Making Changes

The kids and I just finished reading Anne Frank: the Diary of a Young Girl for our homeschool book club.  It wasn't one of my favorite reads, but we certainly learned a lot about what it was like being stuck in a small apartment with another family for 2 years. 

The story (obviously) is told by Anne in journal format.  It begins with her 13th birthday and ends a little over 2 years later.  For most of  the book, Anne, her family and another family are hiding from the Germans in a small annex above an office building.  Throughout the two years, the reader sees a lot of growth in Anne.  Anne starts out as a vain teenager who is only interested in boys, friends, movie stars, and clothing.  By the end of the book, Anne shares deeper feelings of  love, true friendship and hope. 

In one of Anne's last entries, she writes: "I can't imagine how anyone can say: 'I'm weak', and then remain so.  After all, if you know it, why not fight against it, why not try to train your character?"  I thought this was a great question.  Why do people not want to be better?  Why do they think it is OK to remain the same, to remain stagnant?  Anne goes on to write that most people say that it is easier to remain weak.  She disagrees.  She writes that "what appears easy and attractive will drag [one] down into the depths, depths where there is no comfort to be found, no friends and no beauty, depths from which it is almost impossible to raise oneself." 

This made me think of the changes Jonathan and I and several of our friends have made in how we homeschool.  We looked at what we were doing, realized that it was "weak" and have been doing hard work to make the right changes.  We have been pushing ourselves to get a better education, we have changed the learning environment of our home and how we view our kids' education, and we have constantly been striving to be better people.  Has it been easy?  No!  Has it been worth it?  Definitely!  I've already seen growth and I love it.  Thanks to characters like Anne Frank, Pollyanna, Jo March, Bilbo Baggins, Uncle Tom and many others we have learned good values and positive character traits that we try to implement in our own lives. 

Was he a Monster?

Hollywood has taken Dr. Frankenstein’s creation and turned him into a monster.  But is that what he really was?  I think that he was just a person looking for friendship; for someone to look past his physical appearance and see what he was like inside.  Instead he was scorned, and the “mildness of [his] nature had fled, and all with in [him] was turned to gall and bitterness.”

Dr. Frankenstein was fascinated with the “secret of life.”  After discovering this secret, he brings to life an 8 foot monster whom he despises the second it opens its eyes.  Frankenstein runs away and leaves his creation to fend for itself. 

Later in the story we learn from the monster how he, much like a baby, learned to see and distinguish between objects, how he gained knowledge through experience, and how he learned that the way he looked affected how people reacted to him.  He learned how to speak and read by secretly watching a family.  He hoped that he would be able to convince this family to care for him by his acts of service, his ability to communicate and by his admiration of their virtues. 

The monster says that he “was benevolent; [his] soul glowed with love and humanity.”  He enjoyed flowers and birds and summer.  He helped others.  All he wanted was those feelings of kindness to be returned towards him.  Unfortunately no one was able to look past his outside shell. 

The monster starts to have feelings of hatred and revenge and he doesn’t “strive to control them.”  He first takes his anger out on inanimate objects, but that changes after he rescues a young girl from drowning and is shot instead of thanked.  He is “inflamed with pain, [and vows] eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind.”  He decides to take revenge on his creator and one by one kills all who are dear to Frankenstein. 

The monster’s situation makes me think of the unfortunate kids who are bullied all their lives and can take the pain no longer so they bring guns to school and shoot their classmates.  I also think about the black people during the Civil Rights Movement.  They were treated differently because of the way they looked.  Could these events have been prevented if people were more like Christ and looked on the heart instead of the outward appearance (1 Samuel 16:7)?

At the end of the book, Frankenstein lies dead after chasing his creation to the end of the earth so he could take his own revenge.  He is unsuccessful.  The monster is there and wonders if he is “to be thought the only criminal when all humankind sinned against [him].”  Why does no one hate the family that drove him from their home?  Why do they not loathe the one who sought to destroy his creation?  Instead he, “the miserable, the abandoned, [is] an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on.”  He suffered his whole life and thinks that his suffering is the best revenge that Frankenstein could have achieved. 

So, no, Frankenstein’s monster wasn’t really a monster.  He was simply a person who reacted to how others treated him. 

Money and The Roman Government

I've started reading Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? and mentioned it to the kids.  They were interested in the title and I told them what I learned in the first chapter.  Then after reading the second chapter I asked if they wanted to learn more and they excitedly said yes.  So I attempted to explain what I had read.  I thought that I would try to write a summary every couple of chapters to help me with my explanations. 

Chapter 1
Money: Coins and Paper

The book is written in letter format; Uncle Eric writing to his 9th grade nephew, Chris.  Uncle Eric asks Chris to look at a penny, nickel, dime, quarter, half-dollar and dollar bill.  The dime, quarter, and half-dollar all have grooves on the edges and are made of copper sandwiched between a nickel-zinc metal.  And they are all probably from later than 1965.  The coins are not really coins, but tokens because they contain no precious metals.

Chapter 2
Tanstaafl, the Romans and Us

Governments have public works projects like building roads and buildings.  They also have wars and welfare programs.  Back in the day of the Romans, the Roman government ran into a problem with all their projects.  It is called There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.  They learned that nothing of value is free and they would have to pay for these projects.  The way governments typically fund these endeavours is through taxes.  But people will only take so much of being taxed so the Roman government had to find another way to get money.  They came up with counterfeiting as their solution. 

Because the printing press had not yet been invented and there was only coin money, the government decided that when the money came to the treasury after being collected they would clip it.  Clipping a coin means shaving off the edges.  They used these shavings to mint new coins.  Now they had the old, clipped coin and a new coin, too.  Pretty soon the Roman people realized that their coins were getting smaller and lighter and they refused to take clipped coins or they reduced the value of the clipped coin making people buy their product with 2 clipped coins instead of the usual 1. 

Later, people had notches cut into the edges of coins to prevent the clipping.  When this happened the goverenment had to come up with a new system of counterfieting.  This time when the coins were brought into the treasury they were melted down and some base-metal (non-prescious) was added in.  Now instead of being 94% silver the coins were 84% silver.  Eventually the coins were down to less that 1% silver.  Now more coins could be made and the government had enough money to do what it wanted. 

Gresham's Law (a law of economics) says that bad money drives good money out of circulation.  This is what happened in the time of the Roman's and it is what happened in 1965 here in America.  When the people realized that the coins were losing silver, they would save thier silver coins and spend only the low-silver soins. 

Becuase the governement had to pay for what it wanted, it started counterfeiting instead of raising taxes.  I can't wait to learn what the consequence of this action will mean.

An Acrostic Poem about Little Men

Loving mother

Inspiring father

Thinking about the future

Thoughtful consequences

Leading the way by example

Esteem building

Much understanding

Encouraging praise

Nurturing environment

Little Men: Life at Plumfield with Jo’s Boys by Louisa May Alcott is a perfect title for this book.  Jo and Fritz Bhaer are the “mother” and “father” of the many boys (and a few girls) that live and learn at Plumfield. 

Mother Bhaer was the loving mother who always had time for her boys and tried to look for the best in them.  She understood them and looked for ways to help them be better.  She kept a conscience book where she wrote an account of how the boys got on through the week.  She shared this with them every Sunday.  If the account was bad she felt sorry and disappointed, but if it was good she was proud.  She wanted her boys know that she was there to help them.  Her love for these children showed in her every action. 

Father Bhaer was a wise teacher.  He inspired and understood what the boys needed to learn best.  He allowed the boys to study what they were passionate about.   He helped them create a museum, plant gardens, put on plays, love books and want to learn.  Plumfield had a learning environment--a home where learning occurred everywhere. 

Together the Bhaer’s planned for the boys’ future.  They had many talks and shared ideas.  They worked together to create a loving home.  Their example was inspiring to me.

Is There Such a Thing as a Good Lie?

Recently I read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer a loud to my kids to prepare for our homeschool kid book discussion.  There were a lot of things to talk about: how boys and girls relate to each other, superstition, friends, adventure, behaviors in kids, treasure and honesty.  I was particularly interested in the discussion about honesty.  There are several times when Tom tells a lie and the people affected forgive him saying it was a good lie.  I raised the question “Is there such a thing as a good lie?”  I was surprised at the responses and comments from the kids and later from the moms.

Let us go to the story and look at Tom’s lies.  The first is after he and 2 of his friends run away and are mistaken as dead.  A funeral is planned for the supposed dead boys.  Before the funeral Tom sneaks back into the town and observes his Aunt Polly and Mrs. Harper remembering all the good traits of the boys.  Later, after the funeral and the boys reveal themselves to be alive, Aunt Polly rebukes Tom saying it was “a pity [he] could be so hard-hearted as to let [her] suffer so.”  She thinks that he should have given her a hint that he had only run away.  Tom then proceeds to tell Aunt Polly about the time he snuck into town.  Only in his telling he lies and says it was a dream.  When Aunt Polly discovers the lie she says “it’s a blessed, blessed lie, there’s such a comfort come from it,” and later “it’s a good lie—it’s a good lie—I won’t let it grieve me.”  She is forgiving the lie because he believes Tom did it out of his love for her.  Is lying to protect someone’s feelings OK? 

Another lie of Tom’s happened later in the story at school.  Tom’s girlfriend, Becky Thatcher, had ripped a picture of the teacher’s and Tom was the only witness.  He knew that Becky would get punished when the teacher found out she had done it; so when the teacher started asking the students if they had committed this misdeed, Tom jumped up and confessed that it was he and took the punishment.  Becky believed Tom to be “noble” and bragged about his actions to her father.  Judge Thatcher said that it was “a noble, a generous, a magnanimous lie—a lie that was worthy to hold up its head and march down through history breast to breast with George Washington’s lauded Truth about the hatchet!”  In this case Tom lied to physically protect someone he cared for.  Is this type of lie OK?

Now, back to the discussion.  When I posed the question “Is there really such a thing as a good lie?” most of the kids responded with yeses.  They sided with Aunt Polly and Judge Thatcher.  In a later discussion with the moms several moms brought up how people lied to save the lives of Jews during World War II.  It seems that the opinion of most is that a lie that protects someone else is a good lie. 

I struggled with this idea.  I’m not saying that I’ve never told a lie, but I tend to lean toward the letter of the law than the spirit of the law in this case.  The law found in D&C 42:21 says “thou shalt not lie; he that lieth and will not repent shall be cast out.”  Two of the Ten Commandments also deal with honesty: “thou shalt not steal” and “thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”  We are commanded to be honest in all our doings.  Does that mean that we shouldn’t lie to help or protect someone?  I think so.  What do you think?  Is there such a thing as a good lie?

What is Your "Hyde"?

Braedi and I recently read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.  It's a story about a doctor who experiments with the idea that people are really 2 (or maybe more) separate people.  The doctor was able to create a potion that turned him into his other self--Mr. Hyde.  As Mr. Hyde, the doctor was able to do the things that a person of his status wouldn't normally do--gamble, be rude, get drunk, etc.  Whenever Dr. Jekyll felt an urge to do those things, he would turn into Mr. Hyde.  Then he would take another potion and return to his respectable self.  After Mr. Hyde killed a man, Dr. Jekyll decided that he would have to git rid of Mr. Hyde and stay Dr. Jekyll.  But after a short period of time Dr. Jekyll found that Mr. Hyde could appear without the potion and that it was harder and harder for him to return to himself. 

This made me think of the temptations and sins that we struggle with.  We all have weaknesses that we are fighting daily to overcome.  They might be addictions to drugs or alcohol, pornography, same sex attraction, anger, over-eating, or any other thing.  Sometimes we give in to those weaknesses.  Sometimes we are able to fight them off. 

As Braedi and I read and discussed I compared our weaknesses to Mr. Hyde.  When Dr. Jekyll turned into Mr. Hyde he was giving into his weakness.  When he chose to never turn into Mr. Hyde again it was like he was fighting the weakness.  Unfortunately because he had given in to the temptation so many times before it was a lot harder for him to change and eventually it was impossible and Mr. Hyde won.  I told Braedi that when we continually give in to temptations it is harder to repent and change.  But,  unlike Dr. Jekyll, with Christ on our side we can win. 

Louis Pasteur

The kids are participating in a biography fair with our homeschool group next Thursday and have been working on their presentations all month. I had the urge to learn about someone, too. I mean, if they have to do it I should too, right? We've been learning about microscopes in science and some of the small things scientist could now see because of microscopes and Louis Pasteur and germs were mentioned. There was only a small tid-bit of information and I was intrigued. I decided to learn more and do my biography on him.  I read a simple book, did a simple summary (following what I've been learning from my new writing program), and presented what I learned to my kids.  I think he's a fascinating man. 

"Watch out! It's a mad wolf!"  Louis Pasteur heard this a lot as a young boy in Arbois, France.  Mad wolves were biting people and the people were dieing.  He never forgot the mad wolves. 

As a youth, Louis Pasteur wanted everything he did to go right.  He worked slowly and carefully.  He loved to draw and was good.  He thought he might be an artist, but his High School principal said he should be a professor. 

Louis attended a school and studied hard.  He liked science.  He still thought about the mad wolf. 

Pasteur was interested in crystals and how they grow.  He got a job teaching science at a University.  He studied crystals in the lab.  Then he met someone that he liked more that crystals--Marie Laurent.  They were soon married and had 4 girls and 1 boy. 

Guess what Louis studied next?  Beet juice!  Sometimes it turned to alcohol, sometimes it turned sour.  He found living things in the beet juice which are called microbes or germs.  He learned that different microbes act in different ways which caused the juice to act differently.  Scientist didn't know where microbes came from.  Louis found that they were in the air.  He learned that heat would kill the microbes.  People used his idea and killed microbes in milk.  This process is called pasteurization.  Louis' findings also helped dirty hospitals kill  microbes.  Louis told the doctors to boil their tools to kill the germs. 

Then 3 of Louis' daughters died.  He worked harder trying to find ways to help people. 

He studied sick silkworms next and found ways to keep them healthy.  After that he studied anthrax in sheep.  It was killing the sheep.  He injected a weak version of anthrax into healthy sheep and they didn't get sick.  These weakened versions of a disease are called vaccinations.  It's what you get when you go to the doctor for shots.  Lois Pasteur discovered this idea.

Remember the mad wolf?  So did Louis.  Now he decided to study rabies.  It was very hard and dangerous.  The rabies microbe is small and there was a chance that he would get bitten.  Bet he kept trying.  He gave infected animals a vaccine and cured them.  Now he wanted to try in on people but wondered if it would be safe.  He tried the vaccine on a boy bitten several times by a mad dog.  The boy got 13 shots and got well.  Pasteur gave the shot to many other people and save many lives.  He was a hero.

People donated money to Pasteur and he made the Pasteur Institute.  He was now too old to study, but he had a lot of helpers.  He died when he was 73 years old, but his work will never die.