Readaholic Update – July 2022

I have been enjoying the Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks website this week. According to my Goodreads account, I have only finished 15 books so far this year, so I think I’m probably on target for the Bertram Wooster award, but nothing else. (“That is earned by reading one book set in England of any genre but failing spectacularly at all other challenges.”)

I do have a terrible habit of starting new books without finishing the previous ones, so I may have started 52 (it’s only July!). I had decided to place myself on a book-buying ban until I had managed to finish some of the books I’ve started, but they’re difficult to resist.

Since January this year, since I have been largely housebound with chronic illness, I set myself a reading schedule very similar to the timetable I used to use when I home educated my children, as follows:

Morning Time – every day

• Prayer/ ‘Devotional’ reading (I usually use religious prayer books but I have just ordered this: The Humanist’s Devotional: 366 Daily Meditations from Some of the World’s Greatest Thinkers

• Music

• Bible/ Religious education/Humanism

Mondays

• Biology

• History

• French (and other Romance languages)

Tuesdays

• Chemistry

• Geography

• German (and other Germanic langages, including Old English)

Wednesdays

• Physics

• Social Studies

• Swedish (and other Scandinavian languages)

Thursdays

• Astronomy

• Anthropology

• Cornish (and other Celtic languages)

Fridays

• Politics

• Civics and Government

• Finnish (and other languages)

Afternoon Time – Every Day

• English

• Maths

• Reading (Literature)

• Home Economics

• Other Courses and Extras

It is obviously not generally recommended to try to learn multiple languages at once but my ADHD brain gets very bored very easily, very quickly, so variety is key! Most languages are available on Duolingo and I have almost managed a 200 day streak so far, and for languages that are a bit more obscure like Cornish and Old English, I use Memrise. I have used Audible a lot for their free ‘Great Courses‘ titles for science and history and religious education. If and when I finish any titles I will endeavour to write a review for them. Many of them are expiring as free titles in Audible at the end of July, so I am going to try and ‘get my skates on’ to make the most of them while I can.

I confess that I have largely failed to read anything at all for Maths or Home Economics, although I have a pile of books for each which I plan to get to eventually. The same goes for Civics & Government, except for the fact that I have so far failed to find any good textbook for the UK.

Other courses are usually short course through FutureLearn or Coursera.

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What have you been reading? I would love to hear from anybody else like me, readaholics (perhaps with ADHD) who need lots of variety and stimulation (and perhaps who missed out on education due to late diagnosis)!

Mother Culture: My Continuing Education

I thought it was time to re-vamp this much neglected and abandoned blog, as part of my commitment to writing 50,000 words across all my blogs and websites in November for ‘NaNoWriMo’.

NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, is of course intended to encourage aspiring writers to start novel projects, and that is something I have previously done, but didn’t feel up to trying this year. I did, however, think that it would be a good opportunity to get writing regularly again and that I could do so on my own various projects such as this one.

What is Mother Culture?

As you may know, I home educated my four children from 1999 to 2018, and some of that experience is documented over on Ohana Home Education (also much in need of attention and updating).

One of the most interesting, significant and impactful philosophies of education I encountered during that time was that of Charlotte Mason – a nineteenth century teacher and teacher of teachers who revolutionised British primary school education in her lifetime for the better, but for various reasons fell out of fashion and became forgotten in the UK until she was rediscovered by Susan Schaefer Macaulay, who wrote about the philosophy and how it could be related to education at home in her book “For The Children’s Sake” and later, Charlotte Mason’s ideas were amplified (although debatably, possibly misrepresented) by Karen Andreola with a very conservative, Ameri-centric perspective. Having said that, I did very much value Andreola’s first book “A Charlotte Mason Companion”.

Andreola has much more recently produced a book on Mother Culture, again from a particularly conservative, Ameri-centric (and, to my mind, unfortunate) perspective. If that perspective is what you’re looking for, you may love it. But I’m not convinced that perspective was what Charlotte Mason had in mind.

Charlotte Mason was a radical, revolutionary, cutting edge educational thinker, right at the very forefront of educational philsophy. she emphasised the personhood (agency) of children and the imperative for their educators (Mothers in this case, although it would equally apply to Fathers, Teachers, Carers) to keep up-to-date on every area of educational thought and learning.

Mother Culture, then, is the quest for the continuing self-education of those with whom children are entrusted, regardless of whether we are currently in the process of home education. On this blog I have dubbed it ‘Continual Professional Education’ but it need not only apply to those of us who are professionally engaged in education either.

As I understand it, when Charlotte Mason talked about the education of Mothers, she included every academic subject, and recommended that one keep at least three books on the go: one light fiction, one heavier (perhaps classic) fiction, and one non-fiction.

It isn’t an easy task if you are in the thick of educating young children. As they grow it becomes easier and now mine are grown and almost flown, I finally have the time, if not energy, to devote more to my own studies.

On our UK Mother Culture facebook group, I mostly post interesting links to art & painting, music, ballet, opera and literature. If this sounds like something that might interest you, and you’re not looking for that conservative, Ameri-centric perspective, please do join us!

Here we go again…

Somehow, we seem to have arrived in 2021. Here in the UK we’re in Lockdown again for a third time, oh joy!

Unlike my overachiever and moderately high achieving friends, I have done nothing with my time. Really, nothing. I have my reasons, which are all perfectly legitimate, but I’ve been a little (spectacular understatement) frustrated with myself and my circumstances.

Prior to that, I dropped out of both my OU courses due to ill health, deferring them until ‘next year’, which would be now, except that I have heard nothing further from the OU, so I’m not quite sure what is happening there. I have to admit to having no burning desire to return to those courses which, frankly, put me off teaching in State schools for all eternity.

The only thing I have re-started, working very, very slowly through is my Vegan and Vegetarian Nutritionist course through the ‘Centre of Excellence’. Since Nutritionist is not a protected term in the UK (unlike Dietician), I could if I wished set myself up as a Nutritionist. Do I want to do that? I don’t know, that sounds dangerously like an achievement. (In truth: yes, of course, I would like to set myself up as something, anything, and stop being an underachiever. But I have discovered over the last year particularly that one particularly strong aspect of my personality is a self-sabotaging streak. How inconvenient.)

I have a number of other courses lined up, and if I can ever get my act together, I will tell you about them as I go.

What are you studying this year?

What holds you back?

I’d love to hear from you.

BA Education Studies (Primary)

After a few years of arguing about funding, and having no interest in continuing with Combined Social Sciences, I decided to change my degree to Q94, BA Education Studies (Primary) and carry on my studies with the OU, and I’m due to start both first year modules in Ocober.

Now, though, I feel quite overwhelmed (what was I thinking, doing two modules together? !) And once again I am a little bit terrified that I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

I need to re-learn how to study. Again.

Has anybody done this degree? Or modules E102 and E103? I would love to hear from you. Please feel free to reassure me that it will all be alright…

Study Plans for 2016

I haven’t done any formal studying for a while now. Something went wrong with the funding for my OU course and, since I didn’t really get on with DD101 (I know I passed, but I never had any feedback or a score or anything) and for a whole host of other reasons, I won’t be picking it up again any time soon. But as it turned out, we had a really bad year which made not studying a good thing, I could not have coped with study deadlines at the same time.

I changed my OU degree from Q69, Combined Social Science, to an Open Degree, but nothing really appeals at the moment. So if I do pick it up again, I don’t know what direction I will go in. I wasn’t impressed with the way the OU worked, the materials, the tutor, and it felt like a waste of time, money and effort.

I had been considering the possibilities of studying Theology (which obviously would necessitate moving to another college anyway, St John’s Nottingham is an online option) – firstly in the hope of following the vocation of the priesthood, and secondly as a back-up plan, I could use it for teaching (primary or secondary) or alternatively as a chaplain of some sort or another (hospital/ school/ college/ military).

All of those possible paths have stumbling blocks – principally of the financial kind, and my health has been very poor this year, so I don’t know if I will even be able to take up a career any time soon even if I do manage to get qualified, I’ll be 45 this year, and I have already had 12 years of ME.
So at this point I’m just shrugging my shoulders and letting it all wash over me and trying not to care or worry.

A (virtual) friend of mine with ME started a Law Degree a few years ago. I can’t imagine how you would manage that with this illness, but he seemed to. I took an intro to Law (a 10 point OU course) It wasn’t hard, but it didn’t exactly thrill me!

But in an effort to ensure that my brain doesn’t turn to mush, I will probably start looking into what’s available to study informally this year again. I don’t like the idea that schools, colleges and universities act as the gate-keepers of knowledge. The whole qualification and student finance game seems like a big racket to me.

I have previously bought OU materials to study on my own without going through the rigmarole of the course and the debt. I have even toyed with the idea of studying medicine just for the fun of it. It might come in handy, you never know.

Do any of you have recommendations for any good courses coming up? So many books! So little time! 🙂

DD101 – TMA 03

I have just finished the third TMA (essay) for my Open University Course, DD101 Introducing the Social Sciences.

I didn’t think I could do it at all, in fact this essay has had me in tears and convinced that not only I don’t want to carry on with this particular bit of the course, but that I’m really not cut out to be doing Social Science at all.

It has been so discouraging, because I have studied Sociology before at GCSE (although actually, ahem, I suppose it was actually O Level) and A Level and I had loved the subject, but I don’t remembering it being this hard.

TMA 03 was a two part essay. The first part was 500 words analysing a table of data from the Census related to the ethnicity of residents of the national parks in England and Wales. Huh, I didn’t know we had any ‘national parks’.

The second part was 1000 words on the topic of how certain communities are included or excluded in certain places.

Oh my. I had thought the essay on ‘rubbish’ was hard.

It was the data table that really had me in tears, because my mathematical skills are oo, rusty shall we say? It was fairly obvious that ‘White’ was vastly more numerous than any other ethnicity, but it was a very poorly categorised set of data really. Why, for example, does the government categorise ‘Gypsy’ and ‘Irish Traveller’ together as one ethnicity? They seem political rather than bona fide ethnic categorizations. But ours not to reason why or comment, just to analyse.

Part two was just a straightforward essay really, and should have been easy because it was only 1000 words, but because I had procrastinated for so long, putting it off because I was finding the first part such a headache, I had to cram everything in today and cobble it together before the deadline. So I’m not expecting a very good result this time. Ho hum, I got it done anyway.

Now I just need to start getting back into a regular rhythm of study and keep to it so I don’t get into so much trouble next time.

How’s everybody else finding the course?

 

DD101 Making Social Lives, Chapter 5

I am very behind – not least because I get distracted by other things. But I am trying to catch up.

In my reading today, of chapter 5 of Making Social Lives, on p. 229 the author says:

“the argument should not be based on the idea that there once existed a high street that was somehow home-grown, coherent and disconnected from the world outside. Rather, if we were to lament the loss of a sense of place on these streets, then our argument would have to be that it is not that high streets have become more and more connected to the outside world, and therefore somehow weakened as unique places, but that the quality of the connections has changed. The challenge would be to seek to build better connections and so make better places.”

He has been previously arguing that the country idyll is imagined, I understand that, but why can’t you argue that a place should be unique?

He seems to be saying that cookie-cutter high streets with all the same chains of big stores can’t be argued against on any other basis than ‘connections’.

Am I missing something obvious?

DD101 Week What?

Well I don’t even know which week we are supposed to be in.

I have looked at the next TMA, number 3, and it is more horrible even than the last two. This time it’s wading through a table of statistics of the ethnicity of visitors to national parks in the UK.

I haven’t had a chance to look at the materials at all this week. Maybe I will take them up to read in bed, but I don’t think so – I really need an awake brain to be able to take anything in.

I don’t know what to do about feeling so negative about this course. I’m disappointed because I expected to love it.

I don’t think it’s just a lack of discipline and determination on my part, as I have never (to my memory) had this with any of the previous studies I have done, not even at school!

In fact, I loved sociology at school, so why am I hating it now?

Does DD101 get better?

DD101 TMA02

I had been warned that DD101 was dull, but some people have said they love the course, so I am trying to keep an open mind

The second TMA topic though, was rubbish. ‘Outline the argument that rubbish is not worthless’. Really, really dull.

I found this essay a challenge to complete, to the point that I have seriously considered pulling the plug on the OU study altogether. But I did persevere  and got it done, and received a slightly improved mark than I did for my first essay.

The main area I fell down on in terms of losing marks, was my essay plan. There are three parts to a TMA and you lose points if you fail to complete any one of them. The main part is obviously the essay itself, and the other two parts are an essay plan and a reflection.

This essay was requird to be in the region of 1250 words, while the reflection was 50 words but there was no set word limit for the essay plan, and although the essay booklet did give guidelines, it wasn’t specific about what was required. I assumed that the purpose was to show clear thinking about your plan for the essay but that the plan was basically for the student’s benefit. Apparently not. I was marked down because I didn’t waffle at length about what I was intending to put in the essay, and why, or include all the references that I was intending to put in the essay. Irritating to say the least.

Ugh. I hope this gets better because I am not very enthused altogether. The mark I got actually was not bad at all. It’s just the pernikety, trivial nonsense of the game of academia that really gets my blood boiling, and it makes me wonder why I’m doing it at all.

Teaching Adult Learners, Entrepreneurship & Indigenous Studies

I have just finished three free four week courses on the Australian Open2Study platform.

The first course was Teaching Adult Learners

The next course was Entrepreneurship and Family Business

And the third course was Indigenous Studies, looking at Australian Aborigines, Torres Strait Islanders and New Zealand Maori.

 

Teaching Adult Learners

This was a great course, with lots of ideas and I took a lot away from it. I have taught several classes on a variety of subjects but I haven’t done much with adult learners. I did think that a lot of what was said about adult learners would or should apply to children, especially older children.

Entrepreneurship and Family Business

This was an interesting and encouraging course, but it wasn’t terribly well organised and I’m not sure by the end of it whether I am any the wiser about how to start and run a business at all. One thing I will say though is that the course leader, Leon Levine does kind of embody the entrepreneurial spirit, from the point of view that he obviously isn’t an academic, but he has enough perseverance and determination to be doing a PhD!

Indigenous Studies

This was my favourite of the three courses. I had a very limited knowledge both of the Maori and the Australian Aborigines, so the history was fascinating as well as rather heartbreaking and quite appalling altogether. I saw a lot of parallels between the way the British treated the natives there and the way the native British (Welsh, Cornish and Scottish) were put down and oppressed and marginalised.

 

I particularly like the Open2Study platform – all the lessons are delivered by video, with a short ‘pop quiz’ question afterwards and a longer quiz after each module. You also earn reward badges for everything you complete, and even though there’s not much going on in the forum, there’s plenty of feedback on Twitter for example.

Each module is a week long, and I didn’t realise that there’s a deadline for the final assessment which I missed although I managed to pass based on my points from the previous modules.

Altogether though, I am really glad I did them, and the Open2Study platform will definitely attract me back again for more courses.