NotesToMyChildren

Trying to reorganize my hard drive, I came upon a file from a few years ago called NotesToMyChildren.

This was a list of thoughts I was having on child raising in general and on home schooling and intellectual development in particular.

I'm not going to share all of it, but here's a handful of the earlier points:

• Be patient with your old man: he means well.

• NEVER accept "he means well" as an excuse for anything!

  Intentions are necessary but not sufficient.

• With me, you will have to speak French very slowly.

• Don't dichotomize. Not only is it intellectually lazy, but it also leads to wrong answers. Look for 3rd, 4th, and Nth alternatives to the standard 2 you'll be presented with.

• You're going to have to provisionally trust authority (me, your mom, the media, librarians, professors, books, etc.) long enough to get a coherent picture together. Trust the facts long enough to see if they make a consistent map. If they don't, then you can't continue trusting any of those facts, at least not on the mere authority of their source.

  If the facts do make up a coherent picture, you still can't take the picture as true or accurate. At this point, you have to start checking the facts. I can't tell you how many lies I've discovered in my own schooling.

- papa