Free Learner

The Christmas Truce

The Christmas Truce of 1914 has been called by Arthur Conan Doyle “one human episode amid all the atrocities.” It is certainly one of the most remarkable incidents of World War I and perhaps of all military history. Inspiring both popular songs and theater, it has endured as an almost archetypal image of peace.

The above is from the addendum to an article written for schoolchildren on the truce at Christmas during the first year of World War I.

I knew about the Christmas Truce but had subsequently heard it was enormously exaggerated if not apocryphal.  Apparently, that's not so.  According to the above link, a few historians have verified that it really did happen and was quite widespread along the front line.  Which made me think: Wow -- for a day, or a few days -- they held a war and no one came.

What's more, this is not as unprecedented as people think.  Also from the addendum to the article:

Another false idea about the truce was held even by most soldiers who were there: that it was unique in history. Though the Christmas Truce is the greatest example of its kind, informal truces had been a longstanding military tradition. During the American Civil War, for instance, Rebels and Yankees traded tobacco, coffee, and newspapers, fished peacefully on opposite sides of a stream, and even gathered blackberries together. Some degree of fellow feeling had always been common among soldiers sent to battle.

In more recent times, he points out, cultural and language barriers have prevented informal truces from occurring in many battle arenas.  Nonetheless, their historical occurence, along with estimates that (for instance) soldiers only fired 1 in every 7 times they were ordered to fire during WWII, does suggest that sometimes the common people quietly rebel against war.  The elites, the CEOs, the war mongers, the intelligence mavens-- these are the men who want war, and bring us to war.  The Zbigniew Brzezinskis and Henry Kissingers of the world.  And when they garner the populations' support for war, it is always through false pretenses.  Lies, propaganda, and false flags (such as the non-existent Gulf of Tonkin attack, or the apocryphal Spanish attack on the USS Maine) are used to whip up fear and anger in a domestic population to allow for war. 

There's an anti-war book called War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, that argues that warfare can be exhilirating and addictive to some of its participants, but also to whole societies involved in a war.  I shouldn't comment on a book I haven't read, but I would imagine that this process doesn't work quite so well without state propaganda.  When I watched the old series Upstairs, Downstairs they showed that many British were gung-ho for war against the Germans, at the start of WWI.  But that was on the basis of outrageous propaganda about the evil Huns.  Remember those Iraqi soldiers who knocked over the incubators of premature babies in a Kuwaiti hospital?  It never happened, but it's very much like the WWI anti-German propaganda.  Take all that away, and would the common people feel so inspired by war?  I doubt it.  It's just that war, because it involves death, enemies, and "the Other," provides for the most potent propaganda there is.

We are constantly being told how terrible human beings are, but the worst atrocities are committed not because people run amok, outside the control of any State, but rather, on the orders of the State.

 Except when, sometimes, they refuse.

College after homeschooling

Recently one of the moms at one of our homeschool groups held a talk / discussion about applying to colleges after homeschooling K-12.  My own kids aren't there yet (being only 11 and 7) but I thought there were plenty of useful things to pass along.

Basically, you make up your own transcript.  This will often be a combination of classes taken in some "official" format (online high school classes or community college), credit hours given based on the student's own home study, extracurricular activities (which for homeschoolers can be just about anything), and any external tests / proficiencies (such as AP exams or language proficiency tests).  There are various transcript formats -- these things aren't standardized among schools, either -- and you should experiment with which layout looks best for your child.

This mom's child had applied to 5 colleges using a homemade transcript, and none had asked for any sort of verification of anything in the application.  (3 of the 5 sent acceptance letters and the other 2 are still pending.)  If your kid reads 25 books on a subject, and they've been discussing them with you, you can call that a class, and no one is likely to question you.

One of the moms in the discussion found this a bit odd, especially since a homeschooled kid -- who can keep reading and studying until (s)he has 99% comprehension of the materials used -- is very likely to get an "A" in any home study course you list on the transcript.  She said it seemed odd to just say "Mom gave me an A".

The mom leading the discussion said that of course there are subjects which don't work well, for any given child.  A kid might love physics and despise chemistry, but as a homeschooler one is free to list an "A" in physics and simply leave chemistry off the transcript.  You could potentially list environmental studies, astronomy, or paleontology as a science class instead.

At some point I chimed in that school grades don't necessarily have any more integrity than an A your mother gave you, because a schoolkid can cram for tests, pass them with flying colors, and remember absolutely nothing 2 weeks later.  This was what I often did in school.  There are rarely cumulative final exams in high school, and for obvious reasons-- kids would flunk them in droves.  A homeschooled kid who has pursued their own interest in some area is likely to have excellent retention of information relative to a kid just trying for the "A" in their high school class.  And it goes without saying that you'll remember (say) a Stephen J. Gould book far better than a textbook.  To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, those who can write well don't get stuck writing textbooks.

Colleges do often want some sort of third-party verification of abilities from homeschooled applicants.  The usual PSAT, SAT, ACT tests are one source; there are topical SAT tests one can optionally take (say in world history or higher mathematics); there are tests offered by organizations such as Sylvan Learning Centers which can be useful; community college or online high school classes are a source; and letters of recommendation from academic sorts (tutors, music teachers, etc) are yet another.  Some colleges have homeschoolers fill out an extra, supplemental section of the application.

Rather than finding the discussion stressful, I actually found it very reassuring, because this particular family are not just homeschoolers but unschoolers.  I found out that on one of the standardized tests, students are asked to copy out a sentence, in cursive, which affirms that they are who they say they are and have not cheated, or whatever.  This was the most time-consuming part of the test for this kid, because they'd never studied cursive and were writing it for the first time.  I, too, have been thinking of giving cursive a miss (both my kids type faster than they write and always have)... but now I know that my kids should at least be able to write this particular sentence in cursive!

Lastly, it occurs to me that if your kid was 17 and you didn't think (s)he was quite ready to apply to colleges, he/she could always do a little test prep and take a couple of community college classes and pick up an additional extracurricular activity, and then apply a year later.  For homeschoolers I think it's often a more gradual transition from high school to university.  For example, one of the high school-aged kids in our group has a volunteer research internship at the local university, even though college is still a couple of years off.  And many of our kids take community college classes while still in high school.

The mom who led this discussion had this final advice: Don't think that homeschooling in itself will make your kid stand out, but don't worry that it will be a hindrance in any way.  I'd add that in the recent past, statistics showed that colleges and universities were accepting homeschooled kids at a higher rate than schooled kids.  I imagine that's partly because homeschoolers have the time and the freedom to study unusual things and/or to pursue unusual hobbies, which does make them stand out.  And there's evidence that homeschoolers participate more in the community and tend to be more politically active than schooled kids, which may matter to some colleges.