I encourage you to read the first eleven verses of John chapter 12. The passage is about the woman who annoited Jesus with an expensive perfume. Judas was angry at this reckless act the woman had done. He asked why the perfume couldn’t have at least been sold so that the money could be given to the poor. What a waste! But Mary did just the right thing.

I find myself thinking like Judas a lot. I have thought a lot about what I should be studying in college, what to do with my life. I have spent so much time worrying about whether I’m doing the right thing. I was afraid of doing the wrong thing and failing. I prayed that God would use me according to my abilities. I didn’t want to be wasted. Then I realized that my thinking was all wrong.

It is not our business to ensure that the little we have is put to good use. It’s easy to “surrender” ourselves with the condition that God use is us the way we have in mind. But we cannot say to God, “Wouldn’t my talents and abilities be better used in this setting?” We can only say, “God, here am I, all of me. Take me and use me as you please.” It is only when we pour ourselves so recklessly at his feet like this that we begin to be of use. It doesn’t matter if we feel like all our best work goes for naught. Give it to God, obey him, and he will make it something beautiful.

Related posts:

• Mt. Sophia Academy- What is Our Mission?
• Why Are We Here? (Part II)
• The Banana Peel at the Starting Line

To stay homeschooled or not to stay homeschooled—that is the question:

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of “real” high school’s drama,

Or to take arms against a sea of stereotypes

And, by opposing, end them.  To stay home, to sleep in—

Oh joy!—and by our sleep to say we end

The grumpiness and the thousand natural shocks

That sleep-deprived, “real-schooled” flesh is heir to—‘tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished.  To stay home, to sleep—

To sleep, perchance to learn.  Ay, there’s the rub,

For after that sleep we must study what math lessons may come,

When our parents have not studied trigonometry for twenty years;

This must give us pause.  Here’s the respect

That makes calamity of studying at home.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of trig,

Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud answer book’s contumely,

The pangs of a weary mother, the father’s delay,

The insolence of noisy younger siblings, and the spurns

That “real-schooled” friends have more time than I do,

When I myself might my quietus make

By calling Social Services?  Who would the “above-average” label bear,

To grunt and sweat under impossible expectations,

But for the dread of giving homeschoolers a bad reputation?

The uninforméd public from whose bourn

No story of un-socialization can escape strengthens the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others we know not of.

Thus stereotypes do make cowards of us all,

And we would rather stay homeschooled than—horrid thought!—

Go to “real school.”

-Christa Swafford

Related posts:

• Homeschool Asylum
• Homeschooler, Justify Thyself!
• The World According to Chowder

From what? you might ask.

From our oppressors, we would respond.

The English? you ask. (Poor English people. Can you imagine them watching us celebrate being independent from them every year?)

Not really, no, we respond. After all, none of us were ever oppressed by England.

I mean, raise your hand: Have you ever been oppressed by an Englishman or -woman?

Didn’t think so.

____

The 4th is not about our freedom from England. It’s about freedom from tyranny — from unjust, exploitative, illegitimate force and violence.

It’s about the day when the leaders of the thirteen “united States” (not, interestingly, the “United States”) said that there are certain fundamental truths that everyone can see — truths about people and governments and God and countries — and that anybody who violates those truths forfeits his (or her) authority to rule.

But notice that they claimed these were truths everyone could see.  And notice how they felt it necessary to explain their actions to the world by writing up a “Declaration.”

And notice that they didn’t declare war on the 4th. They simply claimed to be speaking the truth and explaining themselves.

____

Now, the guys who wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence weren’t all good guys. But we can learn something from them, nevertheless.

The Declaration of Independence was an attempt to remind everyone of important truths (important truths they all already knew), to convince them that the government of England had violated those truths, and to convince them that the citizens of the thirteen American colonies were justified — because of those violations — in no longer seeing the government of England as their government.

The road to independence, in other words, begins with truth, reasoning, and argumentation.

____

If you want to teach independence to your children, then, what must you do?

First, teach them to see truth.

Second, teach them to understand how others see the world.

Remember, the Declaration of Independence doesn’t appeal to truths that only Americans or Christians could see.  It appeals to truths that everyone could see. The Declaration of Independence tries to start its argument from “common ground.”

But even if you can’t find “common ground” with an opponent, you still need to understand how he or she sees the world.  You can’t help someone get from the wrong place to the right place if you don’t know where he’s coming from!

Third, teach them how to make a case, or construct an argument, that others will find convincing.

Remember, the job of the Declaration of Independence was to convince the rest of the world that the American colonists were right.  The Declaration isn’t a law that forced people to agree.  And it isn’t a declaration of war that threatened violence if they didn’t agree. Its job was to make a rational argument that rational people would find convincing.

Fourth, teach them how to write.

The Declaration is extremely well written. It wouldn’t have had nearly the force it’s had for 200+ years had it not been.

But also, the secret to the Declaration of Independence is John Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil Government.  Everyone had already read John Locke’s book, and been convinced by it.  All the Declaration had to do, then was to remind everyone of what John Locke had said about people and governments and God and countries, and then convince them that what Locke had said applied to the American situation.

John Locke’s book was a culture changer. Without it, there would have never been a Declaration of Independence.

____

As homeschoolers, you have already declared your independence from the “normal” school system.  And that means you have the freedom to teach independence to your children.

The 4th of July is here to remind us not to let such opportunities go to waste!

-Micah Tillman

^{[Micah is a Mt. Sophia graduate who is working on his doctoral dissertation at The Catholic University of America. He also gets to teach philosophy (as a "teaching fellow"), which he loves.]}

Related posts:

• On the Reading of Old Books
• A Homeschooler’s Identity
• Dr. Gerald Culley Teaches on History, Philosophy and Mt. Sophia- Part I

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• Quote for the Week
• Quote for the Week
• Quote of the Week

____

I was thinking, the other day, about the Classics. You all make your children read them during the school year, and maybe even over the summer. And I bet you’ve all heard some complaint to the effect of, “Why do we have to read this book? What’s so important about it?”

Where I teach philosophy, we are very much “into” the Classics.  We teach the Classic Philosophical Texts. That is our approach to teaching philosophy.

Other schools might focus on Classic Philosophical Problems, or Recent Philosophical Problems, or Contemporary Questions in Philosophy, or Historical Debates in Philosophy. And we do that too. It’s just our specialty is in teaching the Classic Texts.

____

But why focus on classic books?  What do you tell your children?

Here’s some of my thoughts on the subject:

____

The classics are, for the most part, very old, and very well-known. They’ve been popular for a very long time, in other words, and have been read by many, many historically-important people

When you sit down to read a classic book, therefore, you’re doing the same thing that countless other people have done before you, are doing right now, and will still be doing in the future.

You’re joining in an activity that spans the ages and the globe. You’re participating in an experience that is shared by thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people across time and space.

____

You’re having the same experience now as the George Washingtons, Winston Churchills, Abraham Lincolns, etc. of history had when you read Shakespeare today. You’re having the same experience now as Cicero and Julius Caesar and maybe even the Apostle Paul had when you read Homer.

When you pick up a Jane Austen novel, you’re joining with a whole sea of unseen others who have picked up the same novel. When you read a C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkein story, you’re living through the same events that many great people have lived through as they read the same book.

____

When you read classic books, therefore, you’re helping to tie history and the world together. You’re participating in the same activities and experiences that many others have. The experience you have, and activity in which you engage, of reading the story is the same as the experience others have had, and the activity in which others have engaged, around the world and through the years.

Furthermore, when you read classic books, you’re becoming part of a tradition. You’re participating in something larger than yourself.

____

And, when you read classic books, you’re enabling yourself to better understand the people who have shaped your world, because (a) you’ve now shared some of their experiences with them (the experience of reading the book you’re reading, and of living through the story with its characters), and (b) you now know the characters and plots and stories that helped them to see the structures in their world and to understand the events in their lives.

The stories we read and hear and watch begin to act as metaphors for the events in our lives. We begin to see our world through the stories we’ve experienced. The stories we’ve lived through help us to see the organization and structure of what we live through in the real world.

There’s an important sense, therefore, in which you cannot understand another person unless you understand the stories they see the world through.

____

So, we read the Classics in order to participate in the connecting of different times and places with each other, in order to participate in a tradition larger than ourselves, and in order to better understand other people (especially those who have helped to shape our world).

But there are other reasons as well.

What do you think?

-Micah Tillman

^{[Micah is a Mt. Sophia graduate who is working on his doctoral dissertation at The Catholic University of America. He also gets to teach philosophy (as a "teaching fellow"), which he loves.]}

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Students’ Unique Abilities

We firmly believe that God has placed into each child unique and beautiful abilities. No two students are alike, but they are all placed here on purpose by a purposeful God. At MSA, we want to help our kids find and develop those gifts as they learn, love, pray, socialize, serve, and grow.

Creating a Culture for Christ

Our unified and clear purpose is to create a culture that will look like and advance Christ’s kingdom. As the students (and adults) grow, so will that culture. There will be a culture for Christ within each student. Then through those students will come a culture for Christ around them.

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• Mt. Sophia Academy- What is Our Mission?
• It’s 1/3 About You
• How the Blog Was Born

This is our mission in a sound bite. And every word is “intentional”.

Please allow me to review it with you…

Intentionally

“Intentionally” has several different meanings which apply here.

One meaning is “doing things with a purpose, towards a goal”. We are working towards the goal of having our students’ abilities developed well.

Another meaning is “looking at something, putting one’s attention on something”. That fits also. We are looking at each student’s uniqueness to see what God wants to develop there.

Maximizing

“Maximizing” also has a couple of pertinent meanings.

One meaning is “to increase to the greatest possible amount”. I doubt this one can actually be reached this side of heaven, because our children have God’s abilities working along with their own abilities. Still, we want to steward those gifts.

“To make the fullest use of” is the other definition. We are aiming in this direction for sure.

Here is a thought, “What if the students at Mt. Sophia come to know their God-given gifts and abilities and work to enjoy them?”

Woo-Hoo! That will be fun!

Related posts:

• Why Are We Here? (Part II)
• Dr. Gerald Culley Teaches on History, Philosophy and Mt. Sophia- Part I
• Dr. Gerald Culley Wraps Up His Story and Gives the Object Lesson

Oh the pain!  Can you imagine being in school till the middle of June!?

Well, maybe you can.

____

Why is it, after all, that colleges always get out earlier than high schools and middle schools and elementary schools?

And why is it that some homeschooling families don’t do summer vacation at all?

Is there one right time to begin school every year?  Is there one right time to end school every year?

____

When I first went off to college I was a little annoyed that the school year started before Labor Day.  In the Tillman household, we had always started school the day after Labor Day.  That just seemed like the natural time to start.

But then I found out that colleges work on a different calendar.  They begin at the end of August.

Why?

Who knows.

____

Aristotle said that you can’t always figure out exactly what you should do head of time.  Sometimes you have to wait till you’re in the situation before you can see how you should act in that situation.  Sometimes you have to feel it out from within the situation, rather than trying to reason it out from outside the situation.

Imagine, for example, a football coach who calls a play for his team.  In the play, one wide receiver is supposed to run down the field for ten yards, and then make a sharp left turn.  Then the quarterback will throw him the ball.

Now, imagine that the wide receiver asks the coach how many steps he should take to get to the ten yard mark.  Or, imagine that the wide receiver asks the coach what he should do if one of the defensive players gets in his way.

____

What would the coach say?

He’d say, “Look, son,” (coaches always call their players “son,” evidently), “you’ll figure it out once the play starts.  Feel it out.  You’ve got the experience.   You’ve got the training.  You’ve developed all the right habits.  You’ll see what the right thing is to do when you’re in the middle of the play; you can’t just figure it out ahead of time.”

____

There are many things in life like that.  You’ve got a goal, and a basic plan for getting there.  But many of the details can’t be figured out ahead of time.  You have to be in the middle of the situations that will arise before you can figure out what to do in those situations.

Of course, this only works if you’ve developed the right habits and dispositions and tendencies ahead of time.  It only works if you’ve become “virtuous” (to some extent), as Aristotle says.

But preparing yourself, on the one hand, and having a rational, step-by-step plan for every possible eventuality, on the other hand, are often two different things.

____

So, why is it that we all seem to start and end the school year at different times?

Everyone’s got a goal (”Get educated!”) and a basic game plan (”Devote at least some of the year to schooling!”).  But college is a different situation than high school, and high school is a different situation than middle school, and all of those are different situations than homeschool.

And that means the people who make the calendar decisions for each group have had to work it out over time.  You can’t just impose a one-size-fits-all, purely rational policy on everyone in every situation.  Some things work for some people in some situations, that don’t for others in other situations.

But so long as those who are making the calendar decisions are well attuned to the needs of their students, and to the requirements of their curricula, and to the goals they’re trying to fulfill, they’ll be able to eventually figure out a way that works, even if they couldn’t have figured it out in the abstract ahead of time.

____

And, as if things weren’t complicated enough already (wouldn’t it be nice if we could figure everything out ahead of time?), there’s often more than one good way of doing things.  Just because Option A is good doesn’t mean Options B and C aren’t equally as good.  All three may be better than Options D and E, but A, B, and C may all be “tops” (as it were).

So, some people go with A, without thinking badly of B and C, and others go with B, without thinking badly of A and C, and others go with C, without thinking badly of A and B.

I think it’s part of the greatness of God’s creation that there are often so many good options.

-Micah Tillman

^{[Micah is a Mt. Sophia graduate who is working on his doctoral dissertation at The Catholic University of America. He also gets to teach philosophy (as a "graduate fellow"), which he loves.]}

Related posts:

• Homeschooler, Justify Thyself!
• Teaching Independence
• On the Reading of Old Books

Facebook is starting something new called “Connections.” And if it were only that — just a way to connect a little more with the outside world — then I’d probably be on board. But these “connections” aren’t just that. They’re a way of making more of your information public.

So, whatever you think your privacy settings are…if you haven’t checked them since May 1, then you’re wrong. Facebook opts you IN by default.

May 2-8 is the first annual Choose Privacy week and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

What you should know and what you can do about it:

Facebook Is Trying Hard to Make Your Information Public

I used to have information about my hometown, education, and employer on my profile. Now I don’t. Why? Because now Facebook is rolling out a policy forcing users to make all of this information in “connections” & “pages.”

What’s wrong with that? Well, it’s public by default. And it’s not just public to your friends; it’s public to anyone who looks for you on Facebook (whether or not they’re logged in or part of your networks) and it’s public to anyone using a search engine.

And you can’t make them private. So how do you make it so that only your friends can see that info?

You can’t. You either share with everyone or no one. So, Facebook made me delete that information— my hometown, education, and employer—since I refused to make it universally public. No more hometown, education, or employer.

Furthermore, my interests and activities would have gone the same way—they would have been made public to everyone on the planet—had I not already deleted those sections.

You see what I mean about Facebook seeing us as a product? Facebook is no longer a tool to share information with our friends; it’s geared towards making information about us public. That’s not user-oriented; their corporate customers are the people who want our personal information to be public.

Facebook Is Opting You Into Their New Privacy Settings

Besides making your Pages (and friends) public with no hope of changing them to private, Facebook is opting you INTO their new opennness, rather than allowing you to choose for yourself. Their policy is that when they update to make things more public, your info is automatically less public unless you change it.

When you used the old Facebook Connect to leave a comment or do something else on a partner site, the partner site could keep some of the information about you for 24 hours. Now they can keep everything forever.

The claim is that this lets you personalize your web experience. Sites can look at your area, interests, etc, and choose how to display content just for you. If you want that, then take advantage of it; just remember when putting information in your Facebook profile that sites you connect to via Facebook Connect, and applications you use in Facebook, can now pull that information and save it.

I’ll talk a little more about the specifics in the section on things you can opt-out of.

Facebook Wants to Shape the Way You See the Web

Facebook wants to be the nexus that pulls things together. Facebook Connect is meant to personalize your browsing experience, and it’s not altogether a bad idea. There is a ton of information out there. (Google does something like this if you enable remembering Web history.)

Facebook and its partner sites will be personalizing based on your Facebook profile and your browsing patterns. But from a practical standpoint, this may not give them all the information necessary to make a call about what you really want from your news sites, etc. Sure, I’ll read celebrity gossip on CNN, but when I go there I scan all the sections for interesting headlines. I don’t want International News getting sidelined if I don’t click on it enough.

When it comes to implementation, this means what I said above—sharing your private information and allowing partner sites to do whatever the heck they want with it.

What’s Wrong With Making Everything Public?

The world isn’t bunnies and happiness. It’s profit and marketing and theft. And while the internet is full of awesome people, it’s also full of scammers and spammers. It was incredibly easy for a random person to hack Sarah Palin’s personal e-mail. How? He just used the password reset on Yahoo & filled in the details with info that was available online.

Strangers and strange websites don’t need to know your birthdate, your home town, your employment history, your current employer, your interests, your activities, etc. There’s no need for the information to be out there, and it could put you at greater risk of being turned down for a job, hacked, scammed, robbed, or having your identity stolen.

Suppose your future hiring manager sees one of your Facebook groups listed in Google and doesn’t agree with that group; they may not be allowed to use that info to turn you down for a job, but it could still form a bad impression in their mind. And if someone equally qualified doesn’t have public info that rubs the manager the wrong way, who will get the job? Or if you post details on your out-of-town trip…well, with your hometown and other identifying info available to the world, it’d be easy enough for a thief to look you up in an address book.

Is this paranoid? I prefer to think of it as practical. What actually needs to be out there? Who actually needs to see it? Am I better taking steps to protect my data? This is like locking your apartment even though you live in a locked building. You can choose to trust all your neighbors and their guests and hope that no one breaks through the front door, but it’s practical to take some precautions.

Why is Facebook Doing This?

Because they want to be bigger. Most companies aspire to be bigger and better and more profitable. If the primary way you interact with the web is through your Facebook account, then not only does Facebook get a lot more activity, traffic, and advertising revenue (!!!), but they also become your go-to source for the internet. They want to be the next AOL. Maybe they’re forgetting that the reason AOL died is because that’s not what most people want.

And if making your private information public is the price they have to pay, then they’re willing to risk making you upset in the hopes that you’ll just give up on privacy all together.

So, How Can You Protect Your Privacy On Facebook?

Now that we’ve been through all the bad stuff, here’s what the Facebook privacy settings currently are, where to find them, and what you should look for in each section. If you just want to delete your account, visit this page and read the whole set of instructions because Facebook doesn’t like deleting accounts and makes it a little complicated.

Let’s get started. Click on “Account” on the far right of the blue navigation bar that runs across the top of your screen on Facebook. This is where you’ll find the three Settings sections: Account Settings, Privacy Settings, & Application Settings. I’ll go through them in that order. If you haven’t changed these since May 1, you need to go through them again.

Account Settings

This area doesn’t have much that’s important in it, but here are a few things to check.

Settings -> Password: On the settings tab, you can change your password. Make it something strong. Here’s a pretty good article on strong passwords.

Networks: You don’t have to do anything here, but consider whether or not you want to be in all the networks you’re in. You can’t make those private.

Notifications: I think it’s a good idea to err on the side of getting too many notifications. That way you know every time you’ve been tagged in a photo, etc. If you don’t like the photo, just untag yourself. If someone wrote something on your wall you don’t want there, delete. You can find all that when you login, too, but if you don’t visit Facebook often then notifications are your friend.

And that’s about it. Let’s move on to the much more intense…

Privacy Settings

Personal Information and Posts: Here you can control who can see your Bio, Birthday, Interested In & Looking For, Religious and Political Views, Photo Albums, Posts, whether friends can post on your wall (and who can see it and the comments on it). If you choose Friends of Friends or networks, then you’re giving up a certain amount of privacy. People you don’t know will be able to see it. (These are only the settings for humans, we’ll get to the website settings later).

You can choose to make things visible to “Only Me,” meaning that in theory no one else can see them. Like your birthday, which you can’t edit or delete.

Now, a word on Photo Albums in “Personal Information and Posts”. Click on the “Edit Settings” button to be taken to a page where you can edit your settings for each album individually. They default to “Everyone”!

Contact Information: This one is pretty self-explanatory. I’d actually remove most of this information from your profile altogether (the first section, from IM Screenname through Website). If not, I recommend sticking to Friends only.

There are two options in this section for who can add you as a friend and who can send you a message. Because I recommending locking everything else down so thoroughly, I actually suggest keeping these two open.

You may want to limit your child’s friend requests to a specific network, but keeping these open mean that even if you choose NOT to be Facebook friends with someone, they’ll be able to get in touch with you if they need to. That way you don’t have to friend someone just so that they can get ahold of you.

The last section is about your e-mail address(es). If you already allowed people to contact you on Facebook then there’s no actual need for displaying your e-mail. However you may find it convenient and provided you’re willing to risk spam, etc, it’s not as dangerous a choice as displaying a lot of other personal information.

Friends, Tags and Connections: Another pretty self-explanatory section. I recommend setting everything to Friends. Photos and videos in which you’re tagged will still be visible to friends of friends if they’re friends of the friends who uploaded the photos/videos.

Applications and Websites: This section is very important! Even if YOU only share some things with your friends, THEY can share your information too! Applications and connected sites can view anything made visible to Everyone, plus information about your “Name, Profile Picture, Gender, Current City, Networks, Friend List, and Pages” and can ask to see more. (Now that they’re forcing you to set things like your education, employment, interests, and activities as “Connections,” which are Pages, Applications can see those too.)

The “Learn What You Share” section is covered in this article and in a section below, so I’m going to skip it.

I suggest unchecking everything in the “What your friends can share about you through applications and websites” section. There’s no need for your friends to do that. Blocking Applications and Ignoring Friends isn’t necessary, but it’s good to know it’s there if you find yourself being swamped with invitations to use an application or have one friend who keeps trying to get you to join the next Farmville, Mafia Wars, etc.

The MOST important option in this section is at the bottom: “Instant Personalization Pilot Program.” Click on it and uncheck the box. Otherwise you’re giving partner sites you visit access to the information I mentioned a few paragraphs ago. And they can store this information as long as they like (even if you delete it off Facebook).

Search: This helps you control who can see you in searches on Facebook and online. I decided to set my search results on Facebook to Friends and Networks. That’s because I’m not really looking for new Facebook friends and I can friend them myself if I want. However there’s nothing wrong with setting the Facebook one to “Everyone,” if you want to make sure your friends can find you.

Uncheck the public search results one unless you’ve got a particular reason for people to find you on Facebook through Google. People wanting to be your Facebook friend will search on Facebook.

Block: Fortunately I haven’t had to use this one. Unless there’s a specific person or e-mail address you want to block on Facebook (like an ex, a stalker, or someone you’re generally trying to avoid), you can skip this section.

Application Settings

Applications are allowed to access a lot of your data. Application developers aren’t held accountable for how they use this information.

Use the drop-down list in this section and select “Authorized.” Remove every application with a little X mark unless you implicitly trust the application developer. There are a few that are built into Facebook and you can’t uncheck. That’s ok, those are just Facebook functionalities.

Other Recommended Reading

I suggest checking out these other articles on Facebook:

1. Things You Need to Know About Facebook — by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (an excellent resource on online privacy)
2. Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook
3. Facebook Security Flaw Publicizes Private Chats — just another reason to be careful what you say or do on Facebook

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For Delawareans, there is a bright spot. If your family makes too much money to be eligible for Medicaid (up to 200% of “poverty level”- which is actually quite a bit of income), you could be eligible for an awesome program called CHAP.

CHAP is not a government program, it is affiliated with the Delaware Medical Society and the Delaware Health Care Commission. What they do is have you fill out some paperwork and assign you a rank according to income and family size.  Then they connect you to physicians, specialists, and mental health professionals who will see you on a sliding scale. (See- no program, no deductibles, just a lovely sliding scale initiative.)

I recently attended a meeting that was recruiting physicians and mental health professionals to join the Voluntary Incentive Program. This is the provider arm of Community Healthcare Access Program. I was so impressed that I will be signing up as a provider through my Pike Creek Psychological Center office.

The staff there was a group of people that believe we should all look out for each other. Cool! A cause.

If you could use some medical care co-operation, look into CHAP. Call 1-800-996-9969 and choose option 3.

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