cris

Due to a case of walking pneumonia I can't sleep -- but I can
breathe, read and type at the moment. A local just posted this
article on a local list, and has all the moms gushing about him and
how they hope this will inspire their own kids. Does this article
make this young man appear to have some sort of agenda against
unschooling -- or am I a little paranoid? I haven't read the book...
cris who is too paranoid being the only radical unschooler in this
state...

http://www.azcentral.com/families/education/articles/1229homeschooledn
ovelist-ON.html

>>>quote: Paolini says he's glad he was home schooled because it
gave him the time to write "Eragon." But he believes the success of
home schooling is totally dependent on the parents' thoughtful
involvement.

"The problem with home schooling is you can either get an incredible
education or you can get no education at all," he says. "I do know of
families in Montana whose kids reach high school age and they don't
know how to do basic math and have no background in literature,
because the parents were doing canning and the parents said the kids
were learning counting from canning."

Unlike "unschoolers," Paolini says he and his younger sister followed
a fairly regimented curriculum devised by their mother, a trained
Montessori teacher. They used home-education materials made by the A
Beka Academy in Pensacola, Fla.

Paolini's mother guided them until they reached high school age, when
they enrolled in an accredited online distance-learning program
called The American School.

"We put ourselves through high school, essentially," he says. "That
was one of the most valuable lessons - learning how to learn."

Paolini says sometimes having his mom as his teacher made the mother-
son dynamic more intense, but they managed. It might have been nice
to grow up around more kids, but he's meeting plenty now on the
lecture circuit.

"I've been in more schools with this book than I would have going to
regular schools," he says with a grin. "It's retribution, I guess."

Home schooling gave him wide latitude to pursue his own interests in
music, writing and computer games. He does not believe, however, that
children should be totally free to decide what they study.

"If it was up to kids, half the time you know you wouldn't be allowed
to teach them anything," he explains. "They don't understand how
useful it's going to be later in life or how much they'll end up
enjoying it."

Any personal examples?

"I remember marching up to my mom and saying, 'I hate reading.' "
(end quote).

cris

E-R-A-G-O-N sorry!

too much LOTR movie watching lately...

crazeemom77043

Does this article
> make this young man appear to have some sort of agenda against
> unschooling -- or am I a little paranoid?

I don't think either that you're paranoid or that he has a hidden
agenda (although the newspaper reporter might have one). The kid --
in all his wisdom -- has a very out-in-the-open agenda, it seems to
me. He obviously has negative feelings about unschoolers. I wonder
why it's such an issue that it should dominate this article this
way? Did the reporter emphasize it, I wonder?

<sigh>
They've done studies on how homeschoolers do compared to public
schoolers, right? I wish someone would do a study on how unschoolers
do in comparison to everyone else so that we could just quote some
statistics in their faces and get them to just LEAVE US ALONE.

Laura B.

gehrkes

My Friend Dana, Who is a huge fan of his wrote to his dad because
she was so upset by the comments made. The dad immediately wrote
back and said the comments were totally taken out of context and
unschoolers were never even mentioned in the interview.
Chris is on David Letterman tonight so I am holding my opinion until
I see that.
kathleen











--- In [email protected], "cris" <muddpies@m...>
wrote:
> Due to a case of walking pneumonia I can't sleep -- but I can
> breathe, read and type at the moment. A local just posted this
> article on a local list, and has all the moms gushing about him
and
> how they hope this will inspire their own kids. Does this article
> make this young man appear to have some sort of agenda against
> unschooling -- or am I a little paranoid? I haven't read the
book...
> cris who is too paranoid being the only radical unschooler in this
> state...
>
>
http://www.azcentral.com/families/education/articles/1229homeschooled
n
> ovelist-ON.html
>
> >>>quote: Paolini says he's glad he was home schooled because it
> gave him the time to write "Eragon." But he believes the success
of
> home schooling is totally dependent on the parents' thoughtful
> involvement.
>
> "The problem with home schooling is you can either get an
incredible
> education or you can get no education at all," he says. "I do know
of
> families in Montana whose kids reach high school age and they
don't
> know how to do basic math and have no background in literature,
> because the parents were doing canning and the parents said the
kids
> were learning counting from canning."
>
> Unlike "unschoolers," Paolini says he and his younger sister
followed
> a fairly regimented curriculum devised by their mother, a trained
> Montessori teacher. They used home-education materials made by the
A
> Beka Academy in Pensacola, Fla.
>
> Paolini's mother guided them until they reached high school age,
when
> they enrolled in an accredited online distance-learning program
> called The American School.
>
> "We put ourselves through high school, essentially," he
says. "That
> was one of the most valuable lessons - learning how to learn."
>
> Paolini says sometimes having his mom as his teacher made the
mother-
> son dynamic more intense, but they managed. It might have been
nice
> to grow up around more kids, but he's meeting plenty now on the
> lecture circuit.
>
> "I've been in more schools with this book than I would have going
to
> regular schools," he says with a grin. "It's retribution, I guess."
>
> Home schooling gave him wide latitude to pursue his own interests
in
> music, writing and computer games. He does not believe, however,
that
> children should be totally free to decide what they study.
>
> "If it was up to kids, half the time you know you wouldn't be
allowed
> to teach them anything," he explains. "They don't understand how
> useful it's going to be later in life or how much they'll end up
> enjoying it."
>
> Any personal examples?
>
> "I remember marching up to my mom and saying, 'I hate reading.' "
> (end quote).

Holly Furgason

--- In [email protected], "crazeemom77043"
<LauraBourdo@a...> wrote:

> <sigh>
> They've done studies on how homeschoolers do compared to public
> schoolers, right? I wish someone would do a study on how
unschoolers
> do in comparison to everyone else so that we could just quote some
> statistics in their faces and get them to just LEAVE US ALONE.
>
> Laura B.

Oh, no, Laura! The thought is just too scarey! My kids would look
terrible next to schoolers- well, all but one of them. They are
learning different things in a different way and it cannot be measure
in any traditional sense if at all. There learning to think not what
to think.

You know Justin, my 18 yo. If he had been tested at the age of 12,
he would have been off the lower end of the charts. Had they tested
him, I'm sure they have decided he was dyslexic, dysgraphic, ADD and
who knows what else. Think of what Gale Fallon said about him. But
look at him now. He's been successful in college and the work
place. He has a physical intelligence with his juggling, clowning,
dancing and acting. People love him; he's a great converstaionalist
and has a wonderful sense of humor. None of that would ever have
been tested.

I need a Little Debbie!

Holly

Kelli Traaseth

Yeah, I was going to post this yesterday. I saw it too, from HEM homeschoolers in the news.

I just finished reading the book last week. Pretty good, I mean I read the whole thing in a few days, and its practically 500 pages! So something held my interest. It did bug me though that he borrows quite heavily from Tolkein.

He has a new language going, maps, dwarves, elves, certain grotesque creatures chasing them. He even has a wise old man who says some things that were darn exact to Gandalf's. I guess he has a right to use these characters just like Tolkein did, but it just felt sooo similar.


As far as his comments, sounds like his mother or who ever has really sold him on the idea that a required type of 'education' is what is needed in childhood.

Obviously he doesn't have a clue about unschooling and the complexities it involves. I'm wondering if he really ever met an unschooled family? Sounds like he was heavily controlled,

How about this statement: "Paolini says sometimes having his mom as his teacher made the mother-
son dynamic more intense, but they managed. It might have been nice
to grow up around more kids, but he's meeting plenty now on the
lecture circuit."

Doesn't sound so great to me, sounds like their relationship was strained and that he was sheltered.


So, he's not an unschooler. :( I was hoping too, when I heard he was homeschooled, but when it said he had finished high school at 15 I guessed that he wasn't. Too much school lingo. <g>


**cris who is too paranoid being the only radical unschooler in this
state...**

Kelli~ who feels the same some days! Aren't you glad the internet is here!




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Kelli Traaseth

----- Original Message -----
From: gehrkes

**Chris is on David Letterman tonight so I am holding my opinion until
I see that. **
*************************************************************************************

Thanks Kathleen, I'll be watching. :)

Kelli~




To: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2004 8:34 AM
Subject: [UnschoolingDiscussion] Re: writer of eragorn-- hidden agenda? (I'm a little bored...)


My Friend Dana, Who is a huge fan of his wrote to his dad because
she was so upset by the comments made. The dad immediately wrote
back and said the comments were totally taken out of context and
unschoolers were never even mentioned in the interview.
Chris is on David Letterman tonight so I am holding my opinion until
I see that.
kathleen











--- In [email protected], "cris" <muddpies@m...>
wrote:
> Due to a case of walking pneumonia I can't sleep -- but I can
> breathe, read and type at the moment. A local just posted this
> article on a local list, and has all the moms gushing about him
and
> how they hope this will inspire their own kids. Does this article
> make this young man appear to have some sort of agenda against
> unschooling -- or am I a little paranoid? I haven't read the
book...
> cris who is too paranoid being the only radical unschooler in this
> state...
>
>
http://www.azcentral.com/families/education/articles/1229homeschooled
n
> ovelist-ON.html
>
> >>>quote: Paolini says he's glad he was home schooled because it
> gave him the time to write "Eragon." But he believes the success
of
> home schooling is totally dependent on the parents' thoughtful
> involvement.
>
> "The problem with home schooling is you can either get an
incredible
> education or you can get no education at all," he says. "I do know
of
> families in Montana whose kids reach high school age and they
don't
> know how to do basic math and have no background in literature,
> because the parents were doing canning and the parents said the
kids
> were learning counting from canning."
>
> Unlike "unschoolers," Paolini says he and his younger sister
followed
> a fairly regimented curriculum devised by their mother, a trained
> Montessori teacher. They used home-education materials made by the
A
> Beka Academy in Pensacola, Fla.
>
> Paolini's mother guided them until they reached high school age,
when
> they enrolled in an accredited online distance-learning program
> called The American School.
>
> "We put ourselves through high school, essentially," he
says. "That
> was one of the most valuable lessons - learning how to learn."
>
> Paolini says sometimes having his mom as his teacher made the
mother-
> son dynamic more intense, but they managed. It might have been
nice
> to grow up around more kids, but he's meeting plenty now on the
> lecture circuit.
>
> "I've been in more schools with this book than I would have going
to
> regular schools," he says with a grin. "It's retribution, I guess."
>
> Home schooling gave him wide latitude to pursue his own interests
in
> music, writing and computer games. He does not believe, however,
that
> children should be totally free to decide what they study.
>
> "If it was up to kids, half the time you know you wouldn't be
allowed
> to teach them anything," he explains. "They don't understand how
> useful it's going to be later in life or how much they'll end up
> enjoying it."
>
> Any personal examples?
>
> "I remember marching up to my mom and saying, 'I hate reading.' "
> (end quote).



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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

my3sonsinva

From the below article, I thought they unschooled. I was very
disappointed to hear they used the american school. It seems to
undermine even school at home types. Why can't a family do it
without help????

Barb in VA

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?
xml=/arts/2003/12/22/bopao22.xml&sSheet=/arts/2003/12/22/ixtop.html

Meet the 21st-century Tolkien
(Filed: 22/12/2003)


He's 20, he has never been to school, he lives with his parents in a
remote community in Montana – and his debut novel is outselling Harry
Potter. How did Christopher Paolini do it? It was a family affair,
Michael Shelden discovers


For a young man of 20, Christopher Paolini has lived a rather
sheltered life. He has never been to school, never held a regular job
and still lives in the old farmhouse along the banks of Montana's
Yellowstone River, where he grew up.


Magical tales: Christopher Paolini

When he is not busy constructing a hobbit hut with an 8ft tunnel near
the river, he spends much of his time happily lost in a fantasy world
of his own creation - a place he calls Alagaesia, where dragons roam
and battles rage among sword-wielding tribes.

This time last year, he was just another geeky teen with too much
time on his hands. But now, thanks to Eragon, his 500-page rousing
adventure story set in his imaginary world, young Christopher is
suddenly rich.

The British edition appears early next month, but already it is a
huge bestseller in America, where it has surged past the Harry Potter
books. Almost half a million copies were sold in only two months, a
screenplay is in the works and at least a dozen foreign-language
editions are on the way.

So how is the new millionaire spending his fortune?

"Well, my dad bought a new computer, and we got this really cool
plasma-screen TV. The picture is so good, we don't go to the movies
any more. We just stay home and watch DVDs."

He has also been ordering a lot of tapes to listen to around the
house. Lately, his favourite is The History of Science Since the
1700s.

Home is a cramped living room with an old sofa and a wood-burning
stove, a kitchen with a bare linoleum floor, a dark study and a few
bedrooms. A cardboard box holds a load of logs for the fire, a
welcome feature, since it's freezing outside and the wind is howling.

When I suggest that a new house, or simply a family holiday, might be
in order, the entire Paolini clan - father Kenneth, mother Talita and
sister Angela, 18 - stare at me as though I wanted them to move to
Las Vegas and take to drink.

"We're not like other people," Angela says, with a gleeful smile. "We
know we're weird, and that's fine." Her dad nods, but is more
temperate in his view of the family. "Let's just say we're a little
eccentric."

For years, Kenneth and Talita - former members of a survivalist cult
led by a woman called Ma Prophet - seem to have lived on a
shoestring, with only occasional employment. Kenneth, the son of an
Italian immigrant, used to be a photographer, but doesn't appear to
have had much work lately.

He and his wife have devoted their lives to their children, schooling
them at home and, until recently, rarely venturing outside their
small community of Paradise Valley, Montana.

"We like being together," Christopher says. "If Nasa is looking for a
team of four people who can spend years with each other on a trip to
Mars, we're it."

Which explains why you don't go to the Paolini house and just
interview Christopher. The whole family gathers round the kitchen
table and speaks in turn, answering my questions, correcting each
other and asking questions of their own. Eragon - and the other two
books in the Inheritance trilogy that will follow it - is a family
business.

But it didn't start out that way. At first, there was just a lonely
boy with a vivid imagination.

"You see what it's like here," Christopher says, pointing to the
rugged landscape outside, with its looming mountain peaks and snow
swirling over the river valley. "You have to do something to
entertain yourself and keep busy. So I thought it would be kinda neat
to write a story."

Inspiration came from long, intense days and nights of solitary
reading - everything from Beowulf to Tolkien - and close observation
of the world around him. His mountains and valleys were transformed
into a mythical land full of strange characters who seem like
refugees from The Lord of the Rings. His hero discovers a dragon's
egg, then makes a best friend of the newborn creature.

Giggling like a little boy, Christopher says: "Dragons make perfect
friends. They can eat anyone you don't like."

Yes, well, I'm sure that's useful, but how did he manage to create
500 pages of this fantasy in so remote a part of America that even
his parents call it the "middle of nowhere"?

"I was only 15 when I started Eragon. I didn't know how to write. I
just told everything in one gigantic burst, then spent another year
revising it. My parents read it and thought it was great. But I
didn't really trust their opinion. After all, they're my parents. I
wasn't surprised they liked it."

His mother points to the faded sofa in the living room. "He wrote the
book sitting right there," she notes, with a grin of satisfaction.
She encouraged him all the way, but her husband was less enthusiastic
until he saw the finished product.

"My dad's not a big fan of fantasy books," Christopher explains.

However, Kenneth saw its potential. It's an understatement to say he
liked it: he and his wife were so smitten by the rough manuscript
that they decided to publish the book themselves in paperback and
sell it online and in local bookshops.

Kenneth typeset it on his computer, his wife and daughter did the
proof-reading and Christopher designed the cover. With the last of
the family's savings, they paid a printer to produce a few thousand
copies and went out into the world to hawk them.

"People told us we were nuts to do this," says Kenneth with a
shrug, "So what else is new?"

Christopher donned a home-made costume that was supposed to make him
look like a Renaissance storyteller and went to school libraries to
promote his book. Didn't he feel self-conscious?

"Not a bit. It attracted a lot of attention and people wanted to know
more about the book. They would buy copies and I would sign them with
my tag line, 'May your swords stay sharp'."

To everyone's amazement, the book was a huge hit, but the self-
publishing business was onerous and unpredictable. "Our house was
filled with copies of Eragon," says Angela. "They were stacked
everywhere. We couldn't handle the demand."

"But when things didn't go well," her father interjects, "it was
tough. For a while, money was so tight that if we didn't sell books,
we didn't eat."

Their big break came when the popular crime novelist Carl Hiaasen
visited the area on a fishing trip with his young son, and the boy
became immersed in a copy of Eragon. On the way home, Hiaasen asked
his son why he couldn't put the book down. "It's great, Dad," came
the reply, "better than Harry Potter."

To a novelist who has had his fair share of bestsellers, those words
were magic. Hiaasen alerted his editors in New York, and the next
thing the Paolinis knew, the prestigious publisher Knopf (a part of
Random House) was offering them a contract.

Christopher excitedly recalls the day when he heard the good news. He
is unreservedly grateful and is particularly impressed that Hiaasen
has never claimed any credit for himself.

"We didn't even know what he had done until a few weeks ago. But he
changed our lives for ever. It made all the difference to get the
support of someone like that."

His father greeted the news of Knopf's interest with caution and
decided to drive a hard bargain. He hired a powerful New York agent
to do the deal. In the end, they secured a considerable advance from
the publisher.

"We may live out in the middle of nowhere," Kenneth says, with a sly
grin, "but we didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday."

The former survivalists proved more than a match for the city folk,
and now have so much money that they can't seem to bear the thought
of parting with it. One reason is that, having been poor for so long,
they seem more comfortable saving than spending.

"It's our main stream of income," young Angela says, then adds with
the prudence of a country banker. "We have to be careful how we spend
it."

Her mother adds a bleaker note: "About money, we have an acute
understanding of the lack thereof."

A small woman with an air of quiet determination, Talita says that
she regards her son's book as a natural extension of his home
schooling. She always wanted her family to be close and began by
insisting that she give birth at home.

When the children reached school age, she didn't want outsiders
interfering with their lives. Now she can be proud that the education
she gave them has resulted in one becoming successful enough to keep
them all together.

And Angela may be next. She's writing her own fantasy novel and her
brother seems to think it will sell.

In fact, brother and sister often share their creative plans and are
so close that they tend to finish each other's sentences. Dark-
haired, bespectacled and clad all in dark clothing, they could be
twins.

They seem confident of their future, if not yet of their finances.
They will continue living and working at home, churning out their
respective epics and relaxing in front of the plasma-screen
television at the end of a hard day's writing.

For the time being, the family is willing to let the occasional
stranger enter their haven and ask a few questions. But the curtain
of their privacy will soon be drawn across again. They have already
disconnected their old telephone and put in a private line. Soon, it
will be the dead of winter in the mountains, and they will be snug in
their hideaway, using email as their main contact with the outside
world.

"We are highly private people," they assure me, before I go.

From his study, where he is checking sales figures on his computer, I
hear Kenneth shout out the latest numbers to his family: "543,308
copies sold," he announces triumphantly.


Eragon by Christopher Paolini (Doubleday, published on January 8) is
available from Telegraph Books Direct for £11.99 plus £2.25 p&p. To
order, call 0870 155 7222

External links

Eragon - Random House

Elizabeth Roberts

the other article claimed they'd used A Beka.





Why not?!

---------------------------------
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Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

my3sonsinva

--- In [email protected], Elizabeth Roberts
<mamabethuscg@y...> wrote:
> the other article claimed they'd used A Beka.
>
At first A Beka, than the American School.

"Paolini's mother guided them until they reached high school age,
when they
enrolled in an accredited online distance-learning program called the
American
School."


washingtonpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43258-2003Dec30.html

For Home-Schooled Teen, Novel's Success No Fantasy
By Leslie Brody
The Record (Bergen County, N.J.)
Wednesday, December 31, 2003; Page C03

HACKENSACK, N.J. -- The latest Wunderkind of home-schooling,
Christopher
Paolini, grew up by a river in rural Montana and wrote the hit
fantasy novel
"Eragon" when he was 15.

In October, soon after Alfred A. Knopf published the magical
thriller, it jumped
to No. 3 on the New York Times bestseller list for hardcover
children's chapter
books. This month it hit No. 2, outstripping four of the five Harry
Potters.

Paolini, now a lanky and poised 19-year-old with a fresh-scrubbed
face, is
clearly ecstatic. He reportedly sold the 528-page "Eragon" for a
price in the
mid-six figures, and he's under contract to write two sequels for his
"Inheritance" trilogy.

Although he has been accepted at Reed College in Oregon, he's not
sure he'll go.

"I'm getting paid to do what I love, and it's not like I've stopped
learning,"
Paolini said at a recent book-signing. After all, before his book
tour, he
listened to a taped college course on Einstein's theory of relativity
and modern
quantum physics. He insists "it was lots of fun."

Paolini says he's glad he was home-schooled because it gave him the
time to
write "Eragon." But he believes the success of home-schooling is
totally
dependent on the parents' thoughtful involvement.

"The problem with home-schooling is you can either get an incredible
education
or you can get no education at all," he says. "I do know of families
in Montana
whose kids reach high school age and they don't know how to do basic
math and
have no background in literature because the parents were doing
canning and the
parents said the kids were learning counting from canning."

Unlike "unschoolers," Paolini says, he and his younger sister
followed a fairly
regimented curriculum devised by their mother, a Montessori teacher.
They used
home-education materials by the A Beka Academy in Pensacola, Fla.

Paolini's mother guided them until they reached high school age, when
they
enrolled in an accredited online distance-learning program called the
American
School.

"We put ourselves through high school, essentially," he says. "That
was one of
the most valuable lessons -- learning how to learn."

Home-schooling gave him wide latitude to pursue his interests in
music, writing
and computer games. He does not believe, however, that children
should be
totally free to decide what they study.

"If it was up to kids, half the time you know you wouldn't be allowed
to teach
them anything," he says. "They don't understand how useful it's going
to be
later in life or how much they'll end up enjoying it."

Any personal examples?

"I remember marching up to my mom and saying, 'I hate reading.'"

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

[email protected]

In a message dated 1/6/04 8:08:40 AM, unschooler@... writes:

<< I wish someone would do a study on how

unschoolers

> do in comparison to everyone else >>

How?
They can't test unschoolers without screwing up everything.
If we start teaching to their test, we lose our magic.

But someday when a bunch of unschoolers are grown, they can interview them
and quantify them and most people will look at the statistics instead of the
anecdotes and thereby probably miss the whole point. <g>

Sandra

[email protected]

In a message dated 1/6/04 9:52:34 AM, my3sonsinva@... writes:

<< Inspiration came from long, intense days and nights of solitary

reading - everything from Beowulf to Tolkien - >>

Not a very big range. <g>

I don't mind that they're weird homeschoolers who used American School and
used to be in a cult. That's more interesting than most homeschoolers.

Sandra

pam sorooshian

On Jan 6, 2004, at 10:47 AM, SandraDodd@... wrote:

> But someday when a bunch of unschoolers are grown, they can interview
> them
> and quantify them and most people will look at the statistics instead
> of the
> anecdotes and thereby probably miss the whole point. <g>

Linda Dobson's "Homeschooling Success Stories" and Peter Kowalke's film
--- I'm short of time - somebody fill in the details for me please -
I'm running out the door.....

-pam
National Home Education Network
<www.NHEN.org>
Serving the entire homeschooling community since 1999
through information, networking and public relations.