Soap Box

For those of you who may not have hear (and I doubt that's anyone, considering how our lack of TV always makes us the last to hear anything), the President is giving a speech to children in public schools across the country on Tuesday. Well, when I first heard about it, I immediately thought that he was trying to brainwash our children into believing his propaganda. After all (as Daniel pointed out to me) most of those in high school will be voting in the next election. Scary, huh? Either that or his popularity ratings are so low that he's trying to get us all to think he's great because he's encouraging children to stay in school. Either way, we weren't happy about it. But what could we do? It's on the first day of school, so we can't keep her home. Daniel wanted to call the school and complain, but I (being the anti-confrontational person I am) told him not to. After all, they obviously don't have a choice in the matter. Well, that's not quite the case.
As I did some more reading and research (yay google!) I became less upset about what the content might be (the more I think about it, the more I think he'll stay on safe subjects), and more upset by their methods. The first thing they did, was completely bypass the public school authorities (such as the State Board of Education) and sent private emails to the school principals telling/asking them to participate. So not right. Even worse, they bypassed the parents. It's one thing for a President to go visit an elementary school and read them a story, or to give a graduation speech at some elite high school, it's an entirely different thing to command the attention of most of the children in America without their parents. Elementary aged children will believe anything that an authority figure tells them, and it is very hard to convince them otherwise. To make matters worse, they prepared a "study guide". Apparently a quick little speech is not enough, they want to make the first day of school devoted to our President. You can find the study guide here. This has preparatory questions, such as:

How will he inspire us? How will he challenge us? What might he say?

This question assumes that the children will be inspired. It seems to be worded so that it influences children to have a positive response to the speech. This study guide also encourages teacher to read books about Obama before the speech. Oh fun.

During the speech, they are supposed to be listening for what the President wants them to do. And also listen to see if he's asking anything of teachers, principals and parents. Why would he be asking anything of parents if they're not even there? Somehow I'm thinking he will though.
After the speech, they then discuss things like:

What does the President want us to do?
Does the speech make you want to do anything?
Are we able to what President Obama is asking us to do?

Oddly, there is nothing in there that helps the children to come to their own conclusions. Nothing about what they think about what the President says, or if they agree. Again, the questions are trying to influence the children into a positive response.

And wait, we're not done! There's "extended learning"! This is where the biggest controversy was. The students were supposed to:

"Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president. These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals."

Yep, help the President. Not their country, not their family or even their school or neighborhood. Their president. Supposedly it's been changed to making goals for themselves.

So, Daniel called the school district. I was actually kind of impressed with their response. They had gotten a lot of phone calls about the speech (shocking in north Idaho, eh?) so they are planning on not showing it on Tuesday, most likely they will be showing it on a later date and parents will be given the option of opting their children out.

Ok, I'll step off my soapbox now =) Maybe I need to start doing "Soapbox Sundays" or something.

58

58. That's how many pounds of apples we brought home from my parent's house last night. Yes, I weighed them. That scale needs to get some use every now and then! My parents have two apples trees at their house, so the kids and I headed over there yesterday to get ourselves some free apples =) This is what we came home with:

While we were over there, my mom came out and hung out with us for a while. Camera in hand. Which is good, because I had forgotten my camera =) While she was taking pictures, we were discussing how when you have a blog, everything suddenly becomes interesting and therefore you must take pictures to share with the world. A couple of minutes later, Kelsi holds up a rather deformed apple and says, "Mom, look at this apple! We should take a picture of it and post it on our blog!" Yep, I have her well trained. Somehow she managed to keep track of the apple, and we took a picture of it:


Pretty cool, huh?

So, what am I going to do with all these apples? Apple butter! And maybe some apple cider too =) Yum. Last year I made some apple butter and then used the peels to make apple jelly. Which is a wonderful way to have less waste, but the jelly was too sweet for me. This year, I think I'm going to try making apple cider vinegar with the peels instead. Sadly, it takes about 6-8 weeks to ferment, but it should be a fun experiment!

And, since I was pulling pictures off my camera, here are a few random ones to share:



Being goofy.



Matthias found a pair of my socks and thought they looked cozy. I don't blame him, they are =)



Kelsi wanted her picture taken too!

Just For You, Mom

Ok, after much turmoil, I've decided to give into the peer pressure (that would be you, Melissa). I've kept it a secret for about a year and half, but no more. My other website: http://www.beansproutcreations.com

Ok, now the rules. Don't feel like you have to say nice things to me, or really, don't feel like you have to say anything at all. I like to pretend that I don't have a low self-esteem, but who am I kidding? So if you laugh at me, don't let me know =)

Happy Birthday, Mom! You now have my website.

Items 11 and 12

It has been brought to my attention that I have forgotten a few things to my list =)

11. The author must take one of those dice from Scattergories (You know, the kind that has all of the letters on it) and roll it 12-15 times. They then take the letters and arrange them into a name. They then repeat this process for all the main characters. Oh, and cities.

12. Remove the Elves, Dwarves and humanoid bad guys...add droids and various kinds of aliens and you suddenly have a sci-fi book!

Ten Things Tuesday

My favorite type of book to read is fantasy. I recently discovered that the fourth and final book of one of my favorite series is available, yay! As I'm waiting for it to come, I've been re-reading the first three books of the series. This got me thinking...I already know the outcome of the final book. Why? Because all fantasy books are the same. So, my list for today is entitled "10 things a book must have in order to be considered fantasy"

1. A main character who is just coming into adulthood (age 16-18).
2. Said character obviously must save the world from impending doom.
3. Said character must whine and complain "why me" for at least the first book of the series.
4. Said character will have a mentor, usually an old man, who will guide him/her.
5. This mentor will die, although sometimes they come back or turn out to have never died to begin with.
6. There will be some sort of humanoid monsters (orc, goblin, or similar) who are trying to find and kill the main character.
7. There will be dwarves and elves in addition to the human race.
8. A main character will fall in love with someone who is of another race (such as human and elf) or someone of royalty.
9. There is an object of immense importance that either needs to be found or needs to be kept safe.
10. Against all odds, and after surviving every possible situation, the main character will succeed in conquering evil and save the world. This is usually through no skill of his/her own however.