Free Learner

How the Earth Was Made

When I was in middle school I had a year of "Earth science," which I actually remember as one of the more interesting science classes -- I mean hey, it beat weeks and weeks of binomial taxonomy a couple of years later.  Still, what I remember from the class boils down to the definitions of the following terms:

• igneous, metamorphic, sedimentary
• plate tectonics
• magma vs. lava
• core, mantle, crust
• Pangea

Hmm, yep, that's about it.  I may be forgetting some terms, but then, I may already have known most of the above terms prior to the class, since we always had fairly nerdy dinner conversations.  I definitely knew about erosion and the water cycle before taking the class, but I imagine that was also covered.

In lieu of schooly earth science, lately we've been watching episodes of How the Earth Was Made, a History Channel program (instant playable on Netflix) that actually manages to make geology interesting.  I mean, geology is interesting, but given the extremely long time frames it can be tough to get people too excited about it.

I figure that watching all 24 episodes of this show is far superior to my own middle school earth science class, and it's not a criticism of the teacher or even the textbook necessarily, it's just... computer animations and video footage are so much more informative than those textbooks.  And the information is up to date to within the past 1-2 years.  And the same vocabulary terms are introduced, only in context, at a point in the show where you actually need to know that term.  And you get to hear real scientists talking about hypotheses and data and their field experiences; science is not presented as dead facts, but rather, as an ongoing investigation.

Anyway, I highly recommend the series to homeschoolers.  But note that some episodes involve natural disasters (Krakatoa killed 40,000) and a few may cause kids to worry (the San Andreas fault or the Yellowstone supervolcano).  So choose the episodes accordingly.

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.

21st century learning

Quite a few months ago, a friend of ours got an iPad.  My kids picked it up and started playing games on it without any visible learning curve at all; they just knew how to do it.  Tristan learned how to play chess from it in less than an hour, since it would highlight all the possible spaces into which each piece could move, and it didn't let him accidentally break any rules.  There were educational games involving words and physics, and I admit I was sort of wishing we had an iPad, but I wasn't even considering spending that much money on such a thing.  Another friend has one and reported good things as well: the iPad easily taught her son to tell time, no frustration involved.  He just played the game and worked it out.

So, yesterday my husband came home at lunch with a new iPad, unexpectedly.  I set myself loose at the App Store (although "Store" is a little misleading since almost everything I downloaded was free).  Now we're awash in math games, time games, geography games, physics games, and word games.

My kids like looking at maps, and they really like our map of the world jigsaw puzzle.  But the iPad geography games are, hands down, the easiest way to learn where the countries are, what the capitals are, etc.  You can learn the countries of South America and their capitals in about 15 minutes of playing these games.  Even plain old multiplication drills are more fun on the iPad.

I've been thinking about Alfie Kohn's book "No Contest," which says the research is pretty clear regarding competition in the classroom: it's a bad thing.  It inhibits learning, creates anxiety, and (contrary to popular belief) lowers performance.  But yet, when you're competing against your own previous high score or against a timer, or trying to get a certain percentage correct so you can get another token of some sort, that challenge seems very helpful.  You feel motivated to remember which one is Guyana, or to be a little quicker hitting "72" when 6 x 12 flashes up.  The kids are picking up countries and their capitals, landmarks, and state mottos incredibly quickly.  I suppose Kohn would also object to the extrinsic motivation that's inherent in all these games, as that's not supposed to be good for learning either.  But I mean, if you've learned where Uruguay is then you've learned it, at least you have that.  One doesn't need to go on memorizing countries for the rest of one's life.

The intelligent games on the iPad, which is many or most of them, will repeat material to reinforce it, but without getting tedious.  They'll gradually increase the difficulty level, or lower the difficulty if you get several wrong.  They'll provide hints on a schedule that keeps the game from getting frustrating.  One of the geography games seems designed so that you can often guess correctly from the four possible answers by process of elimination or reasoning.

I like sitting on the floor with my kids, opening up books, and just looking at them and chatting.  We do a lot of learning that way, and they have done plenty of math worksheets, and with Tristan I used reading flashcards (many of which I made myself).  But I have to say the iPad apps are pretty amazing learning tools.  Last night I was looking at a star chart app, and when I turned, the stars on the screen moved.  It knows which way you're facing and it shows you what should be in the sky in that direction.  A different app lets you move around the solar system, zooming in close enough to see the city lights on Earth (and the major satellites in their current positions), or zooming all the way out until the Milky Way is a spiral of dust and stars.  And it has animations explaining the relative sizes of celestial objects, the phases of the moon, the seasons, etc.  Maybe I'm an idiot but I didn't realize that the moon rises and sets at the same time as the sun at the new moon, but opposite to the sun at the full moon.  When you see the video it's obvious why that is, but I just hadn't thought about it before.

The Khan Academy website is another excellent use of technology.  It's exploded from a small collection of videos into a site with exercises, videos, and a connected "coach" (or parent) account that lets you look at what your kids were doing or watching on the site, how many minutes they spent, what % of questions they got right, etc.  The guy who does the videos is a natural teacher with a really friendly style and great explanations.  And all of this is free.  We had been using the Aleks online math system (not even close to free) but the Khan thing is superior.

An iPad is a luxury, I realize.  The iPad and the internet are not necessary for learning.  But I know families who don't let their kids use any kind of screens at all or even toys with batteries in them, and I wonder if they really know what they're missing?  Perhaps they should try watching The Secret Life of Birds at a friend's house, or let their kids play Map Quiz or with the solar system app once or twice.  Or maybe they have, and they aren't interested... I'd be interested to know what the argument is against using this new technology.  Myself, I think it's fantastic.

 

Self-selection doesn't explain the success of homeschooling

The numbers vary from one data set to another, but generally speaking, homeschooled kids score well above average in comparison with public school students.  A common reaction to those data is the claim: "Of course homeschoolers do better, because they're a small privileged group with highly educated and devoted parents."  It's exactly the kids who would've done great in school anyway who choose to homeschool, or so this argument goes.  The home educated kids who win the national spelling bee or geography tournament tend to reinforce this notion that homeschoolers are selected from among the bright kids with the academics-obsessed parents.

The thing is, dissatisfaction with the academics at school is not cited as the most important reason for homeschooling by most families.  From 2003, we have these survey data:

 

 

(That first footnote is to clarify that "environment" included safety, drugs, and/or negative peer pressure.)

Note that while 16% cite unsatisfactory academic instruction at school, perhaps implying that their child is bored and unchallenged, 14% cite difficulties which may include learning disorders, ADHD, serious anxiety, or other factors that would tend to decrease standardized test scores.

Also, many of the people who feel homeschooling is undertaken by the privileged (and therefore is unfair and un-leftist) also believe that Bible-thumping backwoods homeschoolers are abusing their children through skewed and inadequate education.  Well, you can't have it both ways.  If the non-college-educated fundies in Missouri or Utah are guilty of criminal neglect for homeschooling, then wouldn't that tend to pull down those homeschool statistics?  Mind you, I don't agree at all with these stereotypes, but they're out there.  Since religion is cited as a reason for homeschooling about twice as often as dissatisfaction with academics, then if anything, according to some, we ought to expect below average test scores.  (By the way, in this study of 2009 data, homeschoolers tested in the 86th percentile in science.)

In my college town community, many people homeschool as an extension of attachment parenting.  We like spending more time with our kids, knowing what's happening in their lives in more detail, and reducing bustle and stress.  (I once told a friend that getting my kids dressed, fed, cleaned up, and packed for school before the bus came would literally be harder than homeschooling-- and I was not joking.)  Beyond attachment, the reasons are extremely varied.  One family keeps strictly kosher, one has boys whose nut allergies are potentially life-threatening, one has a son who's dyslexic, one has a daughter who faced bullying in school, one doesn't like the pressure her daughter experienced to be "girly".  Some kids certainly have interests they couldn't pursue in school (or not as much), such as music, theater, or chemistry (at age 11).  Anya's major interest is the breeding of animals and genetics.  But of course, interests that wouldn't be met in school would also not be on the test.  So, when parents cite dissatisfaction with academics, that may be because there isn't enough emphasis on their child's particular area of interest-- but that interest is not likely to improve test scores.

I think it comes down to the most obvious thing: One-on-one tutoring is a lot more effective than one adult teaching 25 kids in what is (for many kids) a hostile environment.  Just remember that every homeschooler represents a smaller child-to-teacher ratio in some classroom somewhere, so homeschoolers and schoolers are not natural enemies here.

As for how privileged homeschoolers are, here is some more 2009 data:

• The median income for home-educating families ($75,000 to $79,999) was similar to all married-couple families nationwide with one or more related children under age 18 (median income $74,049 in 2006 dollars; or roughly 78,490 in 2008 dollars).
  
  
• Homeschool parents have more formal education than parents in the general population; 66.3% of the fathers and 62.5% of the mothers had a college degree (i.e., bachelor’s degree) or a higher educational attainment. In 2007, 29.5% of all adult males nationwide ages 25 and over had finished college and 28.0% of females had done so.
  
  
• Almost all homeschool students (97.9%) are in married couple families. Most home school mothers (81%) do not participate in the labor force; almost all home school fathers (97.6%) do work for pay.
  
  
• The median amount of money spent annually on educational materials is about $400 to $599 per home-educated student.

This does suggest that homeschooling families are of higher socio-economic status.  Homeschooling parents are more than twice as likely to have college degrees as the rest of the adult population.  However, that being said, in the 2009 study, even when neither parent had a college degree, kids still scored in the 83rd percentile on "core" subjects (reading, language, math).  Families where both parents had a college degree had kids scoring in the 90th percentile.  There's a difference there, but parental education doesn't come close to explaining the gap between homeschoolers and schoolers.

Regarding income, I'm surprised (maybe even a little incredulous) that there's little or no income difference between schooling and homeschooling families.  Though I do live in a college town where many folks are degreed, most homeschooling families that I know are scrimping to get by, and in quite a few cases live pretty close to the edge.  Second-hand clothes and toys, CSA's and food co-ops, and heavy coupon usage are the norm.  And most of the moms I know do some form of work on the side, it's just that most of it's under the table, and would therefore not be reported in a survey.

It's odd to me that what I'm saying here is often taken as highly controversial.  I'm saying that parents are probably better at teaching reading and arithmetic to their kids than are teachers who are 1) responsible for 25 kids and 2) totally hamstrung by rules, regulations, and the current fads.  Feels to me like I'm stating the obvious.  And yes, maybe parents without high school diplomas have a harder time teaching their kids to read, but the thing is that, beyond the sort of phonics you see on Sesame Street ("S" says Ssssssss)... I didn't teach Anya to read at all.  She taught herself using the Webkinz website, comic strips, and Bunnicula books.

Homeschoolers actually tend to be non-judgemental, because we ourselves get judged so often.  But our presence in the world does tend to raise some questions about why certain schools are failing, or why schools are failing certain kinds of students.

 

 

Waiting for Superman

That's the title of a documentary [watch the trailer] about failing schools in inner city neighborhoods.  It's stirred up a lot of criticism because it blames the failure of these schools largely on teacher's unions, and because it gives an intentionally distorted view of the success of charter schools.  80% of charter schools are the same or worse than their public school counterparts, but those featured in the film happen to be wildly successful.

Partway through the film, Bill Gates suddenly shows up.  The second I saw him on screen the hair stood up on the back of my neck and I realized I'd been had.  My brain clicked into gear on the topic: Identify the hidden agenda.  And I think the ulterior motive can be summarized as "Megacorp wants to raise your children."  Not only does this documentary argue that schools should be privatized, but also that kids should be going to school all year round, 8 hours a day, or-- better yet, as featured in the film-- to boarding schools.  Why not just imprison your future workers from middle school on, and put them in corporate-run "boarding schools" which can provide "better educational outcomes" than kids left at home in inner city neighborhoods?  All for the good of the kiddies, right?  And toward the destruction of their families and communities.

[This isn't really new, I suppose.  We owe K-12 schooling to Rockefellers and Carnegies and their ilk, who still exercise a great deal of control through their foundations.  And we've seen a constant expansion of hours spent in schools over the past century, most recently with the disappearance of half-day kindergarten in favor of full-day kindergarten.]

Anyone who homeschools knows that it doesn't take that much time to teach math and reading.  Kids do not need to go to school 8 hours a day all year in order to learn.  The people who want children locked away for their entire childhoods are at best useful idiots; more likely, they like the economic benefits of free child care; at worst (here I'm thinking of Gates and other elites), they're hoping to re-shape society according to whatever utopian zealotry they're currently prey to.

Hidden agendas aside, it's a heartbreaking film.  It follows a few bright, thoughtful kids as they're consigned to schools that will decimate their chances for attaining a college degree and/or a comfortable life.  Or, in some cases, they're not consigned, because they were holding a lucky number at the lottery.  The randomness, however intellectually defensible it may be, feels like an outrage when you're waiting to see if these kids get the luck of the draw.  And the rotten schools are breath-takingly rotten-- high schools where the incoming students have a 3rd grade reading level on average, and a very solid majority never graduate.

The kids in these neighborhoods are mostly going to stay in these neighborhoods, or ones like them.  The idea that public schooling is a force for equality has no empirical standing as far as I can see.  Consider, by contrast, the results from a 2009 sample of over 11,000 homeschooling students, from all 50 states, who took standardized tests through one of 15 different testing services.  They were scored on reading, language, and math, and these results were combined into a "core" score.  Some of the results:

 

There was little difference between the results of homeschooled boys and girls on core scores.

Boys—87th percentile
Girls—88th percentile

Household income had little impact on the results of homeschooled students.

$34,999 or less—85th percentile
$35,000–$49,999—86th percentile
$50,000–$69,999—86th percentile
$70,000 or more—89th percentile

The education level of the parents made a noticeable difference, but the homeschooled children of non-college educated parents still scored in the 83rd percentile, which is well above the national average.

Neither parent has a college degree—83rd percentile
One parent has a college degree—86th percentile
Both parents have a college degree—90th percentile

Whether either parent was a certified teacher did not matter.

Certified (i.e., either parent ever certified)—87th percentile
Not certified (i.e., neither parent ever certified)—88th percentile

Parental spending on home education made little difference.

Spent $600 or more on the student—89th percentile
Spent under $600 on the student—86th percentile

The extent of government regulation on homeschoolers did not affect the results.

Low state regulation—87th percentile
Medium state regulation—88th percentile
High state regulation—87th percentile

In a previous study of homeschooling, reading scores were the same for white and minority students, while in math white students scored in the 82nd percentile, and minority students scored in the 77th percentile.  By comparison, that math difference is around 30 percentile points in the public schools nationally, not 5.

What's the excuse for the flat playing field among homeschoolers and the drastically tilted one among the public schools?

Given high (and rising) unemployment rates among those with less education and among minorities -- i.e. people similar to those featured in Waiting for Superman -- you have to wonder why homeschooling and tiny co-op educational arrangements are not more common in poor urban neighborhoods.  In Detroit we have communal urban agriculture, which has gotten a little bit of press.  Communal urban co-op tutoring and homeschooling would seem to be a logical thing to attempt.  Where a few shared vegetable plots have been noted to reduce crime, introduce neighbors, and generally improve morale, I would think that sharing in the education of a neighborhood's children would be even better at building cohesion.  And they'd be virtually certain to do a better job than the failing schools in inner cities.

Not so much waiting for Bill Gates in a Superman costume, as waiting for Mom, Dad, and Grandma.

 

Math... in one year flat

At today's homeschooling get-together I happened to sit down next to someone else's stuff, which was on the adjacent end table.  At the top was a book called "Basic Mathematics: Collins College Outlines."  Several of the moms had been looking at it, and I took a look too.  It was something I hadn't really seen before: a basic math book written for adults.  Very straightforward and efficient, and focusing on concepts and the inherent logic of mathematics.  I said it looked like a pretty good text.

"Well you know," another mom said, "they didn't do math until last year."  I quickly wondered if I had the right kid in mind because the one I was thinking of was very tall and could vote.  The other mom continued: "But they used this book over the last year....  He just took his ACT's and he did really well."

There are other radical unschoolers in the group, and I have learned not to show surprise at things like "Oh, we didn't do math for the first xx years."  So I didn't show much reaction.  But consider what this person was telling me.  This newly adult boy hadn't bothered studying math, at least not in a schooly way, for his whole life except for the past year.  But-- one year, the right book, and-- the ACTs?  No problem.  Had he been fascinated with science, it might have worked out differently, who knows.  But this boy is extremely musical, and the focus of his life did not require schooly mathematics.  Only the college admissions people did, so... fine.  A book, a little daily practice for a year, and presto-- great ACTs.

I don't have a "point" to finish with, because honestly, I'm still taking this in.  What if the people who hate math don't need to bother with it until they're nearly adults and it's much easier -- cognitively and emotionally?  What if all that middle-school math anxiety is for naught?

What you can learn from Monopoly

As we've all been sick with bad colds around my house, we've not done much "schooly" stuff this week.  And today I played Monopoly with the kids for hours because I was just too sick to do dishes, laundry, cooking, etc.  But it was quite the unschooling experience.  Stuff my kids (one or the other) learned:

• Obviously, math for Tristan, who would be in 1st grade.  He's getting really fast with the exchanges of money.
• The difference between the phrases "make change" and "give you back your change," which were confusing him.
• What a monopoly is in the first place.
• The reason why, late in the game, you may have enough money to pay for rent on Boardwalk with three houses, when at the beginning these costs were totally prohibitive.  It's inflation due to the influx of new money into the system (i.e. the $200 per go-around & by other means).  Money entering the system = inflation; incomes and rents can thus increase.
• Railroads are like that because they really were monopolies, historically.
• Okay, this one was just for me-- the game is based on Atlantic City, which I didn't know until Marvin Gardens rang a bell, and then I looked over at Boardwalk, and I went and Googled it.  Coincidentally I've been watching HBO's Boardwalk Empire, set in Atlantic City during Prohibition.  The colored territories seem to be the neighborhoods of Atlantic City, from the poor row houses to the boardwalk hotels.  And of course, if you could monopolize the booze sales in a neighborhood you'd get much higher prices.  Not so much "rent" as liquor sales?  Houses = speakeasies and hotels = hotels / casinos?  I don't know, but the timing is roughly correct, because the game was evolving during Prohibition and was sold to Parker Brothers in 1934.  In the game, as in Prohibition, you're nowhere without a regional monopoly.
• For both kids: that you need both income and savings.
• How to calculate 10%.
• What it means to mortgage a property.
• What a dividend is.
• Reading (Tristan was semi-reading his Chance & Community Chest cards).
• Haggling (when we were selling properties to one another).
• The perils of tying up too much capital and being cash-poor.

If someone asked me if we did any homeschooling today my initial reply would be "No, we didn't."  Then I remember the discussion about DNA shared between family members.  And about the Egyptian revolution.  And about the safety of the antiquities museum in Cairo and King Tut's mask.  And Anya saying "They usually get stolen art back eventually but it's usually damaged," which, although it may or may not be true, is a conclusion based on various stories we've read because she's so interested in art history.  "Right," I said.  "Like The Scream."

I find that when you're a homeschooler it can be very easy to start holding yourself up to too high a standard.  Partly, other homeschooling parents will tell you what their schedule or curriculum is but not tell you how much of the time they actually stick to it, leaving you with the impression that their house runs like clockwork while in yours, you can't keep to the same schedule for three days strung together.  Secondly, you hear about so many different things that other kids are doing-- but you can't do all of that.  That's why I was drawn to unschooling in the first place -- why not do what my kids are most interested in, as that's the most efficient learning anyway, and it solves the problem of What to Focus On.  And most importantly, even when we aren't doing any deliberate learning, like today, there is still a lot of learning going on.

US foreign policy in 2 minutes 41 seconds

Perhaps my second favorite scene from Good Will Hunting:

 

 

My absolute favorite scene, of course, is the bar scene.  The more I read about the dubious educational value of college and the incredible amount of debt incurred, the more I tend to agree with this:

 

 

The only thing that's unrealistic in the second speech is that I rarely have so little as a $1.50 late fee at the public library.  My impression is that we pay so many late fees we should have our names on a plaque somewhere, as devoted contributors to the library.

Treasure trove of free educational videos

This morning someone alerted me to the online Khan Academy, where you can find over 1,600 short videos (usually 10-15 minutes) on math, history, science, and economics.  Truly an amazing site!  There is no registration required.  Just look around and click something.  If you were worried about teaching your kid algebra, have no fear... they're good videos, and you can pause, re-watch, or rewind as needed.  Notice they also have SAT math test prep.

Speaking of math, another site I'd recommend for those with younger kids is The Math Worksheet Site (check out what you get with a subscription), because you can customize the worksheets your kids are doing.  This seems much better than buying workbooks for a few reasons.  First, you can give them more or less practice at a concept, depending on how fast they pick it up.  Second, you can make the problems a little easier or set it to print fewer problems per page to make something new less intimidating.  Third, Anya always objected to the stupid drawings and decorations that are somehow supposed to make math workbooks more interesting, but which she thinks are condescending.  These printed math worksheets are as simple as possible.

Hurrah for the internet!

The Story of Art

It turns out that the same E. H. Gombrich I mentioned in my last post also wrote a book on the history of art, which has the same sort of tone and format.  An Amazon review puts it this way:

The size and compression of his book is not its salient feature from a philosophic standpoint: it is the presence of an authorial voice, and a continuous narrative. Most other survey texts give up the ideal of coherent exposition in favor of a neutral descriptive voice and a fragmented "story" that continuously interrupts itself in order not to lose any essential historical detail.

Hurrah for a continuous narrative!

I find the reviews a bit funny, since several people express surprise at finding the book enjoyable.  "This may sound a bit strange, but this is a great book to take on a plane or train with you," says one.  "It's actually a book that I have been reading more for pleasure than for study," says another.  A student in art history tells of reading ahead of what was assigned-- in fact, of finishing the entire thing in two weeks.  And someone else says: "I cannot recall ever reading a college textbook written with such grace and quiet authority."

Well, it's like George Bernard Shaw said: If textbook authors could write readable books then they wouldn't have to write textbooks.