Wind in the Willows

 Wind in the Willows, someone once said, is not a book that you judge: it is a book that judges you. But it is a kindly judgment, not the imperious magistrate casting you into the gaol, but the friends dragging you back home for your own good. It is a book I feel sorry for people who never got to read, or who cannot appreciate it. And I can understand why some people struggle with it (beyond those who have no enjoyment for anything fantastical): the pacing is erratic, lurching between pastoral lyricism and the crazy adventures of Toad. But so be it. It is not for us to judge. 

Whereas Winnie the Pooh deals with life's small and ordinary feelings and encounters, Wind in the Willows dives right into some of its hardest tangles: the line between supporting friends and enabling them; the tension between the longing for home and longing for adventure; the overwhelming weight of glory and the mercy of our day to day agnosticism. 

The thing that struck me most of all on this reread was that Grahame succeeds in a way almost unique to bring the modern (to him at least) world into his fantasy without losing any of the sense of wonder. It is extremely easy--nearly every modern YA fantasy book does it--to render magic into mere technology. It is not particularly unusual to write fantasy, like Tolkien did, in which technology is the enemy and hostile to magic. But to make a world where Mr. Toad can steal a motor-car--and a train for good measure--and yet every tree and streamlet is laden with mystery and purpose--that is quite uncommon. 

It had been too long since I read it (not since Dame and Dash were second graders, so eight years at least), and I will do my best not to let so long go by again. 

Other Books:
I finished How to Read a Tree, by Tristan Gooley, but I really think I need to own it because it's a book to read a tiny bit of and then go for a lot of long walks and noticing. Not that I get to spend a lot of time noticing since my walks are usually desperately trying to restrain or hopelessly trying to locate the dogs, but I still am spotting some more. Looking forward to trying out more by this author, the library has a bunch. 

I also got back from the library and finally finished The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery. Last year everyone was reading Incredibly Bright Creatures, including our book group, and while we enjoyed it pretty well (especially for the local setting and for being more cheerful than *most* of the local books we get to read), the best part was definitely the octopus and if you really want to spend some time with octopuses, The Soul of an Octopus might be more what you want.

Our book club's newest selection is In The Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick. I am looking forward to hearing everyone's opinions on it--it's the true story on which Moby Dick was based. I think everyone will enjoy it, except perhaps Barb who has some cannibalism-related trauma due to being a child before movie ratings systems came out. Adventure on the high seas and all that. I really want to give Moby Dick another go now (I last read that as an extremely stubborn but largely uncomprehending 10 year old) but I'm still only about a third of the way through the Brothers Karamazov. I definitely want to check out more by this author. 

In children's books that came out since my time, I've been reading a whole slew of Harriet Hamsterbone and Danny Dragonbreath adventures by Ursula Vernon. They're in the gaining fluency stage, somewhere between a graphic novel and a chapter book, and they're hilarious and inventive and in my opinion a significant cut above the better known series in that range. Harriet and her battle quail solve various fractured fairytale crises, while Danny and his small reptilian buddies cope with various more or less mythical monsters. They manage to have great adventures without dead or absentee parents, potty humor, or any excessive degree of family turmoil. I also highly recommend Castle Hangnail. 

The Brothers Karamzov I have moved to audio book--it's way easier to keep the characters straight with an actor doing different voices than it is to remember who is going by which name in what context. Russian literature, I suspect, is rather like watching reality TV or soap operas: one's own life can hardly escape looking better by contrast. It is great and profound and thought provoking and also sometimes I just want Flora from Cold Comfort Farm to show up and convince everyone to stop being so melodramatic. 

I saw a bunch of recommendations to try Louise Penny as a modern mystery writer and I must say the titles and cover art were very compelling. I read A World of Curiosities and found it pretty well done but in the end I really don't like the grittier kind of mystery very much. (Even though, if you think of it, cozy mysteries are far more disturbing--to think that an ordinary person living their ordinary life could have personal knowledge of dozens of murderers who mostly murdered for rather humdrum and ordinary reasons--is far more troubling than to think that the chief detective for a large metropolitan area would need to deal with the occasional serial killer.) But I will probably read a couple more because the titles are so lovely, but not right before bed.

Due to wanting to inspire Dame to keep up on her Latin I started doing Latin on Duolingo, but the course is not very long and I have already gotten to the part that's only review while still being very far from actually reading anything interesting in Latin. So I'm very excited to have purchased Scribblers, Sculptors and Scribes along with Wheelock's Latin, which promises reading real Latin writers from the very beginning, even if we have to start with graffiti and copybook headings. 

Only Two More Days!

And I get to go here: Charlotte Mason Northwest Educator's Conference. I'm totally excited. I will bring my ugly knitting. But I haven't figured out what I did with my copy of The Living Page.

Here With You

We have started school again, with all the attendant fun and drama. Sometimes we have those frameable moments when everyone is eagerly sketching leaves in their nature notebooks to the music of Brahms, and sometimes it's just plain hard work and you can  do one more line, and sometimes the majority of the participants are wailing in despair (usually because everybody else is making so much noise).

One thing I have learned in five years of this is that it is all the good stuff. Ambleside Schools International has an inspiring series of videos, one phrase from which echoes in my mind through every day: "It is good to be me here with you."

It may be that our lesson today is not so much about odd versus even numbers and more about putting your mind back to your work despite the fact that your brother has the audacity to breathe audibly, but I am here to help you learn both.

It may be that you only get three words on the page after fifteen minutes of tears, but those three words represent a battle bravely fought and won against fear, perfectionism, and a brain that takes things in much faster than it can get them out.

It may be that we are still practicing three-letter words when I thought we would be reading novels, but we are weaving day by day the links between sight and sound and movement and one day that weaving will be strong enough to hold the torrent of ideas you will need it for.

The written lesson plan matters, but the unwritten lesson plan matters more. And that is the plan that says: Here, today, we will do the best we can with what we have; we will give it everything we have in us; we will grow in what we need today.

It is good.

ETA: Why yes, it is the fifth day of school and I am winding up eating brownies straight from the pan. They're good, too.

The Master and His Emissary, Pt 3: Education

Final thoughts on The Master and His Emissary. (Part 2).

Perhaps the best picture of the differences between the right and the left brain approaches in education was given by Charles Dickens, in Hard Times. Mr. Gradgrind, the teacher devoted to Facts, is examining the students, first Sissy Jupe, whose father is a horse handler for the circus:

'Your father breaks horses, don't he?'

'If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do break horses in the ring, sir.'

'You mustn't tell us about the ring, here. Very well, then. Describe your father as a horsebreaker. He doctors sick horses, I dare say?'

'Oh yes, sir.'

'Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse.'

(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.)

'Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!' said Mr. Gradgrind, for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. 'Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals! Some boy's definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours.'

 . . .

'Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.' Thus (and much more) Bitzer.

'Now girl number twenty,' said Mr. Gradgrind. 'You know what a horse is.'

The irony, of course, is that Girl Number 20 is the only one in this conversation who knows what a horse is. Gradgrind and Bitzer know only a list of words so distant from reality that they have almost ceased to have meaning. There can be no question who would be the best one to care for a horse.

But the kind of learning that Gradgrind and Bitzer have engaged in is something that can be taught and measured. You can go round to a school and set out a piece of paper and find out how many approved facts about a horse the students have memorized. It is exactly what the left hemisphere loves: measurable, identifiable, transmittable. And exactly where the left hemisphere is weak: by itself completely irrelevant to reality.

The kind of knowledge of a horse that Sissy has, though, cannot be measured. You cannot really "teach" the knowledge of the right hemisphere. It must be learned by the learner's own connections. At best you can do what Sissy's father has done: be with the learner and the thing and care about it in front of them.

Sadly, most of our society's thoughts and deeds about education have been caught in a left-hemisphere death spiral for several decades. We know that what we are doing doesn't really lead to learning in any meaningful sense, and yet we can't let go because we have to have something that we can measure. So we do more tests, more detailed lists of benchmarks and standards, and just keep taking things farther down the same road of increasing futility. (Which of course, is not to say there aren't still plenty of good teachers who really do help their students--but I think everywhere you find them you will find it is because they care, not because they have amazingly detailed benchmarks to follow.)

Of course the left hemisphere shouldn't be shut out of education altogether--it just needs to be kept in balance, to remember that it is the servant, not the master. At some point, Sissy ought to be able to put into words what a horse is. (Perhaps she could already if it were not such an obviously pointless exercise.) But that can only come after she already knows the horse itself, and can only be useful if she remains in touch with the living, breathing reality of horses.

I think this articulates why I find Charlotte Mason's educational principles so compelling. She articulates and maintains the balance consistently throughout education. Poetry, art, music, literature, nature are not nice extras or frills--they are the essence of education. Skills and facts are only useful if learned in the context of those realities. And we cannot force education on the child, nor do the work of knowing for him . . . all we can do is bring him into contact with it and leave it to him to form a relationship.

A Lack of Milestones

It's been one of my cardinal rules that school is optional until age 6.

It's easy to stick to this rule when you have children who, like Duchess and Deux, teach themselves to read by age five. Or if you have smaller ones who beg to be included in what the big kids are doing.

But Dot and Dash are not interested. Oh, they could read, if they had a mind to. They can tell you the sounds in a word, and if you sit them down to it and ask them to read off the letters in a word they can figure out what it says, and if you show them the word in one spot on the page they can see it in another. But the task interests them not a smidge. They know how to spell their own names, and how to spell Garfield. They check out stacks and stacks of books from the library and sit poring over the pictures for hours. But they do not want lessons.

Reading is such a nice, tangible milestone. It's like sleeping through the night and potty training. It feels good to announce that your child has reached the mark, and of course they should all do it a little ahead of time.

But, they can't *all* do it ahead of time. And it really doesn't matter, nor does it say anything about how smart they are. There are plenty of other interesting things to do with your time when you are five, especially if you have a twin who is ready to put on a cape and go out to adventures in the backyard while the big kids are busy at school.

They memorize poetry and Bible verses by the yard. They listen to Longfellow and Bunyan and Kipling with evident comprehension. They can tell you the plot of any Narnia book at length. They can add and subtract up to seven without even a glance at their fingers. They ask questions and give explanations during science lessons that floor me. But they don't read.

At least not that I've caught them.

I promised no required lessons until the fall after they turn six, and I'm sticking to it. Their desire to mimic the big kids is more than satisfied by doing a maze every morning. On rainy mornings this fall they'll sit down and we will do the work and they will read.

Well, that's my theory. Or, you know, maybe they'll be illiterate all their lives and curse my theories.

A Late Summer Ramble

Last year I was adamant about clinging to the last remains of summer. This year I feel eager to bid it goodbye.

Many homeschoolers are advocates of year-round schooling. There are many reasons why I do not personally wish to do it, but one of them is that I have no heat tolerance. If the temperature is above 76 I am cranky and do not wish to speak to, hear from, and especially not touch other people. This is not good for education. So, it's a great time of year for the kids to be doing that valuable unstructured playing outside and anything else that involves them not talking to me.

However, eventually, this adds up to too much crazy and it feels like time to have a plan again. So I wrote one out. Duchess is thrilled. She loves plans. Deux is horrified. There are never enough hours in the day for all the things he wants to do, and therefore any time planned for school is time when he cannot be playing Legos/reading Encyclopedia Brown/digging giant holes in the front yard. DOB pointed out that children in regular school spend six hours a day at it, but by that time Deux had lost interest in the conversation and was back playing Legos/reading Encyclopedia Brown/digging giant holes in the front yard.

I have not read nearly as many books aloud as I meant to over the summer. Actually, we haven't finished the first one. This is because I hate it. I am not sure what to do about this. They like it. It's highly recommended by our curriculum, which I normally agree with. It is not a bad book--the chapters are just too long for me to enjoy reading out loud and I am finding it a bit too verbose for the subject matter. Right now I'm going to let it slide and read Brer Rabbit to them instead. Probably it is not worth persevering to the end if it means I never read another book aloud to them because I am dreading this one so much.

In preparation for the first day of school, and the doubling of our school size, I dug out the camera and the cord and put fresh batteries in it and downloaded the pictures and realized that the last time I had used it was May. Of 2012. I should probably do better about this. If it weren't for Her Majesty, we'd have no record of our past year of existence at all.

DOB did get up to the specialist at the University, and he ran some tests and ordered more and said it probably won't kill or permanently incapacitate him, so try not to worry too much and I'll see you in October once the test results come back. It wasn't very helpful, but I guess it's better than something that *would* kill him.

I was reading a discussion on the idea that the executive functions of the brain don't finish maturing until 25 and older people considering whether this meant young people should delay various decisions or responsibilities. I have a couple of random thoughts on this subject, completely unhampered by any actual research. One is that perhaps late maturing of the brain is more created by our culture than inherent--to a considerable extent brain functions are shaped by brain use, and so perhaps if you don't get to make grownup decisions, you don't learn how to make them. A second is that perhaps it's a good thing--growing up involves taking on a lot of really terrifyingly risky things all at once for the very first time, and it's better that it be done by people who haven't quite learned to think through all the potential consequences of their actions, because if they did, the human race would come to a dead stop right there.

Another Snarky Thing I'm Not Saying on Homeschool Forums

There's a news article making the rounds which says something like this: Homeschooling is growing at 7 times the rate of public school enrollment.

To which I can only say: Duh.

Most kids are already enrolled in public school. The only way public school is going to grow significantly in enrollment is if there are suddenly, say, twice as many kindergarteners as there were graduates. Which doesn't happen very often.

The vast majority of kids aren't already homeschooling. Therefore, it takes a very small number of kids switching to homeschooling to make a significant rate of growth.

If that doesn't make sense like that, try imagining a town with 100 kids in it. Ninety of them are in public school, eight in private school, and two homeschool. This year there are two extra kindergarteners, and one of them goes to public school while one gets homeschooled. Voila! Homeschooling is increasing at the rate of 150% (3 instead of 2), while public school is increasing at the paltry rate of just over 1% (91 instead of 90). So homeschooling is increasing at 150 times the rate of public schooling!

This is not exactly worthy of a headline.

(This turns up in other areas, too. Just keep in mind when someone talks about X belief system/activity/product being the "fastest-growing" in its field, it usually means it was really, really small to begin with.)

Teaching to the Test

The Duchess turned 8 before this school year began, which means she has met the minimum school age in our state and must complete a standardized test every year. This isn't shown to anybody so it always has seemed a rather pointless requirement, but it is the law and if it makes them feel better, it is no great burden to us. Especially not now that (as I discovered) you can just get them done online. As far as Duchess was concerned, it was a freebie 3 hours of computer time she didn't have to earn. So what if it was all bland multiple choice questions?

When I was a kid, this was our big social event of the year, as we went down to our church's Christian school and did them in the nursery. We didn't usually actually do them with the class--that would have taken too long and we were always impatient--but we could go out at recess and play with the other kids. Also we got cooler snacks than usual. It was still very low-key--in fact, we often graded the results ourselves, or I graded them for the younger kids once I was done with mine. One year Rocketboy tested with the first and second grade class (I'm not sure why, he shouldn't have needed to take them yet--maybe just to keep him out of the way?) and brought home the chicken pox. That was most unfair to the rest of us, who being considerably older suffered far worse than he did.

I have mixed feelings about standardized tests. On the one hand, they pretty handily demonstrate all that is most wrong about systematized, impersonal, factory-model education. And building curriculum on the basis of scoring well on these tests is about the best guarantee of creating a curriculum that would bore anyone to tears.

On the other hand, they just don't seem that hard to me. Mind-blowingly dull, yes. But not hard. If you can read and think clearly, it's not that difficult to score well. And you don't have to be teaching to the test to teach reading and thinking.

Still, this was my first encounter as the teacher and I was a wee bit nervous. Especially about math. And grammar. I don't hold to the standard methods or sequence for teaching those subjects. Duchess has never done a page out of a math or grammar workbook. She reads a lot, she writes (or copies) a lot, we do lots of mental math and real-life problems and math games, but I have never shown her how to do multi-digit math problems on paper, or taught her the rules for comma usage, and I knew the test would be full of that sort of thing. Not that it mattered. But still. I figured we had reading comprehension and vocabulary and spelling covered, but everything else was up in the air. Mostly I didn't want to shake her confidence that she was good at math and that it was fun, and standardized tests are designed to have problems that are too difficult. Or there might have been a little bit of fear that I was teaching it all wrong. Maybe.

She did get a little concerned when she saw multiple-digit multiplication and other things she had never encountered before, but I told her to just think it through as best she could and give it her best guess. And she did. And it worked--in fact, she was off the chart in math concepts and way up in computation, despite never having done long division in her life. Grammar was the lowest, but even so she did fine, on the rather simple principle of "what looks right."

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming of making up word searches, designing historic paper dolls, and jumping off the bed.

Snarky Things I Don't Say on Homeschool Forums

OP: I'm wondering what to do for my fourth grader since we can't afford a reading curriculum. Could she just . . . read books?

Response: Of course! Your library is full of many great books for free, like Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, Stuart Little, Junie B. Jones . . .

SQOC: OK, sorry, while I agree wholeheartedly on your basic theory, I'm going to have to cite you for a Class B Felonious Confusion of Great Literature With Tripe.

More Things I Don't Say on Homeschool Message Boards

RC: Use curriculum XYZ! We love it!!

SQOC: Boy, one or two exclamation points wouldn't have done it but that third one clinches it: even without any reasoning or explanation, I am convinced that this is the right choice for my family. I'll run right out and buy it.

Original Poster: My 6yo son does [randomly-chosen behavior].
RC: My son does that, too! It must be a boy thing!
SQOC: Yes, because two small boys are a representative sample of the one billion of them on the planet sufficient to deduce a gender stereotype.

RC: I have always done [insert family habit] and my children have never [insert undesirable behavior in question], so I'm pretty sure that's what did it.
SQOC: Have you ever studied logic? I have, and that's why my children have never committed an ax murder. You should definitely try it.

RC: Whenever we come across something about millions of years in a book, I ask my children, "How old is the earth really?" and they shout out "6000 years!"
SQOC: Right, a knee-jerk recitation of dogma is the best way to begin a lifetime of critical thinking.

Real Play, Fake Play

Grownups must periodically rediscover that play is an Important Thing for children to do. This time around, it's being touted for its value in developing "executive function": the ability to plan, exercise self-control, negotiate, and persist. Which is, of course, absolutely correct. All young mammals play at exactly what they need as grown-ups. Young tigers play at pouncing on things, and young cows play at running into things. Young people play at managing small worlds of their own devising.

But the great danger is that as soon as grownups discover that something is important for children, they will ruin it by turning it into something children Have to Do. At which point, if you are under the age of 12, you instantly realize that it's not playing any more.

So I have very mixed feelings when I hear about something like these Tools of the Mind classrooms. Sure, it's better that children be given time to play than herded into one worksheet after another. But by the time you've sat down with a teacher, made an official plan for playing, then been required to stick to that plan for a designated period of time--well, that doesn't sound much like playing anymore. The children aren't the executives any more, they're only the middle managers.

And when I got to the bottom and read in the Q&A, "How much of our 7.5 hour kindergarten day should be devoted to playing?" and saw the answer, "Kindergarteners should play for at least 30 or 40 minutes a day," I gave up. Thirty or forty minutes? Out of 7.5 hours? Five year olds? Now I understand you need time for eating and resting and picking up and an ungodly lot of time for going potty, but still. Thirty or forty minutes of work on letters and numbers and the rest of the time spent playing would be a much better balance, and produce much better results both in literacy and general sanity.

Play is important for children because it's what children are wired to do. It's like real food: we can try to scientifically analyze the different parts and functions, but no one will ever come up with a pill that has the same effect on mind and body as eating a vine-ripe home-grown tomato. And we'll never come up with an activity for children that is as beneficial as real play. But it's only real play if the grownups can keep their grimy mitts off it.

The State of Things

After being absent all summer (and spring, and winter), the sun has finally come out. When it gets high enough to shine over the trees. Not entirely coincidentally, I recently decided to scuttle school in the mornings in favor of going outside. I needed more fresh air. The twins needed more activity in the morning, or they failed to fall asleep until 4:30 in the afternoon, and then had to be woken for supper, and it went downhill from there. The hard part has been persuading the big kids (OK, D1 mainly) that the great big world out there is in fact equally if not more interesting than that of books and drawing.

The main culprit in the aversion to outdoors has been the spiders. This has been an unusually good year for spiders, and for most of September one could hardly take a step outside without getting entangled in a web. Cars parked overnight would sport webs in the morning, sparkling over the slug trails.

As a counterbalancing measure, we read Charlotte's Web and Spiders by Seymour Simon and learned to identify and distinguish them, but academic interest could not entirely overcome the icky sensation of an unexpected face full of web. But the spiders are starting to die off with the advancing fall, and there are compensating activities: raiding the last of the raspberries and huckleberries; making stone soup; spotting rare squirrels, heron nests, and gopher snakes giving birth.

At the same time, the Washington Bar rule change finally became effective and I can qualify for active status again if I take 45 hours of continuing education; half of that has to be live. Then another fifteen hour class for good measure. Fortunately webcasts count as live classes for the first requirement, but even so getting it all in over the next two months so I can be active at the beginning of next year will be daunting. It also looks like the legal research I've been doing will be picking up, for another 15-20 hours a month. Which doesn't seem like that many hours on paper, but it does when someone wakes up early from naptime.

And school? Well, they taught themselves to read last year, so we're already ahead of the game. Why rush matters? They have their whole lives to be chained to desks; best to get them out and running while they still can. Besides, I still hold the best and simplest method of education is to leave a child idle in the presence of heaps of books. It worked for C. S. Lewis and Samuel Johnson. And, less illustriously but more practically, for me. Why not the ducklings?

In My Spare Time

I'm trying to find the best way to track the whole variety of resources I use with the ducklings, both for my own benefit (after all, in four years I'll be teaching another class this age) and for general use.

I've found it hard to track down lists of really good books with geographic themes aimed at the younger age group. So I'm starting to track them, along with websites and project ideas, on Squidoo. We'll see how it works, but here is my first try: Around the World in 80 Books. (I hope no one will think that title is deceptive, when I've only got eleven up so far, but I haven't even started on any specific continents yet--by the time I create a lens for each continent, I should have plenty.)

Oh, and if you like it, I'd love to get feedback, links, or ratings! (If you don't like it, I won't be so thrilled.)

Embracing the Pain

Today D1 and D2 wanted me to write them books they could read. I was obliging and wrote "D2's Book" on the cover of his, with what I thought was a quite well-done caricature of D2 on the front.

He picked up the book and burst out laughing. "Why is there a monkey on my book?" he said.

OK, maybe not so good.

People often assume that if you believe in children learning naturally and through self-directed means that you want learning to be easy and fun for them and they will never have to work hard.

One glance at the mass of bruises on the twins' heads should be enough to remove that notion. Natural, self-directed learning is often painful, hard work. Nothing worth having comes easy. Every baby who has learned to roll over knows this.

Children don't suddenly stop becoming capable of self-directed hard work to learn what they need to know just because they turn five. If they see the importance of something and they are developmentally ready to attempt it, they will work hard at it (though perhaps on their own terms rather than a preprogrammed schedule). And unless they are exceptionally easy-going, they will sometimes get frustrated, cranky, have off days when they seem to have forgotten everything and sudden bursts where they zoom ahead.

I remember when D1 was learning to draw. I certainly didn't tell her she had to; it was something she wanted to do. She'd sit in front of a piece of paper because she wanted to draw, then would start wailing, "But I don't know HOW to draw! YOU draw it for me." But after many months, she started to figure out ways to draw the things she wanted to in ways that were satisfying to her, and now she can happily draw for hours.

Now the same thing is happening with reading. "I want to read this!" "But I don't know how!" And my helpful comments are not always appreciated. "Hmm . . . try actually *looking* at the word."

Growing and learning is a joyful journey, no doubt, but like most journeys there will be blisters and bug bites along the way. And with four children always learning something new, that makes for a lot of wails of despair around here.

I guess it's a good thing my drawings amuse them.

Civics Quiz

You really should try out this civics quiz by ISI; we were quite impressed with the caliber of the questions. They ask things that are actually worth knowing. I got an embarrassingly high score, but then, it's my subject. Then if you like stressing over the degeneracy of society, you can read about how college students fare on the test. I hope my former class would have done better than average, but I am always plagued with doubt. I certainly tried.