Getting old

I suppose I am getting old. Hopelessly, incurably old. I'm becoming unable to relate to things which are such an essential part of this globalised culture that I seem to be an alien.
I bought a DVD (mea culpa) for the kids to watch in English (oh the educational purposes).
It was 'The Pirates of the Carribean - 2', the film my children seemed to be very enthusiastic about - I had heard their happy laughter as they watched it in Russian some days before.
Yesterday I joined my big son , who is a 17-year-old university student, in watching it in English. I struggled through, half asleep, trying to look at the screen as little as possible, bewildered at how the film-makers can actually enjoy creating images like that. My husband, who is an icon-painter, is simply unable to face this kind of visual stuff. As an artist, I suppose, he has a more delicate sense of the beautiful, which he nurtures, in a way. I asked myself and my kids if the people who get used to this art don't completely lose the ability to perceive and create anything beautiful.

eLearning ?

My students and I have our very own community language forum. We created
it in January, after I'd made my first steps in 'cyberspace exploration'. So far the best-working and, in my opinion, the most promising aspect of our forum is its function as a writing workshop.
Well, 'a workshop' is an exaggeration - it would be great if it were just that - so far it's rather like a school magazine where students can read each other's pieces of writing.
It is also a good place to exchange web-references. Other than that, it seems to be kind of smouldering.
How much is online learning involved in a homeschooler's day-to-day work?

The rich and the poor

'Both public schools and private schools in wealthy neighborhoods are able to provide many more AP and IB course options than impoverished inner-city high schools, and this difference is seen as a major cause of the differing outcomes for their graduates.' (Wikipedia)
How severe is this difference in the school budgets?

Education in the USA

Our 'Education' quest continues. In one or two years' time my smart and hard-working secondary school students will go on to university education.
This time I've got some questions about both school and college education in the USA that I hope my American friends can answer.
Quest.1 is about exams. It seems your school is much more relaxed and less exam-oriented than ours. What surprised me is that there are fees for SAT, which is one of the usual admission requirements. Are there any compulsory exams for high-school students, or do they only get 'during term assessment' (there must be a technical term for it - sorry, I forget)?
Quest.2 is about college costs. Can they actually prevent the less fortunate from getting a higher education, even if they have high academic ability?