Back to School 2006
Posted on August 29, 2006 Posted by John Scalzi 18 Comments
Athena’s gone back to school today. School officially started yesterday, but we had to write her a note (“Please excuse Athena for missing the first day of school. She was at Disneyland”). And to top things off, as this video shows (for those of you with RSS feeds, he says), she has a few complaints about her classes. It’s always something.
Calculus? Metaphysics? Closet Materialist?
Tell me that this was scripted. I was eating Play-Do and cutting crooked in 2nd grade.
See, this is the problem with public schools these days. Everybody knows you have to learn regular physics first before metaphysics…
Ah, so that’s the problem with schools in Louisiana. They’re teaching all the wrong subjects!
So the one week extension will get us more good material until, say, Friday?
Alas, no. I used yesterday and today to catch up with non-novel business. Back to the grindstone tomorrow. I want to see if I can get this baby done over Labor Day.
I’m waiting for her to turn out to have been homeschooled so far…
John, I have to say that Athena is a much better actor than you. The tone of your voice screams “staged.” Athena, on the other hand, is completely and utterly natural.
Well, you’re never going to lose any points with me by telling me that my progeny does something better than me. That’s what you hope for.
better than I, you writer.
Great kid. So … um … why isn’t she on the school board?
That “duh-oi!” sound would put the bus drivers’ local right in their place.
better than I, you writer.
The “than” here should probably get classed as a preposition, making “I” an object, making “better than me” the appropriate construction, you pedant.
I second Athena’s deadpan… for a full twenty seconds I thought I’d been transported (ha ha) into the world of Star Trek:TNG educational curricula.
As per ‘than I’ vs. ‘than me’, I’ve heard it argued by various parties that the reason why it’s “than I” is that structurally a predicate is required after the I/me, as in “… does something better than I do.” However, I totally agree that if one chooses to treat ‘than’ as a preposition, then the objective case of ‘me’ is definitely correct.
…
I should start doing my Google searches before starting to write comments. Linky here sez that either functional interpretation of ‘than’ is acceptable, though there can be slight differences in meaning, depending on context. Tricky…
Also, my name and URL seem to be randomly disappearing when I hit ‘preview’… ‘s that a ‘feature’ of the newest release of MT?
So. . . Athena goes to Elroy Jetson’s school, then?
Reminds me of the first (I think) Dr. Who movie. There’s an opening scene of domestic bliss as the grandkids (pre teens) are reading Calculus, Quantum Mechanics, etc; the teens are reading Kant, etc; and then we come to the kindly Doctor who is reading a comic book.
So, Calculus since kindegarden. That means she must be on vectors now and on her way to differential equations by the spring?
Damn. I thought Athena was older than 7. If only for the fact that my daughter just does not read lines well and could never pull of “closet materialist.”
Lucky you. Always good to have a good sidekick.
As far as the “than” discussion goes:
“Never argue nomenclature with a pedant. It wastes your time and annoys the pedant”.
At first I thought I was dumb becouse I didn’t study calculus when I was in second grade…
Now I know I’m dumb for thinking anyone studied calculus in the second grade.
Thanks for mentioning the video as I was indeed reading using a RSS feed and wouldn’t have known about it. It was funny too :).