’s letter gave Darwin a good kick up the backside,’ says the geneticist Steve Jones. ‘He had prevaricated for 20 years and would have done so for another 20 if he hadn’t realised someone else was on the trail.’ The summer of 1858 changed everything for Darwin. Although by no means an arrogant man, he knew his worth. He was already a Royal Society Gold Medal winner and was not going to be robbed by a whippersnapper specimen collector in Malaysia. So he sat down, with a board across his knee, on the only chair in his house that could accommodate his long legs, and wrote up the research he had been carrying out for the past 20 years.

The form of what he wrote was also interesting. He did not write for the small audience of his peers but rather for a larger educated public.

Remarkably, it is the only major scientific treatise to have been written, deliberately, as a piece of popular writing, a book whose interlacing story lines have been compared with those of George Eliot or Charles Dickens and which is peppered with richly inventive metaphor. ‘Darwin was creating a lasting work of art,’ as Darwin’s biographer Janet Browne puts it.

They style may not seem that accessible to the 21st century reader but it is no less so than other writers of his time.

The rest of the article is well worth reading. Weighing the evidence of whether “natural selection” is Wallace’s or Darwin’s intellectual property brings in some very important points about the difference between a conjecture and theory. The key to the latter is the weight of evidence in support of it. The fact that Darwin had been working on this for 20 years before publishing means that he had a lot of evidence to bring to bear. Certainly many people can come up with the hypothesis that natural selection might explain a range of phenomena, but that hypothesis needs to be tested across a range of instances. Darwin had that evidence.

Go on, read the whole thing.

For me, the question of which individual should be credited with a particular discovery is the wrong question. All scientific knowledge is the product of many years of investigations, hypotheses, blind alleys, and the careful collection of substantial evidence. Many people are involved working together and separately. New ideas are born of discussion and debate. It is a particular historical and social context that leads to the desire to pin particular discoveries on individuals, and most of those deserve recognition. But one reason we should study the history of science along with the science itself, is to keep those individuals in perspective.

Scientific advances are built on more than genius and “eureka” moments. They are built on long, careful study, debate, discussion, trial and error, and a bit of humility.

Cadenza by Estelle. 80% merino, 20% tussah silk.

I saw the cover pattern on the summer Knitty and thought “ooh, Tigger would love that”.  I went and got some yarn while I was out yesterday.

Another suggestion from Becky, who has linked to some great reviews. Enough to entice me to buy the Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments by Robert Bruce Thompson. (I’ve linked to the publisher’s site because there is a sample chapter there.) Now that I have it, I thought I would let you know about some of the things that have struck me now that I have the whole thing. I’m not sure if these were not mentioned in the other reviews or if I just didn’t notice them.

First of all, I think this is going to be a great resource for high school chemistry. I know I’m getting ahead of myself here, but the book claims to be all the labs you need for whatever level of high school chemistry you are going to do. I’ll need other texts to go with it to give the theory and whatnot, but the labs are usually the hard part. And it is about serious labs, not imprecise, kitchen-table approximations. Now, sometimes the latter are going to be fine, but I think it is good to have a real choice to do things precisely and properly. And I know that the lack of “proper labs” is something that makes many people seriously consider sending their kids to school for high school.

Others have mentioned the extensive introductory chapters covering safety, equipment, chemicals, basic techniques, etc. These are indeed impressive. All the information you need to make good choices based on your needs and budget. That includes the implications of your choices for things like accuracy and whether that is likely to make a difference for your purposes. In addition, in the lab descriptions themselves, there is a list of “substitutions and modifications” letting you know the implications of substitutions for this particular experiment. Very helpful.

There is also a very useful, and detailed, discussion (pages 5-7) of how to keep a proper lab notebook, making the connection between even introductory laboratory chemistry and practices in industrial and academic labs. I did chemistry up to 2nd year university level and don’t remember having this kind of guidance. A friend who is a biochemistry professor was once lamenting the state of her graduate students’ ability to keep good lab notebooks. It seems to me that this is a potentially very important practical detail that it is good to learn early. (Habit training, as we know, is invaluable.) A well kept laboratory notebook would also be a good thing to include in a portfolio for university admission.

The presentation is not post-modern and funky (à la DK books) but very modern and rectilinear. Now if that doesn’t suit your learner, maybe this is a problem, but I’ve met at least one mom whose kid really requires less distraction on the page. This isn’t designed as a “make chemistry fun” book. It is designed to help people discover how fun chemistry is for themselves. No fancy wrapping. Just good, plain, easy to read, uncluttered text. Boxes to set of important things like materials lists, cautions, side explanations, optional activities, and comments from the author’s advisors. Doing the actual experiment involves following linear text, often set out as a series of numbered steps. Sample tables for recording data are included, as are review questions. The introductory chapter suggests actually reproducing these in your (hardbound) laboratory notebook.

From the point of view of a parent, the information on pages 2-4 is invaluable. The author arranges the experiments in groups according to what kind of course you are following. And suggests the amount of time that should be alloted for chemistry labs. Those few pages really impressed me. I really felt like this made the book much more useful. Given my experience so far with the government curriculum guidelines and the textbooks I’ve looked at, I really like the fact that someone lays out some specific guidelines that don’t require a lot of between the lines interpretation.

There is a list of 15 experiments that would support a general chemistry course for those not going on in sciences. Although he doesn’t use this terminology this suggests to me a “general” course as opposed to a “university prep” course. Suggested allocation: weekly 60-90 minute lab sessions. He says that some might take more than one session so I guess maybe 20 total sessions. And you’d want to have a session all on safety and basic techniques, I’m guessing.

For those who want a full two years of high school chemistry, the second year being the AP chemistry course (or equivalent), he lays out the lab sessions that would be allocated to each year. In my mind this would be the “university prep” course. Suggested allocation: 90 minute to 2 hour lab sessions twice a week or a 3 to 4 hour session weekly, with the 2nd year being at the top end of that. There are 36 experiments in the first year of this course and 28 in the second. Very helpfully, for those who will actually be taking the AP exam, there is a table relating the experiments in the book to the list recommended by the College Board for the AP Chemistry exam (22 experiments).

I really like the fact that I can open the book to pages 2 and 3 and have a clear outline of a basic course, an advanced introduction, and a “further topics” course. Maybe all we ever do are the 15 basic experiments. But at least I know what kind of coverage that gives us. And we can do them properly, keeping a proper lab notebook.

So this book is going on my shelf. And anyone even considering homeschooling through high school should seriously consider getting a copy for their shelf, or at least borrowing it from the library to help make your decision. We won’t be ready for it for a couple of years yet, but I might dip into it for more rigorous descriptions of some of the experiments in Fizz, Bubble, and Flash. I’ve already discovered that we could use a bundle of pencil leads as an electrode rather than one, which might have saved us some frustration when we last tried to use that book. I will also use it as a reference for safety, techniques, and general guidance on buying equipment and chemicals.

Looking at this book and skimming the Ontario high school curriculum guidelines again, I realize that they start with a periodic table based course in the early years. So I am probably going to go back to my earlier plan (that never got executed) of doing that kind of course using Fizz, Bubble, and Flash for experiment suggestions, along with a bunch of other related books (many of which were also suggested by Becky at one time or another). Then in a couple of years, maybe we’ll try the general course suggested by Thompson.

A while ago, Steph kindly posted her plans for biology  for next year. Her daughter is going to be beginning highschool and she posted her draft plans seeking input. I think I’ve mentioned before that one of the things I like about Steph’s plans are that she always includes reading lists for herself. On this plan I noticed the book In a Patch of Fireweed by Bernd Heinrich. Actually it was the subtitle that caught my eye — A Biologist’s Life in the Field. I figured that this might be a good introduction to the discipline of biology, in the sense of the code of behaviour by which they “do” science.

I really enjoyed this book. It is beautifully written. (The link has a “search inside” so you can even read some of the first chapter.) And though the intended audience is adult, I think it would make a great read aloud for older children and teens, particularly for those of us who choose read-alouds that might be challenging for our kids to read themselves but that we think they will get a lot out of if they are not also concentrating on try to read it. The book is illustrated by the author’s own sketches, all of which are beautiful. We haven’t been doing nature journalling but if you have, there is lots in here that would help make the link from that practice to more rigorous science.

The book is a good combination of autobiography, nature journal, and reporting of scientific experiments. It’s real value is in demonstrating some of the invisible parts of the scientific process — how did you come to ask those questions? And how did you get from a field observation to a scientific study? Why did you collect that data and what do the statistics add that field observation without counting didn’t give you? That sort of thing. As such, I would recommend this book for anyone, not just those who are homeschooling (highschool). It has often been said that public knowledge of science is woefully inadequate and this book would be a pleasant way to get a better sense of how scientists see the world, how they think, and how they “do” science.

For those who are interested in insects, the book will be even more exciting. The subject matter of many of the chapters is beetles, moths, wasps and bees. While Heinrich is clearly fascinated by the natural world in general, he focuses on insects. He asks questions that might never occur to the rest of us, though, and makes insects more interesting for those of us who have never given them much thought.

For those who are homeschooling highschool, this book would make a good transition from elementary science, where the focus is on awareness of the world, close observation, and some general knowledge of processes, to secondary science, where more rigorous scientific method should be introduced. Whether or not nature journalling has been part of your homeschool, this book suggests to me that it would be a good practice as part of a field biology course (or course component) and gives good suggestions about how you would go beyond those field observations to develop a more rigorous observational study, collect some quantitative data, and/or do more library research.

And for those whose children are attending highschool, this book might provide some useful insights into the practice of biology that would enable you to help them if they are having some difficulty. We often notice that text-books skip what seems to be important contextual information in the rush to get through the requisite topics. Heinrich’s book would be an enjoyable way of renewing a sense of what biology is about that might enable you to help your kids get over whatever conceptual hurdles they are facing. Or just give them a different take on the subject that might inspire them to struggle through.

If you need a good, short example of why we sometimes need to count things and why quantitative data and graphs can be useful, I recommend the chapter ” Counting Yellowjackets”. The main argument in this chapter is for the value of quantitative data as close observation.

And the first chapter, “Flight into the Forest”, would fit well in a history syllabus about WWII. Although it’s purpose in the book is to describe how the author developed his fascination with the natural world, a fascination that developed into a career as a field biologist, it also serves well as a story of how one particular German family survived the war. And an interesting story it is, too. (That’s why I’ve put it in the history category.)

When I first came across the reference, I was somewhat annoyed that my public library had many books by Heinrich but not this one. I am glad I was forced to purchase it. I think it may be read by everyone in the house eventually, perhaps more than once.  And I am now keen to explore some of his other works, many of which are in my library.

Well, not barley but you get my drift. More photos of the garden. The weather has been a bit odd. We had a real hot spell and now it is coolish again (well, the English folks in the house don’t think so, but I left England for a reason). Lots of rain so stuff is growing. Today you get to see the broad beans and the peas.

Nice flowers, eh? They grow all up the stalk like that. And lots of flowers means lots of beans eventually. I think the plants are still getting taller, too. And they’ve filled out enough that Blitzen doesn’t even try to sleep between them.

The peas are going a bit crazy, too. And they are flowering. Aren’t those flowers pretty? I’m not sure but the colour of the flowers makes me hopeful that these are the purple peas we acquired from the gardener at Upper Canada Village last summer. (There are real advantages to chatting to the gardeners.) He gave us permission to pick some purple peas and suggested we dry them and plant them next year. So we did.

The cucumbers and zucchini are also flowering. Mat even saw and actual zucchini the other day. I suppose I should go check that out before it gets too big. We are eating strawberries though there are lots that would appreciate a bit more sun. I also went out the annex at J’s place to weed the other day and came home with spinach, beet greens, and some spring onions. The potato plants are looking very happy.