School's out for summer

School's now finished for the year for Mulan and Miya.

Mulan finished her final uni exam a month ago, completing her first year studying Biomed at Auckland University.

The results came back, and for the eight courses she sat this year she got five A+, two A, and one A-.

After their first year, if they wish students can apply to transfer from Biomed to Medical Imaging, Surgery, Optometry or Pharmacy.  There are limited places available for each of these four programmes, and only the top students get in.

Mulan's preferred choice is Pharmacy, and she is waiting to hear back if she was selected.

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Meanwhile, last week Miya finished Year 10 at Westlake Girls High School.

At the end-of-year Junior Prizegiving on Thursday, Miya received an Academic Excellence award, as well as Distinction in Music, Maths, Social Studies and Textiles.

For her subjects next year Miya chose Music, History and Textiles, along with Maths, English and Science.

At the prizegiving Miya was also kept busy performing.  She played her French horn in the Junior Orchestra, sang in the Junior Choir and played her clarinet in a small-group ensemble.

In previous weeks Miya also attended the school Sports Prizegiving, where she was recognised for her achievements in athletics, and also the school Junior Music Prizegiving, where she was recognised for her involvement in several orchestras/bands/ensembles/choirs.

Academics

In between athletics and music, Mulan and Miya also do a bit of academic stuff.

Miya:

Last year (2024), Miya finished homeschooling and started secondary school, entering Year 9 at Westlake Girls High School.

It all went well, and at the end of the year she got distinction in Maths, Music, Science and Social Studies, as well as Year 9 Academic Excellence.  She collected her certificates on stage at the end-of-year prizegiving.

This year for Year 10 she chose Music, Dance and Fabric Technology (ie sewing) as her three optional subjects.  She was selected into the Maths Extension class, and is also doing English, Science, Social Studies, PE and Health.

Term 1 has just finished, and Miya is having a relaxing school holiday.

Mulan:

Last year was Mulan's final year at secondary school.  Alongside sitting NCEA 3 in Music, Calculus, Biology, Chemistry and Physics, she also decided to have a go at Scholarship in Music, Biology and Chemistry.

Scholarship is pretty difficult.  Only the top students in New Zealand attempt it, and only about 3% of those who attempt it get it.  Our advice to Mulan was to just treat it as a fun learning experience, and a good introduction to how university learning will likely be.

Delightfully, she got Scholarship Music, and her marks were close in Biology and Chemistry.  Westlake Girls acknowledged the Scholarship winners early this year at a prizegiving.

But the priority for Mulan was to do well enough in her NCEA 3 courses to get into her preferred university course.

By midway through the year Mulan had decided that she wanted to go to Auckland University and do a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Science (and continue living at home).

Entry into Biomed requires at least 280 points in NCEA 3 courses, which is higher than most other university courses (eg, a normal BSc requires 165 points).  Roughly, this meant that she needed to get at least 40 excellence credits and 40 merit credits at NCEA 3.

Happily, Mulan got what she needed, and was accepted into Auckland Uni Biomed.

At the moment Mulan doesn't yet know what she wants to specialise in.  She enjoys biology and chemistry, and there are lots of different directions it could take her.

This year Mulan has been kept busy with her studies.  There's a lot of content to learn, and when she's not at uni she's often in her room studying.  It's now mid-semester break and no classes, but unlike Miya most days she's still working.

University

Mulan has now finished school and is off to university next year.

Coincidently, Forrest Valkai just posted this on YouTube.  In three minutes he sums up perfectly the point of university.  What he describes is very much my own experience of university life.  Highly recommended, and awesome advice.

School

Today is Miya's first day at school (ever).

It was a slightly unusual start, as this morning, at 7:30am, we dropped her off at Westlake Boys High School.  No, she's not going to a boys' school, it's just that she's in the senior Westlake Concert Band, and that's her practice time/place.  After practice, at 8:30am, she walks to the girls' school.

We've now officially stopped homeschooling, and the plan is for Miya to spend the next five years of her schooling at Westlake Girls High School.

She's already been there a few times, for orientation day and music auditions/practices, but this is the official first day.

From what I understand, however, today there'll be little to no learning happening -- it's mostly just administrative stuff with earnest speeches and team-building.  So, an easy and gentle first day (as long as she can stay awake!).

Based on the school financial statement sent to us, it seems that mostly Miya got the subjects she asked for.  The only exception is that she asked to learn Maori, and instead she's got French.  (Given the way New Zealand culture is these days, we thought Maori would be extremely useful to learn, so it's a pity that Miya will miss out.)

Miya's other subjects are English, maths, science, social studies, PE, health, music, Spanish, digital tech, fabric tech, food tech, and hard material tech.

As I wrote before, Miya is in the music extension class, as well as the senior concert band and junior symphonic band.  She'll have instrument lessons through the school in clarinet and French horn.  She'll go to two weekend music camps this term, and later in the year will play at concerts and festivals.

Unfortunately, the two music camps exactly clash with two school athletics competitions (the school athletics day and school North Island Champs), so Miya will miss those.  But there's still the school zone champs and Auckland champs this term, along with the nationals in December.

And I'm sure Miya will find lots of other activities to get involved with.

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Meanwhile, Mulan is returning to Westlake for her final year at school.  Her school year started yesterday.

Her academic results last year were very satisfying, and we are super proud of her.

At the school academic prizegiving last year Mulan was awarded Distinction in Biology, and in her NCEA results she got Excellence Endorsement in two subjects (music and chemistry), and Merit Endorsement in the other four (maths, biology, physics, English).

This year she's studying music, maths calculus, physics, biology and chemistry.

At the end of last year she applied to be a prefect, and her job this year is to help mentor the new Year 9 students.  The downside is that today she had to wear her school prefect's tie, blazer and stockings!  (She was feeling uncomfortably hot!)

She's continuing with a lot of school music -- symphony orchestra, chamber orchestra, and cello lessons.  She's also newly joined the Cigno Voce choir and will have singing lessons.  She also has two school music camps.

And she'll again join the school athletics competitions.

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With no longer homeschooling I (theoretically) have one less job to do.  For the short/mid term, after homemaking and being admin assistant for our family business, I'll likely find a bit of time to paint/renovate our house.  Plans for the mid/long term will sort themselves out in time.

Mulan's NCEA results

The NCEA school exam results came through a few days ago.  We looked eagerly at Mulan's numbers.

And well done her!

As always, as with any on-the-day performance, be it athletics, music, dance or academics, there were some bits where Mulan performed smoothly, while other bits were a little under what we know she can sometimes do.  It's a snapshot in time, not an overall judgement.  Important, interesting and useful, but only in its context.

Having said that, overall it was a very satisfying result and something to be proud of.  I think it appropriately reflects what Mulan put into it -- her time, effort, seriousness, diligence, and, most importantly, investment-balance with the various other life areas in which Mulan is involved.  She put time and effort into her academic studies, but it didn't take over from also equally putting time and effort into her dance, music and athletics, to also achieve well in those.

So, Mulan passed NCEA 1 with excellence endorsement.

She got excellence endorsements in Maths, Science and Music, while she got merit endorsements in English, Accounting and PE.

She passed all 121 credits she sat, with 79 at excellence level and 42 at merit level.

Along with doing NCEA level 1, in her extension English class she sat a level 2 unit.  We were delighted that she passed this with merit, as in some of her earlier practices she hadn't done quite so well.

On the other hand, she didn't do quite so well in one of her Accounting units, getting merit rather than excellence.  Even though the rest of her Accounting was all excellence, with the bad luck of the points calculation system this dropped her down to merit endorsement overall in Accounting.  A little sad after she did so well in her school Accounting results, but that's the idiosyncratic nature of on-the-day performances.

Well done Mulan.  Super proud of her!

School prizegiving

Classes have now finished for Mulan at school.  She's on study break, with NCEA exams happening over the next few weeks.

But first it's been prizegiving season.

Last week the music department had a semi-formal prizegiving dinner at McHugh's.  It was an enjoyable night out for the combined boys and girls schools, and Mulan got a new dress for the occasion.

Along with a yummy dinner, Mulan received a certificate and badge recognising her involvement in the school orchestra.

And then on Wednesday night we attended the senior academic prizegiving.

Mulan was there for two reasons.  First, she was again playing in the school orchestra (she's front right).

And then she was called up onstage for Distinction in Accounting.

We're still not quite sure what "Distinction" means in the language of Westlake Girls' awards.  But at least in this case there seemed to be three girls out of five-ish classes recognised for their accounting skills.

The funny thing is that Mulan had earlier been planning to drop Accounting for next year.  Back in August she'd even booked it in as just her backup subject.  But a few weeks ago, after talking about it some more, she'd decided to change her 2023 choices, continuing Accounting and dropping Biology instead.

We're now (semi-)joking that Mulan should be an accountant when she grows up, sitting in an office all day.

School music and PE

This year Mulan is doing Year 11 Music at school, and is sitting NCEA 1.

Along with music theory and history there is also a practical component, where the students prepare and perform pieces, which are assessed.  One assessment is a group performance, while another is solo.

The school does not tell students which instrument to use, or which pieces to play.  The students choose the instruments they are personally most skilled at, and over a number of weeks practice and polish their pieces both in and out of class (and often with their private teachers).

In other words, one aim of Music at school is to assess the students' specialist areas at their best.

What would school Music be like if, instead of this, the students' practical component was assessed by looking at how well they learnt a new instrument they'd never played before?  What if the school chose the instrument that all students were required to play (intentionally choosing a more obscure instrument that likely no one has played before), gave the students a few weeks of in-class lessons, then evaluated their performance playing that new instrument?

This year Mulan is also doing Year 11 PE at school, and is sitting NCEA 1.

Similar to Music, PE in school has both a theory and practical component.  (Although one difference is that the theory component of PE is entirely internally assessed, whereas Music has some external assessments.)

This year Mulan's school has decided to assess all Year 11 PE students on both gymnastics and handball.  Students do not choose the sport they are assessed in.

Last term Mulan's class went out of school to have gymnastics lessons at North Harbour Gymnastics.  During class they prepared routines, which they then performed for assessment.  Some students had never done gymnastics before, and so the lessons and routines were fairly beginner level.  Mulan was lucky** that for a few years and up until about a year ago she'd casually learnt gymnastics.  Consequently, Mulan found the required gymnastics skills both familiar and easy, and she comfortably achieved excellence on that assessment.  (**Or was Mulan unlucky that those school lessons were a bit of a waste of time for her?!)

This term the students will be introduced to handball, an Olympic sport that's popular in Europe but almost unheard of here in New Zealand.  Mulan's PE teacher told us that this sport was intentionally chosen as likely none of the students have done it before.  Teachers will observe and assess the students as they learn this unfamiliar sport, getting to know the rules of the game and acquiring the basic skills.  As part of the assessment students will also need to reflect on their learning experience.

What would school PE be like if, instead of this, the students were assessed in sports that they were most skilled at?  What if the students chose their own sport, worked on polishing their skills, and then were observed and assessed performing at their specialist best?

Why is it that at school Music is seen as a subject in which students are encouraged to perform as skillfully as possible in their chosen specialist area, whereas in PE one is assessed more on one's learning attitude, reflections and teamwork spirit?

School subjects

It feels like 2022 has barely started, and yet Mulan's school is already requesting that students lock in their choices for next year.

Yesterday, Mulan and I spent about an hour looking at her subject options for Year 12 (NCEA 2) in 2023, before submitting her choices.

Mulan still doesn't have strong opinions about what she wants to do after school (in just 2.5 years!).  So, it's about keeping her options open.  She may want a music career, or possibly something in sports science.  She still enjoys doing a lot of dance.  Or maybe something completely different.

Music was an easy first choice.  It's by far Mulan's favourite subject, and the learning environment at Westlake Girls is excellent.  From the sounds of things teachers and students are passionate and motivated and they're having fun learning at a high level.

Mulan quite enjoys science, despite teacher troubles in the first half of the year.  Westlake has been having difficulty getting enough teachers, and Mulan was stuck with relievers who were not very skilled communicators.  Mostly, the students were teaching themselves.  It was so bad that we contacted the school about this; the person we talked with was very understanding, but said it was the best they could do.  Fortunately this term Mulan's class has a new science teacher, who seems good.  For Year 12 Mulan has decided to take three science classes -- Biology, Chemistry and Physics (with her preference in that order).

Mulan finds maths relatively easy, although she has never been that interested in it.  While homeschooling, and before starting school, Mulan was consistently working at about two years ahead of her age.  Since starting school a year ago Mulan's maths has stagnated somewhat.  Often the school work has been easy, or with familiar content; she sometimes comments that class lessons progress too slow.  On the other hand, one assessment dropped below excellence, suggesting that the learning environment for new content is not ideal.  For Year 12 Mulan has decided to take Maths Progression, which is the second tier course (behind Maths Extension).

Mulan dislikes English, but it's still compulsory in Year 12 (she's looking forwards to Year 13 when she doesn't have to take it!).  This year Mulan was selected into the extension English class (English Writing), which includes some work that's a year ahead (NCEA 2).  For Year 12 she's again applied for the English Writing class, which will do some NCEA 3 work.  (If she doesn't get in she'll do English Literature instead.)

Mulan is taking Accounting this year, and has selected it as her 2023 backup option.  We were wondering about doing this instead of three sciences, but Mulan enjoys science more than accounting.

Mulan is also taking PE this year, but has decided to drop it.  It has been very interesting to contrast PE (and Dance, which Mulan did last year) with Music.  In our experience, the motivated musicians choose Music as a school subject, and the class lessons work at a high level.  On the other hand, it seems the motivated sportspeople generally don't take PE, and neither do the motivated dancers take Dance.  My impression is that school PE lessons are not as high level as non-school-subject sports lessons and training.  (Similarly, school Dance classes are not as high level as non-school dance classes and training.)

After submitting the subject courses we looked at Mulan's mid-year school report (which came through at the same time).  So far this year she's got a couple of merits and the rest excellences.  The main teacher comment is that she needs to ask questions more when she doesn't understand something!

New school hall

Mulan's school just got a brand new hall (which they're calling the Event Centre).

While it's been fully operational all year, they had their official opening ceremony last Thursday.  There were plenty of speeches, as well as several music performances.

The latest school newsletter tells us all about it and links to a YouTube video:

Mulan was there too, missing a half day of classes while playing her cello in the orchestra (see if you can spot her!).

School camps

Mulan's been busy with school camps this past week.

First up, after the music concert last Thursday the orchestra had a camp on Friday through to Sunday.

Pre-Covid, in previous years this was a real camp, going away together for two nights.  But in Covid times they couldn't sleep over, so the camp was just long daytime practices in the school "Event Centre" (AKA hall).

Over the three days it added up to 15.5 hours together, and especially on Saturday Mulan said for the final hour or so their brains were too tired to count the beats.

But overall it sounds like it was a fun and productive weekend.

It was in the school newsletter here (see if you can spot Mulan amongst the cellos).

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On Sunday, Mulan had just a few hours to pack for her second school camp, and this one was a real going-away activity.

This was a compulsory three-day Year 11 PE camp, with NCEA 1 credits on offer.  So apparently they were allowed to be Covid-riskier.

On Monday, Mulan had to be at school at 8am, with packed bags, for the 80-minute bus drive up north to Mangawhai.

Since school is just a five-minute walk away from home, the family walked with her to say goodbye.  As Mama and I stood watching Mulan walk into the gym with her bags, a passing teacher pointedly joked that likely Mulan wouldn't even miss us.  While obviously true, it was also irrelevant to why we were there.

Apart from a brief phone call on Monday evening (from a teacher's phone), we didn't hear anything until Mulan walked in the door at 2pm on Wednesday, slightly stiff from the different-from-usual activities but otherwise good.

The camp was exactly Mulan's style, and she had a great time.  It was at the beach, and they spent a lot of the time in the water surfing, stand-up paddleboarding and kayaking.  They did a short (1 hour) hike, and they had plenty of fun camp activities in their cabins.

Back in school they'll be doing some post-camp written reflections.

Once again, we commented on the school's authoritarianism.  Mobile phones were compulsorily taken away from the girls for the duration of the camp.  (In contrast, at Mulan's club athletics camp last year it was only at team meetings that phones were not allowed.  Kids were trusted to be responsible and self-manage.)

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Fortunately, the school North Island athletics champs, which were planned for the same weekend, were cancelled this year because of Covid.  Otherwise, Mulan would have had a tough decision about a third school camp on offer.

NCEA at school

Mulan restarts school next Tuesday at Westlake Girls; this year she's in Year 11 doing NCEA 1.

She does six subjects -- three compulsory and three optional.  Her three compulsory ones are English, maths and science, and several months ago, before the Covid lockdown, she chose her optional ones as PE, music and dance.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), a couple of days ago Mulan got an email from the school saying that they couldn't figure out a subject timetable that fitted her preferences, and would she mind changing her plans and taking a different subject.

Apparently, music and dance clash; they'd already enrolled her for music but she needed to choose another subject to replace dance (or drop music).  They suggested that she choose quickly as places were going fast.

I have no idea why the timetable designers set things up so that music and dance clash -- surely those are subjects that would commonly go together?

Anyway, Mama was happy, as she'd preferred that Mulan not do dance.  She'd hoped that Mulan would take more desk-based subjects and was against her doing all three of PE, music and dance.  (My advice had been that Mulan may as well do subjects that she enjoys and can get passionate about.)

Mulan had no strong preference for any other subject, so it was up to Mama and me to make the decision.

We suggested accounting.  I took accounting right through school and also first year uni.  In my opinion, accounting is the school subject that has had the most practical use for me post-school.  Without school accounting I would have struggled with the bookkeeping and tax returns for my (and Mama's) self-employed work.

So, it's now all official: for school Mulan's doing NCEA 1 in English, maths, science, accounting, music and PE.

She'll probably look at joining the school orchestra (cello), and maybe do school sports like athletics, swimming and netball.  (All Covid-permitting!)

Out of school she's also doing dance (ballet advanced 1 and contemporary level 6 exams, and performances/shows), music (private recorder lessons and concert band flute), athletics (competitions) and swimming (lessons).  She delivers local papers once a week.

All this should keep her busy and out of mischief this year.

HASCA and Covid

HASCA is the local homeschooling organisation that organises and provides a centre for sport and cultural activities for homeschoolers on the North Shore (Auckland).

In some cases, it's the only place that local homeschoolers can access activities (as otherwise it's via the schools).

Today, as HASCA members, we received an email from HASCA leadership:

Re: Temporary Hibernation

14/12/21

Dear HASCA members and friends,

We have been silent throughout lockdown and the subsequent change from the Alert Level System to the Covid Protection Framework (CPF) as, 1) we have basically been unable to operate, and 2) we have wanted to watch and wait and make a considered decision on how HASCA will move forward under the new mandates.

As well as the government’s directives, our decisions have been influenced by the organisations we partner with - the sports organisations, programme providers, and the venues we hire and utilise to bring our classes and programmes to our home-schooling community. Unfortunately, many are either under government mandate themselves, or have their own in-house mandates which will impact on HASCA’s operations and our ability to provide any sort of non-discriminatory programme for the immediate future.

HASCA strives to be an inclusive organisation that brings people together, connects and supports, and “creates community” for all home educating families. Therefore, segregating or excluding participation based on vaccine status is not something we feel comfortable adopting, and is not where our hearts are placed. Our goal has always been to bring people together, not to divide. We do not want to operate any of what we previously offered if participation and inclusion is based on a vaccine status or the presence of a vaccine-pass. It is for this reason that the HASCA committee has decided that HASCA and all activities operating under our umbrella will hibernate for the foreseeable future. This has been a difficult decision for us, but we simply cannot run programmes knowing we must exclude select families.

[...]

We think they've got this badly wrong.  They make it sound like vaccinations are mostly meaningless, having no significant impact on the health and safety of others who we might interact with.  We have replied to them as follows:

Hi HASCA leadership,

 

As long-term HASCA members we respectfully disagree with this HASCA decision.  We hope that you will reconsider.

 

It's sad that it's the kids who will be the losers in this HASCA decision.  Something is better than nothing for homeschooled children; for HASCA to remove this option for local families is wrong as in many cases this is the only place where local homeschooling children can participate.

 

There is no unfair discrimination in the vaccine pass mandates; it's about following the science, protecting the vulnerable, giving people free choices, then people accepting the consequences of their free choices.  Requiring vaccine passes when people gather in larger groups protects everyone by slowing down the transmission of a contagious disease that would otherwise overwhelm the hospitals.  In saying this, we accept the overwhelming majority opinion of the experts.  As homeschoolers, we aim to model good reasoning to our children.

 

We feel that as a vaccinated family we have done the right thing for the community, and it is not right that vaccinated families are now being penalised by HASCA, just because of the free choices of non-vaccinated families.

 

We assume this means that HASCA won't be organising the Athletics Day and Swimming Day in 2022.  But please do let us know if anything changes.

 

Glenn, Xiaoying, Mulan and Miya

Likely, next year our family would have done the HASCA Athletics and Swimming Days in term 1 (which we help organise), and Miya would have signed up for the HASCA netball team (terms 2 and 3).

UPDATE (17/12/2021): HASCA also posted a similar announcement to their Facebook page, to which I commented that we (our family) respectfully disagreed with their decision and linked to this blog for details.

To date there have been four responses.  Three other members commented on the Facebook announcement, thanking the HASCA committee for their work.  And HASCA leadership emailed me privately, letting me know that the HASCA committee unanimously agreed with the decision.  At no time so far has anyone responded to the substantive points.

I want to emphasise that everyone has been extremely polite and nice about it.  Everyone thanks each other and wishes each other all the best.  Once again, I have no doubt that everyone sees themselves as the good guys -- they believe they are doing the decent and right thing.  And for the most part they are.  Homeschoolers really are nice people, and we enjoy spending time with them.

But I also want to acknowledge that old saying -- the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

In this situation, HASCA leadership has made the decision to block access to education for local homeschooled children.  They can coat it with nice words, but the fact remains that they have made things worse for local homeschooled children.

The only reason they have given for this so far is that they think that the vaccine pass requirement for large group gatherings is unfairly discriminatory, and they don't want to exclude anyone.  So they'd rather exclude everyone.

It is fair enough if, individually, their families (committee members and the three Facebook commentators) choose to not participate until all families can participate -- that is their free right to freely choose for themselves.  (I understand that some families see HASCA as more about social gatherings.)

But it is wrong for HASCA leadership to deny other families the opportunity to make this free choice for themselves.  And it is wrong for HASCA leadership to reduce educational opportunities for children without providing alternatives.  As I see it, HASCA leadership has overstepped their duties by dictating (mistaken) morals to their members, while at the same time failing to uphold their more fundamental duty of providing educational opportunities to children that are otherwise only available to schooled children.

In my opinion, the correct thing for HASCA committee to do is to keep HASCA operating (for now), but acknowledge and accept the right for any HASCA families to not participate until they feel comfortable doing so.  This may mean a reduced leadership group, and committee members would be more than free to step aside for now.  It may also mean that HASCA would need to ask members to join the committee to continue to keep things running (I would consider it, if necessary); if they were unable to get the committee numbers then hibernating would be the right choice.

Given the (limited) feedback to date, there is a distinct possibility that a significant number of HASCA members are either (a) unable to participate because they have chosen to not vaccinate, or (b) unwilling to participate as they (mistakenly) see vaccine pass mandates as unfairly discriminatory.  If this is the case, then there is a distinct possibility that activity sign-up numbers would be too low to proceed anyway.  And so there is a distinct possibility that most (or all) HASCA activities would have to practically stop anyway due to insufficient numbers.   If this is the case, then so be it.

But HASCA leadership should have kept things going long enough to find this out first, one way or the other.  They should have opened it up to the members first, for the members to freely decide.  They should not have denied freedoms to their members.  And they should have thought more about the children who are missing out because of their decision to stop offering activities.

What is science?

A few months ago seven University of Auckland professors wrote an open letter which was published in the Listener magazine.  (Reposted here.)

I know two of those professors.  Robert Nola was one of my teachers in the philosophy department.  Amongst other things, I learnt philosophy of science from him, and I'm pretty sure that when I tutored undergraduate courses on theories of human nature he was lecturing them.

I'm also pretty sure Michael Corballis was one of my lecturers when I did my undergraduate psychology major.

But it seems that some people are strongly disagreeing with the letter.  And sadly it seems to have exploded into academic freedom issues that are now being noted overseas.

Sigh.  As far as I can see, (mostly) everyone means well in the disagreement, but those who are disagreeing with the letter are not understanding the conceptual distinctions.  Maybe I have missed the more reasoned responses (happy to be corrected on this), but as far as I can see, responses to the letter have strawpersoned the letter's reasoning.

Having been involved in some of Robert's philosophy of science courses, to me it is ironic that some people are questioning the letter's understanding of what science is.  More than most people, Robert knows theories of the nature of science, and I have yet to see any responses to the letter that even begin to approach the level of discussion I experienced 20 years ago.

Kyle Gibson tries to clarify things here.

School English assignments

Mulan has just finished her third unit study topic in her English class at Westlake Girls High School.

She started with a study of a Roald Dahl short story (they were partway through it when she arrived).  In Covid lockdown this was followed by a three-minute speech (videoed).  Most recently they've done a film/video unit, where the first half was a photography study learning different types of shots (using our camera at home).

The second part of the film/video unit was on the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding.  Mulan and I watched it together a couple of weeks ago, and Mama watched it later on her own.

As I wrote last year, for the past couple of years Mulan and I have been watching movies together.  We pick anything from classics, to pop culture, to thought provoking, to merely entertaining.  We talk about them together, laugh at the silly ones, and discuss the thoughtful ones.  In that time Mulan has developed her own sense of what is good and what is bad.

For the most part we complete movies to the end, but occasionally (rarely) Mulan decides that some are really too bad to bother continuing.  (Breakfast at Tiffany's, Clueless and Top Gun were examples of movies Mulan considered too silly to bother watching beyond ten minutes or so.)

As Mulan watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding she was really not impressed.  I suspect that if it was her choice she would not have bothered continuing with it to the end.

Then she had to write two pieces for class.

The first was an initial impressions piece -- basically just a few sentences saying what she thought of the characters and so on, probably mostly to show the teacher that she had watched the movie.

The second piece just completed was more in depth.  She had to write two mini-essays joined together, each on an opinion she had about the movie and backed up by evidence then linked to her own experiences.

Schools appear to like to use the "PEEL" essay structure style, where the basic thought is Point, Example/Evidence, Explanation, and Link.  But it also appears that different teachers interpret it in slightly different ways.  This blog, for example, which topped my Google search, basically treats it as intro, two paragraphs in the body, and conclusion.  Mulan's English course apparently interpreted the Link at the end not as a conclusion linking back to the intro point but as a link to the writer's personal experiences (meaning that, strictly speaking, it wasn't an essay as it didn't have a conclusion).

Included in the assignment info pack was a example piece (on a different unit topic), which was in the style wanted and was supposedly of "Excellence" level.  Mulan said this was about 470 words long.

This was where things got problematic, because both Mama and I thought the example piece was very badly done.  I thought it only deserved a Pass.

In a nutshell, the huge problem was that the example writing slid off the topic.  It's Point (introduction) stated one thing, while it's Example/Evidence and Explanation sections (body) didn't elaborate on the ideas stated in the Point but instead discussed other ideas.

In other words, the example directly failed to follow the writing structure as required by the assignment question, and (more importantly) failed to be logically persuasive as the body did not give any evidence to support the stated opinion Point.

The writing style was adequately fluent but not brilliant.  The main thing the example had going for it was that it was earnestly nice and positive, giving the conventional (but simple) statements of good teenager-ness.

So, I wondered why the teacher/department/school thought the example was of Excellence level.

Is it that the assignment marking in general is easy?  For Year 10 maybe they are not expecting students to be able to write any better than that?  (But surely they'd want their example to at least answer the question?)

Or is it because this example, while not structurally or logically good, is ideologically appropriate, mouthing the right platitudes?

Or is it that the teacher/assessor simply didn't notice the failed structure/logic?  They were seduced by the decent words and failed to look further.

To be blunt, it may simply be that school teachers generally only have a bachelor's degree, and may themselves not be very sophisticated essayists.  They may have got average passes in their undergraduate university courses, and never really gained the skills of better essay writing.

(In my experience of marking undergraduate university essays at Auckland University, B or C grade passes may have these sorts of weaknesses to some extent; it is often only A students or once one gets to graduate level that this sort of essay writing sharpness is the norm.)

All this got me comparing the school English work versus Science/Maths work that I have seen Mulan completing to date.  My quick initial impression is that, relatively speaking, school Science/Maths requires a higher level of conceptual sophistication, while school English is not conceptually very sophisticated.  This leads me to wonder why the same degree of analytic precision cannot be taught/used in school English as it is in school Science/Maths.

On the other hand, for Mulan the English written work was more time consuming than the Science written assignment (similar word length) just completed.  (Mulan tells me that she finds Science/Maths easier than English.)  This was because, while the Science was conceptually deeper, the English was agonising because of the uncertainty of trying to articulate in words, with explanations, one's initial gut opinions.  It took some longish family discussions for Mulan to get beyond "the movie is boring!", "why?" "because it is!"

So, maybe that is the point?  School English is conceptually simple, because it is challenging enough to get the kids to put into words their thoughts, let alone learn the conceptual skills.  But maybe, just maybe, if they were explicitly introduced to analytical/conceptual tools they would find articulating their thoughts easier.

Anyway, Mulan submitted her piece a couple of days ago, writing about 900-ish words on two of her opinions of the movie.  Mama and I thought it was very good, and definitely solidly in line with university style essay writing.  It'll be interesting to see Mulan's teacher's comments on it.

UPDATE 28/9/2021:  Oops, we were wrong.  Mulan has been given another assignment on My Big Fat Greek Wedding.  This one is a close analysis of particular scenes, to understand how the emotional feel is built up by the camera angle, sound, lighting, etc.  Mulan is not impressed that she is still having to think about this boring movie (!), but otherwise all good.

Schooling in lockdown

Here in Auckland, our Covid Level 4 lockdown ends tonight, after five weeks holiday working from home.  We've still got at least another two weeks in Level 3 lockdown, which for us means almost no change.  (It's getting doubtful that any of our pre-booked school holiday activities will happen in two weeks' time.)

In that time our family has used the car twice -- once to get a Covid test and once to get a Covid vaccine.

That's a big change for us.  In normal life we use the car most days, driving to the various activities that the girls do -- ballet, rock climbing, swimming, music, gymnastics, athletics, etc.  "Homeschooling" is not a very accurate name for what we do; I'm not the first to suggest it should be called car schooling.

So, how's our schooling in lockdown going?

One difference for us is that our exercise is now all home-based.  Mulan has Zoom ballet lessons five days a week.  Miya has rock climbing and dance Zoom lessons.  Our dining room is a dance studio, while our dining table is in the lounge acting as a jigsaw puzzle table.

We go for runs around our local area and do various conditioning exercises at home.  On the downside my hands are getting soft from no rock climbing; on the upside my golfer's elbow is coming right with no rock climbing.

The girls both have music lessons over Zoom.  Mulan has recorder lessons, while Miya has clarinet, saxophone and trumpet lessons.  Miya is continuing to prepare for her Trinity Grade 4 clarinet exam, which is still planned for late October.  As part of this, we've signed her up for aural test training at e-music maestro.

Miya's deskwork remains the same.  She continues doing Khan Academy and touch typing.  She's still only primary school aged, so it's more about natural in-context learning and inculcating good attitudes.  We do stuff quizzes, and the children use kahoot to set their own quizzes.

This lockdown Mulan and Miya have started online gaming with the cousins, playing monopoly, gartic telephone, scribblio, psych, forge of empires, etc.

But the biggest change is that Mulan is back at home learning with us, instead of going to school.

Before lockdown hit, Mulan had a total of 17 days at Westlake Girls High School -- just enough time to start getting used to school life.  Now she's doing lockdown schooling.

I've heard it said that lockdown schooling is homeschooling.  It really isn't, for one important reason.

Essentially, homeschooling is about the parents/caregivers being the final decisionmakers on what gets taught.  This includes:

(a) Deciding what sorts of knowledge, skills and values are truly valuable to pass on to the children, 

(b) deciding what methods will work best to teach each child,

(c) deciding what order and amount to teach the knowledge/skills/values,

(d) deciding what lesson content to use to develop the knowledge/skills/values, and

(e) assessing what the children do, which then feeds back into the above.

With lockdown schooling, parents/caregivers do none of this.

All that lockdown parents/caregivers do is oversee or help with the completion of the work that the schools have supplied to the students to do.

And this is what we are doing with Mulan right now.

Mulan is connected to her teachers online on her new computer, where they tell her what she needs to do.  As part of our normal family life Mulan tells us what this is.  We then work with Mulan on this as much or as little as she needs.

At one extreme, Mulan's school maths is so easy that we haven't been involved at all in any of her maths learning during lockdown.  She simply does the required work quickly on her own and submits it, getting full marks every time.  (I've suggested that since lockdown is continuing for longer we should get back into doing Khan Academy maths with her; it would be a shame for Mulan to go backward with her maths just because school is not challenging her enough.)

For Mulan's other subjects we have been involved to some extent.  For her longer writings (English, music, science, etc) we typically read and give advice after she has written them, though sometimes we also talk through the ideas before she starts writing.  With the music composition, Miya helped out (Mama and I were useless!).  Miya also helped with the photography unit for English.

According to Mulan, what she has been learning over the past five weeks in lockdown is of a similar amount to what she was learning during those 17 days at school.  The main difference for her is that she says that she spends maybe three hours each day working on it rather than the full school day.  In other words, lockdown learning is, for Mulan, much more time efficient that school learning.

Nonetheless, Mulan says she would still rather be at school than do lockdown learning.  For her, learning at school in the social environment is more enjoyable that learning at home.  Even though school uses up more hours it seems that it is worth it.  And also, lockdown means missing all the other out-of-home activities we do; returning to school means also returning to ballet, swimming, gymnastics, athletics, etc.

From my point of view, lockdown learning is working better than homeschool learning, in the sense that Mulan is very responsibly taking charge of what she needs to do and calmly getting it done.  I've been very impressed with how she's gone about things during lockdown.  When she was homeschooling, if I had have told her to do the same thing she would have mucked around and tried to avoid getting it done.  I think partly she enjoys teasing me (she wouldn't dare tease her teachers in that way!) and partly it is hard to get started on something that is initially slightly out of one's comfort zone.  At least for Mulan, having an outside person setting the tasks is the key.

Having said all that, lockdown, for our family, has been a much-enjoyed quality time together.  We all get on well, and it has been wonderful to have Mulan around home again during the day.  As much as we'd like lockdown to end, and get back to all the fun outside activities, it really isn't that bad at all.

Mulan at school

 Last Monday, Mulan attended school for the first time ever.

The whole family walked her there, signed her in at the office, and watched her get taken away by the Dean and two prefects.

I last wrote in May that we were considering school -- how did we get from there to here?

Throughout May and most of June we were all very undecided.  Mulan had no strong opinions, and we were all back-and-forthing about advantages and disadvantages.  School or homeschool?  Westlake Girls or Takapuna Grammar?

We'd talked with the enrolments people at both Westlake and Takapuna, and walked around the buildings.

After peering in the Westlake windows one weekend I opined that it reminded me of small-town China.  The Communist Party buildings are extravagantly grand, while the normal folks' buildings are old and tired.  Similarly, the Westlake admin buildings are new and corporate-fancy, while the classrooms look like nothing much has changed since my days at school 30ish years ago.  I grumpily wondered at the possible corruption, that the Westlake administrators had conveniently given themselves comfy new offices while leaving the student facilities pretty basic.

But grumpiness aside, we had to decide which option was best for Mulan.

In the end we opted for Westlake, putting in the enrolment application on the 20th of June.

(a) We decided that even though schools are often frustratingly inefficient and occasionally ridiculous, overall it would give Mulan new and valuable opportunities and experiences.  If she could get in with a good bunch of classmates and teachers, then it'd be both fun and rewarding.  And if it didn't work out, we could always return to homeschooling.

(b) We decided to go to the closest school.  It's hard to argue against a 5 minute walk, and Mulan doesn't have to leave home until about 8:40am.  Westlake people have also been consistently warm, welcoming and professional.

For a few weeks until the end of term 2, three days a week Mulan caught the bus to her cousins' place, doing deskwork studies alongside them.  The thought was to get her more used to regular school hours, as well as polish up on maths, science and music.

Mulan is now enrolled in Year 10, and has English, Maths, Science, Social Studies, PE and Health as her compulsory subjects.  She's chosen Music, Dance and Business Studies as her options.

We were worried that school would require a big after-school time commitment, but in the end decided to risk it and for term 3 Mulan has enrolled in her usual after-school activities, which total about 17 hours per week.  The only activity she dropped was homeschool rock climbing, which happens during school hours.  She's also continuing to deliver papers.

Before starting school we had to buy a lot of equipment -- laptop computer, smartphone, uniform and stationary.  Including the school fees, I guess it's close on $2000.

Mulan had never done Business Studies before, so during the school holiday Westlake emailed us a 50-page book of what they'd done in the Accounting topic they'd covered in term 2.  Mulan downloaded it onto her new smartphone and skimmed through it on the bus to ballet lessons.  She thought it looked fairly easy -- after the introductions it's mostly just a matter of putting in the hours to get familiar with double-entry bookkeeping, balance sheets, profit and loss statements, and so on.  So far, last week in class her teacher has been getting her to work on it on her own while her classmates are revising for the unit test this week.

So, what do we think of school so far after a week?

For one thing, Mama said she understands me much better now!  Occasionally in the past Mama would worry that our homeschooling was too relaxed and the girls weren't doing much.  She'd complain that I should be teaching the girls more.  I'd tell her not to worry, and that the girls are doing just as much or more than they'd be doing at school.  After hearing back from Mulan last week on what she did in class, Mama now agrees with me that schools do even less.

But from Mulan's perspective, for now that's ideal.  Last week was a nice, relaxed introduction to school life, and Mulan was able to keep up and also do her after-school stuff.  So far, she's not at all tired.

So far, the worst thing I've heard from Mulan is that she doesn't have time to bike to the public library to pick up two books that are waiting for her.  She wants me to make a special trip, so she can read before bed!  

For Maths, Mulan said they're covering stuff she did a couple of years ago.  We contacted Westlake about possibly moving Mulan to the extension class, or her teacher giving her alternative work.  They've given her a take-home test to do, so if she does well I guess we'll hear back from them about ways to extend Mulan appropriately.

Aside from Maths, in all Mulan's classes she's doing new stuff, in a non-stressful and easily manageable way.

For English, the class was partway through a unit on a Roald Dahl short story.  They'd read the story before the holiday, and on Monday were discussing themes.  They were supposed to submit an essay on Friday.

Mulan had never written an essay in her life.  (My opiniated view is that there's no need to teach essay writing early.  If kids are wide readers, then when they eventually need to write they'll already have a good sense of writing styles and will adapt quickly.)

At home on Wednesday, Mulan wrote about 400 words summarising the short story.  In my opinion it was a very clearly written summary.  Unfortunately it didn't answer the essay question the teacher had set.  Mulan saved it, and started afresh.

After school on Thursday Mulan had a one-hour window to do the essay before her swimming lesson.  When she walked in the door I gave her four 250-word sample essays to read, and suggested she write in that style.  She took it away and before she left for swimming she'd completed a very well-structured 350-word essay.  I gave her a couple of minor general suggestions to tighten it up, but otherwise it was all her own work.

Mulan submitted her essay Friday morning, only to find that the deadline is now extended to tomorrow.  The students are continuing to work on their essays in class, and Mulan's teacher has suggested that Mulan expand more on her argumentative points.

Mulan has made a few friends, hanging out with them in the corridor at lunchtime.  She's joined the knitting club with one friend, meeting on Wednesday lunchtimes.  And she plans to join the orchestra -- she'll take her cello at 8am on Wednesday.  Westlake is in talks with Mulan's recorder teacher, deciding if he can teach her at school during school hours.

So far, we're very happy with the way things are working out.  This half year it's about relaxedly finding Mulan's interests and levels, so that next year, for NCEA 1, Mulan can join the right classes at the right levels.

Decision time for Mulan at school

The other day I wrote about the possibility of Mulan going to school.

We have some choices, as we live in zone for both Takapuna Grammar School and Westlake Girls High School.  We could start at either school at any time, or choose to continue homeschooling.

We've now met with the enrolments Deputy Principals of both schools (Westlake last Friday, and Taka on Tuesday).  Both were very good, and we came away with useful info about both schools.

Taka also showed us around, but we forgot to ask Westlake.  Likely, as a family we'll have a look around Westlake during the weekend.

We've now got to the point where the final decision will be Mulan's.  It will be her call about how she would most like to do her study (and if she chooses to continue homeschooling, she will need to put in the hours of deskwork at home).

The decision is (a) whether to go to school, (b) if so when, and (c) if so which one.

My personal inclination is Westlake starting in Term 3.  (She'd stop rock climbing, and possibly stop gymnastics.  Dance, music, swimming and athletics would likely continue, but we'd need to keep an eye on things.)  But I'm completely happy with whatever Mulan decides.

If Mulan decides in the next several days to go to school, then we'll start preparing for the change and submit the enrolment forms.  If she decides she'd rather not go to school, then we'll start upping Mulan's deskwork time at home in preparation for NCEA studies.

Location:

We live about 5-10 minutes walk from Westlake.  We live at the edge of the Taka school zone, and there are no ideal buses.  Likely, Mulan would spend over an hour each day travelling to and from Taka.

The strong advice from Taka is that it's best to go to one's closest school.  They would be okay if Mulan chose Taka, but thought it made more sense for her to choose Westlake.

Given that Mulan would prefer to continue as many of her after-school activities as possible, it makes sense to spend minimal time travelling.

So, unless there are other overwhelming considerations, Westlake would be first choice.

When to start: Qualifications:

If Mulan goes to school, both schools recommend starting at the beginning of term 3 this year (26th July).  Neither recommend a term 4 start.  Alternatively, Mulan could start in term 1 2022.

Starting in term 3 gives Mulan half a year in Year 10 to get used to school life before starting NCEA 1 qualifications in 2022.  She would get more familiar with the subjects, so then more knowledgeably choose her NCEA subject options.

Or we might think that NCEA 1 is relatively easy and unimportant, and Mulan doesn't need prep time for it.  We might instead treat NCEA 1 as prep and practice for the more important NCEA2/3, and if so starting in 2022 is okay.

When to start: Activity clashes:

As well as qualification considerations, Mulan also needs to think about how time-consuming school will be, and how much it will restrict her other activities and interests.

Schools aren't as efficient as homeschooling, with respect to study, and school will require more of a time commitment than homeschool study.  Almost certainly, if Mulan goes to school she'll have to stop some of her current activities/interests.  Starting later means that she can continue more activities longer.

Homework:

We asked both schools the expectations for homework.  Westlake said under an hour a day.  Taka said 1-2 hours.  Of course, theory may differ from reality.  We've heard from school-goers that 1-2 hours at NCEA level is at the minimum end, and is for those merely aiming for passes (not merit/excellence).

For us, less homework is better, so that Mulan can continue with more of her non-school activities/interests.

There is also the question of whether homework is necessary.  It could be argued that more homework means less efficient use of in-class learning time.

Resources:

Schools have some pretty awesome toys and resources, which is out of the budget of homeschoolers.  Playing with the school's science and sports equipment would be great fun.

Both Taka and Westlake are decently well-funded with good resources.  Both schools achieve very good academic results.

Looking around Taka, it's an older school with some older buildings.  Some areas looked a little more worn, but on the whole it has a classic, warm, wood-finish look.  Taka is next to the beach, and sports lessons are sometimes held there.  There's more open land area, with football fields.

In contrast, Westlake appears more modern and corporate in it's style, and new building construction is continuing.  With less land there are no open fields, and the land use is more tightly planned.

Single-sex vs co-ed:

We'd initially been leaning more towards Taka because it has both boys and girls, just like the real world.  Westlake is single sex, so more artificial.

But there is something to be said for girls-only schools.  As Westlake said, it's cleaner and quieter without the boys!  Also, boys are often inclined to push themselves forward more than girls, so girls can miss out in co-ed schools.  Mulan's personality is often more hang-back-and-wait (like mine), so she may better suit the girls-only environment.

As long as girls don't go boy-silly in a girls-only school, it seems possible that the single-sex learning environment is slightly better for Mulan.

Friends/social:

Mulan knows a few athletics friends go to Taka, but doesn't specifically know of any friends who go to Westlake.  This is another reason we had initially been leaning towards Taka.

On the other hand, Westlake specifically raised the possibility of placing Mulan in a class with people she already knows, and it seems that they would organise a buddy-system with classmates helping her get familiar with things.  Taka did not offer this.  In general, Westlake came across as being more sensitive to psychological/social needs, and appeared to have systems in place to help with this.  Taka did not mention anything like that.

Study style:

I think the deciding factor (homeschool or school), for Mulan, is study style.  Is she prepared to self-motivate for one-to-one or self-study learning at home?  Or will she be more motivated in group learning at school?  Which would be more fun (or less awful)!

At the moment, I think her personality suits the group study, but it's her call about whether she would rather commit to self-study discipline (if, for example, she wanted to be maximally efficient with her study so that she could have more time for her other activities/interests).

Subject choices:

If Mulan chooses to go to school, the next decision is which subjects to choose.  Mulan already does dance, sport and music, and these are all possible school subjects.

We asked both schools their thoughts on students choosing so many non-desk subjects.  Westlake said all subjects are good, and those ones still have 2/3 deskwork.  They said it's best for students to choose subjects they enjoy.  (This is what I had said.)

In contrast, Taka suggested that someone who does dance outside of school doesn't also need to do dance as a school subject.  They suggested, for example, instead doing a social science subject.  (This is what Mama has said.)

With Mulan fluent in Chinese, there's also the question of if/how to include that.

But we don't need to make a decision on this now.  If Mulan decides to go to school we'd enrol first and then get more subject info from the school.

I'll probably write more when Mulan makes her decision.

Mulan at school?

A few days ago I mentioned in passing that we are strongly considering that Mulan go to school.  That's a big change, as Mulan has never been to school in her life.

As a family we raised the idea together late last year, and have been talking about it for the past few months.

The more we think about it, the more we feel that school could be the right choice for Mulan going into her senior secondary school years.

Mulan has been positive about the idea, and thinks it could be quite fun/exciting.  Miya was initially negative, to lose Mulan during the day, but with time to adjust to the idea she is now okay.

We've asked Miya if she would also like to go to school (intermediate next year), but she'd rather not.  That's understandable, as Miya struggles with noise/chaos, and classroom learning doesn't work so well for her.  For now it makes sense for Miya to continue homeschooling.

Going to school is a swings and roundabout situation, with homeschooling better in some ways and school better in other ways.

Schools can provide better resources (eg science, sports), which is increasingly important as Mulan gets older.

Also, Mulan's learning style will likely work better in schools as she gets older.  Increasingly, she seems to prefer doing deskwork in groups alongside peers, rather than on her own or one-to-one.  If Mulan lucks into a good classroom environment, with motivated classmates, then we think she will thrive ("if" is the important word!).

Thirdly (and least importantly), schools provide a no-stress qualification system.  Just enrol and do NCEA.  Much simpler for us all!

On the downside, schools can be inefficient and time-consuming.  Likely, Mulan will have to drop many of her activities.  And that's a tough one, because she loves them and she's doing very well at all of them.

One thing we want to find out is how much school life will restrict Mulan's ability to do all her activities.  That is (a) how much of an expectation will there be for homework, and (b) how much in-school opportunities will there be for Mulan to pursue her various activities.

Another downside of school is socialisation.  Unfortunately, bullying is common in schools.  And peer pressure can reinforce undesirable values and attitudes.  It can be luck which classmates and peer groups one falls in with.  So far Mulan doesn't live with her phone attached to her hand -- we'd hate for that to change!

When we see the schools in person, we want to feel confident that the social environment is on the whole positive, and that Mulan has a good chance to fall in with other kids who are excited and curious about ideas and activities, and will (mostly) happily dive into their tasks.

(In my own experience at school, sometimes I was in streamed classes and other times not, depending on the school politics of the day.  When my school chose to stream, I felt more at home and relaxed, having fun learning with friends; my non-streamed years tended to be my more stressful/unhappy school times.)

A third downside is that our family is bilingual/bicultural.  Our Chinese side is just as important as our English side, and at home the children learn in both languages.  Schools are monolingual, and Mulan likely won't get as much everyday Chinese input if she attends school.

The older Mulan gets, hopefully the less this will impact.  But this is definitely something to keep an eye on if Mulan is at school.

---

The end result is that on Sunday night we emailed four local schools, making first contact about this idea.  All schools were very professional and replied to us Monday morning.

Carmel College was the only school which acknowledged our personal situation in their reply.  Their reply was the warmest and least copy-and-paste-standard-reply feeling.

Unfortunately, they said that at this stage there are no places available for families without a Catholic background.

That's a shame, as from what we'd heard Carmel appears to have an excellent value system and attitude (some of Mama's students attend Carmel).  Carmel was Mama's initial preferred choice.

Rangitoto College was the only school that mentioned Mulan by name in their email reply.  However, we are out of zone for Rangi, and so we'd have to wait for the ballot on 30 September (I went to Rangi, so Mulan would be "Priority 3" on the ballot, but it would still just be luck).

The main advantage of Rangi is that it has a great sporting environment, with the rubber athletics track and swimming centre.  But it's a long bus ride away, which would eat into Mulan's out-of-school time.  If Mulan decided this was important then we'll look into it more, but most likely we won't pursue enrolling at Rangi.

For now our realistic options are either Takapuna Grammar or Westlake Girls.  We're in zone for both, which means that we should be able to start at either school at any time.

Takapuna Grammar's email reply had the most impersonal copy-and-paste feel.  They clearly have a standard text reply to all enrolment enquiries and they sent us a lot of irrelevant info that didn't suit our specific situation.  We followed up, asking to meet in person, but they haven't yet replied.

We had initially been leaning towards Taka, as some of Mulan's friends go there.  But a big downside is that the public transport situation isn't great and Mulan would have to walk a long way to get to the bus stop.  And that means less time for after school activities.  Their email reply has somewhat reduced our confidence in them, too.  But we'll wait and see, depending on whether they are willing to meet in person.

Westlake Girls has consistently been the fastest school to reply, and is both clear and professional.  After an initial impersonal copy-and-paste standard enrolment reply from them, we followed up and they replied again more personally.  We have now arranged with them to meet in person on Friday.

The big plus for Westlake is that it's only 5 min bike away from home.  Mulan can be there and back quickly, and so have more time for after school activities.  We're now leaning towards Westlake, but will hopefully have a better sense of what they can offer after the Friday meeting.

If Westlake present themselves well on Friday, we'll likely decide that Mulan end her homeschooling and start at Westlake.  The start date would depend very much on (a) how much adjustment time Mulan would need in order to get used to school life before starting NCEA-level studies, and (b) how time-consuming school will be, impacting on Mulan's ability to fit in all her other activities.

In the end, a big part of it will be Mulan's own decision, once she gets a sense of what Westlake (or another school) offers/requires -- how much school will impact on her already-busy life, what extra they will add and how much she will have to give up in exchange.

Book review: Humankind

Rutger Bregman's latest book, Humankind: A hopeful history, is popular at the Auckland library right now.

I requested it months ago, have only just finished reading it in my allotted time, and I have to return it in a few minutes for the next person in the queue.

It's understandable.  Bregman's book is a great read, and I highly recommend it.

Last year I read Bregman's other well-known book, Utopia for Realists, and I reviewed it here.

Humankind continues in the same style as Utopia, as a super-easy-to-read yet thought-provoking and occasionally challenging evidence-based approach to modern political issues.

If we could sum up Bregman's thesis in two words, it would be "be kind."  He then spends 400 pages explaining why, with reasons from history and science.

But at heart, as I see it, Bregman's book is motivational and inspirational.  It's written in a style that creates an optimistic feel in the reader (or at least in me!), that doing the decent thing is okay.  Despite the occasional toxicity, despite the cynicism from naysayers, and despite the occasional loss, being kind is the most successful approach to life. 

Bregman dives into the human nature debate, coming out on the side of Rousseau et al that human nature is basically good, and that often civilisation corrupts our basic goodness.  He argues against the mainstream "cynical" view that humans are naturally selfish and individualistic, and that we need rules and order to minimise conflict.

But the issue is complicated, because human nature is complicated, and Bregman also discusses that.

Bregman argues that, contrary to the cynics, the real "realist" approach to life is to accept the solid evidence that humans are actually pretty decent and kind, for the most part.

Bregman goes through many of the psychological studies on this, such as the prison experiment, the shock machine, and the boys camp.  He also discusses William Golding's fictional story, Lord of the Flies (I discuss this here).  He points out the flaws in these studies and stories, and why they don't show that human nature is bad.  He gives a bit of evolutionary psychology and early-human anthropology.

Bregman then turns to some practical social and political implications for this positive view of human nature.

To sum it up very quickly, Bregman is a minimalist when it comes to management and political oversight.  He thinks that in many situations we would do better to have fewer controls and less managerial involvement.

He discusses the prison system, examining the evidence that shows that the "tough" approach simply doesn't work.  Stricter policing, harsher penalties, and stricter prisons result in higher economic and social costs for all concerned.

Similarly, he also discusses education, management, healthcare, etc, with plenty of case studies to show that a more hands-off management style works better and more efficiently.

Bregman, as a historian, has done his research on this, and he fills the back section of the book with plenty of references to studies and evidence.

We could quibble about some of the details, but I really don't want to.

This is because I think that the most important thing is creating the right mindset.  Bregman's book is about doing just that.  If we have a pessimistic outlook on life, and if we distrust those around us, then we create a society that reflects that.  But if we have an optimistic outlook on life, and assume the best of people, then we create a society that is better for us all.

(I have to say, one quibble I have is that Bregman assumes that Machiavelli was Machiavellian.  It's a shame that Bregman didn't read Erica Benner on this -- I reviewed Benner's book a few months ago.)

Right, time to dash off to the library and return the book!

Book review: I don't have enough faith to be an atheist

When I write my book reviews, or my more serious thoughts, I generally try to explain my reasoning as clearly as I can.  I try to understand the writers, and feel the views as charitably and accurately as I can.

This is partly for you, my readers, but honestly, it's mostly for me.  Spending time putting my thoughts in writing really helps me to get clear in my own head how I see things.  Until I write it out, I frequently have only a general and vague sense of my position on things.  And in writing it down I sometimes change my own views.

But there are exceptions to this.  And this is one.

In this post I'm not going to give my reasons.  I'm merely going to give my conclusions (with a bit of biographical background).  I'm not arguing; I'm merely stating.

It's not that I couldn't give my reasons.  It's just that I have no interest to take the time to do so.  In this particular situation, writing it down won't help me to get any clearer on how I see things.  And to be honest, it kinda bores me.

So, take what you will of what follows.

One of my nieces is in school year 13, and she is hugely busy with book work, getting up enough credits to go on to university or whatever.  Good on her!

The required reading for one of her courses is Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek's 2004 book I don't have enough faith to be an atheist.

My Big Sis, Gugu, and I chatted about this, and consequently I requested the Geisler/Turek book from the library.

The main claim of the book is that the evidence points in favour of Christianity, and so atheists are actually required to have more faith than Christians.

Gugu and I grew up in a Christian family, and since teenagers we have often had long and enjoyable conversations about religion, science and other deep matters.  A big chunk of my masters degree was on the philosophy of religion, and for a couple of years I was the tutor for the 2nd/3rd year undergraduate philosophy of religion course at Auckland Uni.

So, while my background is not enough to be considered a professional expert, I think it is enough to say that I am competent to evaluate good versus bad contributions to the subject.

And in my opinion, Geisler and Turek's contribution is in the bad category.  It is not worth reading, and should definitely not be used as the required reading for secondary school students.  It is a serious failing in New Zealand's education system that this is part of a course that gives university entrance credits.

As I was reading it, I was often finding multiple errors on each page.  There are far too many logical missteps, factual errors and misrepresentations of others' views.  Repeatedly, Geisler/Turek committed the fallacies of false alternatives and strawperson.  Repeatedly they made the mistake of being uncharitable to their opponents views, imagining that they had dismissed, in a few lines, the ideas of people who had spent decades on these complex issues; in reality all that Geisler/Turek did was dismiss cartoon versions that few take seriously anyway.  There was an overall sense of the authors not quite "getting" the ideas they were trying to present, but alongside that there was a kind of blissful, contented arrogance from them that they had got it right.  If I had to describe this book in a word, I'd say it was clumsy.

I want to be clear, this is not about religion.  It is about facts, logic and evidence.  Geisler/Turek made claims about where the evidence points, but repeatedly got the facts, logic and evidence wrong.  That they happen to be arguing against atheism, and for their version of Christianity, is irrelevant.  I have also said similar things about badly written pro-atheism books (eg, several years ago I read a bit of work by Sam Harris; in my opinion he's the atheistic scholarly equivalent of Geisler/Turek).

Unless my niece wants to go through any specific pages with me, that's all I feel the need to say.