Armadillo’s Book Blog

One day when my older daughter was about 4, before we knew that she could read, we took a trip to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. It was a great visit. The grounds are lovely and we saw many creatures we’d never seen or even heard of before. But then, all of a sudden, dear daughter cried, “What time is it? We have to get out of here. Now!” She started lurching around, dashing one way and then another. But we were looking at some very interesting red kangaroos, or maybe they were tree pandas, and hadn’t seen the real pandas yet. “WHY do we have to leave now?,” we asked her. Eventually, she calmed down enough to point a sign out to us. One we hadn’t realized that she had seen, let alone read and understood. It said, “Park closes at sundown.” There ensued a heated family discussion about the definition of sundown and it was finally agreed that it might be open to interpretation. The compromise reached was that we would dash over to see the giant pandas and then leave before the federal authorities arrested us for overstaying our welcome at the zoo.

Man On Wire is the true story of how Phillippe Petit and a group of his friends snuck into the World Trade Center and strung a high wire between two of the towers so that Petit could dance nearly 1400 feet in the air over New York City. And was then arrested and charged with trespassing. It was the “Artistic Crime of the Century”.

We took our 13 yr. old (younger) daughter, the one who likes to climb to very high places, with us to see the movie on condition that she “not get too many ideas”. Luckily, the movie features shots from above the “crime scene” so we could all experience what it might feel look like to look down at the streets of New York from 1400 feet. Dear daughter shuddered with the rest of us.

Man On Wire is hilarious, exhilarating, terrifying, inspirational, and, to those of us with a previous relationship with the World Trade Center, nostalgic and sad. Anyone trying, for any reason, to sneak into any New York landmark for any reason these days would no doubt not get even the modicum of support that Petit did. And they might indeed be shot on sight. Sad, very sad. Petit’s lovely graffiti gone, all gone, along with the terrible smells of the subway under the WTC and the soaring views above.

Man On Wire is like a real life Mission Impossible, told in flash-back. It is the story of a team of friends who are very, very, very good at what they do and have to learn to be very good at other things too (like sneaking into buildings), so they can do the thing they love to do.

There’s Petit at 17… Already obsessed by walking the high wire in challenging places, he reads a story about the plan to build the World Trade Center (the towers were going to be the tallest buildings in the world at that time). Before he even knew what they looked like, he knew he had to wire-walk between them.

When he gets out of jail after wire-walking the Sydney Harbour Bridge, he learns that the WTC is about to be completed. We hear Petit and some of his co-conspirators reflect back on their adventure. (The interspersing of live footage and photos with “re-creations” of some moments is confusing, but does not detract from the authenticity of the film.)

The lessons taught by this documentary are plentiful and satisfying:

• That one with a true gift should be honored, but that challenging that person to exercise that gift is permissible. (Petit’s friends worry that by helping him perform this walk, they might be abetting a suicide. The policemen who arrest him let him dance on the wire for a good long time before they drag him in for psychological evaluation.)
• That competent co-workers and friends you trust are not easily replaced, so you should treat them well, appreciate their advice, take their counsel. That you never truly lose them, but you can through your own carelessness, lose them as true friends.
• That hard work and planning, in addition to raw talent and drive, are key to success.

Maybe I’ve said enough about this movie. See it. And take your teenage children. (There is one very, very short scene in which a man and woman romp in the nude. But the real reason you don’t want to take youngsters is that you probably don’t want your three year old to get ideas. Also because a fair amount of the film is in French with English subtitles.)

And, if your child has a gift, even if it is a scary one, you might as well help him or her to do it well and with competent support. We want our children scaling great heights. We don’t want our children breaking into high buildings and jumping off roofs but feeling all alone.

– Emily

1. My 12 yr. old aka dd built a hovercraft as part of her science fair project. Having watched the Junkyard Wars episode on hovercraft, I was quite worried about whether it would ever get off the ground and had actively discouraged dd from choosing this as her project. However, on her own, dd located really excellent plans for building the hovercraft. (The skirt folds in on itself and so forms a closed pouch, and then dd punched holes in the center of the bottom pouch. Which is much more efficient than an open skirt — all the air immediately pushes down.) Then, with just a short lesson about machine tools from her dad (and he did oversee the work) dd pretty much built the whole craft in a day, then took another day to punch the holes and attach the leaf blower (most of that time was spent worrying about where to put the holes). Herself. For example, dd came up with a very clever scheme for where to cut the air holes using a protractor and a pencil on a string for deciding where to cut them… ANYWAY, no limbs, not even any blood lost on the construction. Dd had allocated a week of debugging, but pretty much none was required.

THEN, in terms of the experimental design — dd was trying to determine whether additional weight slowed or sped up the hovercraft — I could tell that she had really no way of even starting to think about what her hypothesis should be. SO, I steered her (really, just emailed her a link) to a webpage with Newton’s 3 laws of motion. And, it was astounding how quickly she understood what F=MA means. And also, when you can sit motionless 1/2 inch above the ground, the law of inertia starts to make a WHOLE lot more sense.

Then, she weighed each of her classmates and had them ride the course she’d laid out to get the data. We had MANY volunteers.

And then, there came the time when dd had to write her report and create her board. I think that figuring out what the difference between “weight” and “mass” are and what the word “gravity” means took the most time. Finally, I pulled out our older daughter’s old AP Study Guide to Physics B & C, and the light bulb turned on over all our heads. No one really knows what the word “mass” is — it a property of matter having to do with how gravity affects it. And so, what is “gravity” — it is a theoretical force that explains how matter interacts. So we got to learn what recursion means, and at some point dd stopped and said, “How come this took me so long to understand? I must be very stupid.” (Must’ve been all of 20 minutes.) And I pointed to the cover of the AP Study Guide to Physics B & C and asked her if she knew what an AP was, and pointed out to her that this was a book for sophisticated high school students, and that, really, it was obvious from the definitions that even physicists don’t truly understand these terms.

Then, there were some very “smart people” (dd’s words) who served as the judges. They were very impressed with dd’s board and with her deep understanding of Newton’s laws. The hovercraft gives you SO many ways to understand inertia. It does not move (horizontally) unless force is exerted on it. It then goes and gives no indication that it intends to stop, once pushed. And then — action/reaction. So there is the leaf blower blowing air down. And — SOMETHING is blowing that air right back up. And that air is pushing the hovercraft up off the ground. (Enough air to lift a 300 pound adult. AMAZING. EERIE.)

Anyway, go now. Build a hovercraft. It is fun. Exciting. To build and ride.

2. Every year dd’s school goes on an Intensive Studies trip. This year’s was to the Southwest. We’d never seen the Grand Canyon before. We live on the coast, where it’s mostly cool and damp most of the time. We had some friends of the school show us Hopi. (The entire trip website is not completed yet. But here are some of the pages.)

One of my photos was named Sony’s Picture of the Day. We saw so many magical places.

So, it was a good school year. I don’t have any idea if dd learned any math or English. Next year is her last year at this school. I am already traumatized at the thought of investigating high schools. Perhaps we’ll just home school.

a review by the mother of a gifted homeschooler

I’ve now read TWTM twice and have had time to think about it a bit. I like SOME things about classical education in general and TWTM in particular, but others, I’m not too keen on.

First of all, Piaget’s stages of development have been known to be incorrect for years (even though they’re often taught in psych 101). They just aren’t true.

Having a true “grammar stage” would be acceptable to some students but just plain painful to most gifted ones–and beyond that, for math, at least, it is simply counter-productive. For example, TWTM predictably likes Saxon math, with its emphasis on rote memorization and the execution of algorthims as a substitute for actual mathematical thinking. While many gifted children will accept this, it is not a good idea. There is, quite frankly, a very good reason that Susan Wise Bauer did not major in science, mathematics, or engineering. Most classical education curricula provide a very poor background for these things. The prediction in TWTM that students will find upper level math and science “hard” is not representative of the difficulty of the subject so much as the completely lack of decent preparation.

Memorization of facts, which is an emphasis of a classical education, provides a framework around which everything else you learn can be hung. Whether it’s dates or mathematical facts (and this from someone who HATED memorizing math facts), there are certain tools that are important to build a body of knowledge upon.

Also, many schools now completely neglect all language arts, and classical programs usually offer a very good program for those. History is often dreadfully dull and incoherent as presented in schools, and most classical plans make it important, relevent, coherent, and at least fairly interesting. Primary sources are important, but they are not the be-all and end-all of math or science or history studies for very important reasons.

For a subject-by-subject critique of TWTM from my point of view, since it’s the most popular book on classical education, click here.

– Sophia

www.notadestination.com

reviewed by Jennifer Dees

I’ve just finished reading one of my old favorites to my daughter, and it occurs to me that it’s a very good book for homeschooled kids. The book is *My Side of the Mountain,* by Jean Craighead George (1959). I vividly remember that I cherished this book at about 8 or 9 years old, little pioneer girl that I was. We lived “out in the country,” with woods bordering our 10 acres, and I spent many a happy hour out in the woods, in my own world, imagining myself an adventurer from some time past, probably as a male protagonist (they had all the fun; the feminist revolution hadn’t hit our small town yet).

My daughter’s well into chapter books but this one’s a little long and deep for her… but when I saw it in the library I couldn’t wait. I read a lot to her when I can find a break in her own reading. I knew this was one we would enjoy together, and we did.

The boy in it is the oldest of 9 kids who live with their parents in a crowded New York City apartment. He dreams of living on his own in the woods. Some land is still in their family from a great grandfather, in the Catskill Mountains, northwest of New York. He tells his father he wants to run away and live on his own, and his father, not really believing him, tells him to go ahead.

He heads for great grandfather’s land, arrives in the Catskills in May, and begins to learn how to live off the land. He carves a home for himself inside a huge, ancient hemlock tree. He fishes in streams and makes fires with a flint and steel. He learns which roots taste good, makes walnut and acorn flour from the nuts, and so on. When hunters poach on his land, he hides the downed deer they lose sight of under branches and then he makes clothes from the deer hide and smokes the venison. As far-fetched as it may sound, the transformation of this city boy to one who can live off the land, with no adults, is very believable.

He hikes into town and researches things he needs to know in the local library. He swipes a baby falcon from a nest and with the aid of falconry books from the library, raises and trains the falcon to hunt for them both.

My daughter and I both loved this independent learner, so close to the earth, and understood when the only thing that brought him back into the “real world,” over a year later, was loneliness and a need to be with other people… yet we were sad along with him for his loss of the true wilderness experience.

The book I have says it’s for “Ages 10-14″ but my advanced 6-year-old loved hearing this read aloud to her.

– Jennifer Dees
Jennifer Dees is a member of the San Francisco Homeschoolers support group,