Cool game. :-)

Lol!

interesting sounding game. Your oldest is 8 and you'll have some time. and there is a difference between how you'll react (because there's a healthy dose of that) whether your 11 grader is a girl or boy.With some exceptions, I'll admit, but in one respect there is a drive to make sons into men but keep daughters girls, retard in some way the becoming of a woman. This is counter to many other cultures, and a little generalized, but I think quite true. Really what happens, is the more they know this is a goal, the less likely they are to open up to you with questions. Even parents who think their kids are discussing everything with them, are probably not. this is part of maturity. I liken this to the silly ritual of Santa Claus. They no longer believe (if ever) way before you find out. You didn't tell me?? lol
some Objectivist is going to give me crap about santa now-

That's a damn good quote. I like it.

I think I also struggle with it a bit because my oldest is 8 and so in my mind they still need a lot of protection and guidance. However I may feel a lot difference by the time they are in High School.

If I compare to myself as an 11th grader then I think I may have been ok with it, my mom at that age, maybe, my dad at that age, definitely not. At least from stories I've heard about my parents.

I agree that many of these kinds of problems need to be addressed in the home. I went to this fair kind of thing in a park the week of the 4th and they had some games about the constitution. One of my favorite ones was a bean bag toss. The bottom hole was huge and labeled family. Then it went community, state, nation. And the holes go progressively smaller until the hole for nation was barely big enough for the bean bag. The idea was that like throwing a bean bag through a hole, problems are easier to solve, and should be, at the family level, and get harder as you go up.

Sorry. That common core stuff is designed by idiots for the use of statism. Sexual randomness serves the chaos of the state. That is all they are after. I feel bad for parents who have to make the hard decision about public school these days.

Lol! Our friend's girls are definitely into boys! They lifeguard at their pool, and tell me all about the hot guys they're drooling over. Plus, the school does mixers with the boys school across from them.

I hear ya, but the very ones you say aren't mature enough, are the ones probably having sex already.

Always, and our kids literally ask us about EVERYTHING. I'm just not quite comfortable with this being presented in a classroom. So many are just not at the maturity level to handle it.

I'm not even sure about all girls' schools. go brush up on your Mary Mccarthy and Lillian Hellman

Nope, NO boarding. She can stay at home until college, thank you very much. :-)

I understand your concerns. I ask that you go back in time and remember yourself as an 11th grader. think of your parents as 11th graders and then consider your child as an 11th grader. the US is hugely victorian about sex. it's dumb and ignorance can always be used against you. check out my profile quote. If an 11th grader is simply innocent, they will choose to engage or not engage with sexually explicit material in a book. Good parenting means open discussion regarding adult themes and a rational approach to things as old as time.

no boarding!

I'm not sure we would qualify. Scholarships may be the only option for reducing tuition costs. :-(

At least you are keeping yourself informed. That's crucial.

We have friends whose children are in several private schools in our state. They love both, though very different. Insist an all girls school in Greenwich, another boards in Kent. Very pricey though. One school we are considering has a lottery, and any student in the state can attend. It's a little far, but on the way to where my husband works. My daughter would prefer an all girls school, though. It throws a whole other spin into the mix! No simple decision.

That's how I feel. Intimacy is completely different from the explicit descriptions in the excerpts provided in this article. I've read books I wasn't familiar with before giving them to my kids. I think AS and The Fountainhead would be absolutely perfect for HS students. I think they should be mandatory reading, quite frankly. They could help stem the tide of the entitlement attitude so prevalent in higher education.

I didn't finish the book b/c I got confused by the broken sentences and white space left at apparently random place in the text. I remember think, "I just want to know who is talking or thinking and what they're saying complete sentences." I think if I re-read it now, I'd get more out of it. I certainly got more out of Things Fall Apart when I read it a few years ago at 34 years of age.

There are some groups in Utah fighting Common Core and I'm keeping up to date on anything going on. Tracking local representatives stances on those things as I can, to influence my voting decisions.

Ah. I was troubled with the on-again-off-again appearances of spirits. It was too distracting. I’ll give the book a whirl. Lol, you don’t have to give me the lady’s credentials. I admit unreasonable bias about anyone who owes their overnight success to Oprah. I didn’t like O’s choice for President. *wink*

Hopefully you are active in that process.

As with all of her books, a major them is entrapment. Entrapment is played out in Beloved several ways. What disappointed me about the movie was a literal interpretation of Beloved as a ghost/demon/spirit. There was no need for a literary device of mysticism to bring the story to its crux. As well, slavery or the threat of it is not as key as self-entrapment, and the movie did not choose to focus on that.
Finally, Toni Morrison was widely taught in University english classes before O had her reading list. She already enjoyed much acclaim in literary fiction circles and I believe it was well deserved. I can't stand her politics or when she speaks about political issues. She is divisive.

ETA: I’m glad to hear the book was good. I thought there was the potential of a great story with the movie, but they lost the theme. I trust your opinion I will read it now.

Reread. I hadn’t read Beloved. The movie was awful and I was commenting on it. I have read 'why the cage bird sings' which was part of my kids reading list; it was good, but not worthy of the attention it was getting.

We did look at one Charter School and it was a dump. Another one nearby was full, and we had heard good things about that one.

As far as recommending Atlas Shrugged I would definitely recommend it to an 11th or 12th grader. Atlas Shrugged does have some sexual themes but nothing I think I would object to for a High School reading assignment.

However the description of this book I think goes beyond some basic sexual themes to being pretty explicit as well as wrong. Not that reading things we disagree with shouldn't be done, but I'm not sure about High School students. Probably something I'd want to read before I let me kids read it.

wow. I thought you and I would agree on this one mimi. She is a very talented writer. and while I don't always appreciate her themes, I respect her ability to tell a good story. Beloved was one of the most finely crafted novels I've read.