Nancy Edison- Homeschooling Pioneer Woman

various

[Clintonfatigued]

IMHO, Nancy Edison is an inspiring Mother's Day story. She could even be a role model for mothers who homeschool their children.

[Full Court]

Excellent post ping

[Reily]

I find Edison to be overrated.
Yes he was a genius and a great inventor.
If you read about his battles with Westinghouse, Steinmetz etc. the Edison star gets some tarnish.
The ethics of some business practices were also questionable. For example, often those he couldn't beat with technology, he beat them with savvy (Even dishonest!) marketing, or got the government involved to control the competition. (the DC vs AC battles come to mind!)
Also his lack of formal training in mathematics diminished his considerable intellectual skills.

[kinoxi]

quite an amazing story about a mother on mother's day

[kinoxi]

his stubborn determination led him to succeed(and fail as you pointed out). read the original post, he must've got it from his mother.

[Clintonfatigued]

Thanks very much!

: )

[Clintonfatigued]

Clearly, it was from his mother that he inherited his knack for creative thinking and seeking new ways of doing things. She was highly intelligent herself and displayed creative and unorthodox thinking in her approaches to schooling him.

[Reily]

I do admire his stubborn determination.
What I don't admire is how it on occasion manifested itself in acts of outright dishonesty. During his battles with Westinghouse he paid newspaper writers to claim that AC power was dangerous and shouldn't be considered as a way to deliver electric power to the home and to industry. Another rival that Edison unfairly attacked was Charles P Steinmetz. Again the ploy was not to attack the work on its technical merits but mostly spread gossip and bring up the fact that Steinmetz was hunchbacked, foreign-born and a Jew. The same was true with Tesla. (Though Tesla was so weird that he was an easy target!) I don't think Edison actually understood the physical principles behind their work well enough to compete with it on a level playing field. It was easier for Edison to use his fame, influence, and 'ad hominem' attacks to gain a business advantage. Of course Westinghouse, Steinmetz etc. get the last laugh whenever you plug an appliance into a wall socket or even turn on a light. After all that AC power going to that bulb.

[kinoxi]

awe come on tesla built a death ray dontcha know? ;) the other people you mentioned were not exactly saints. ac current only won because of tesla's inventions(and the fact that it works better over long distances) that made it usable at the time. i wouldn't be able to type to you right now if it were not for edison, and by logical extension his mother, on mother's day :).

[GladesGuru]

All true, but the post basically sez Edison wasn't "nice". And that may be a sin, dontcha know?

;-)

[kinoxi]

awe come on now, your gonna go and hurt my delicate sensibilities... :)

[Reily]

As admirer of Tesla I agree completely with your statements about Tesla and AC. I am not claiming any of them were saints, (Tesla maybe becomes he certainly lived a ascetic life ! .... I also don't know if I believe the story that Tesla castrated himself because he didn't want thoughts of the opposite sex cluttering up his thinking! ...See I said he was weird !) Everybody did play a very sleazy hard-ball when it came to business in those days. Edison did seem to try to promote the 'saint-hood' idea for himself. I am unaware of any attempts to do likewise by the others. I also don't think you should forget about Steinmetz's contributions to you ability to type on that keyboard also !

[Clintonfatigued]

You've gotten off track. This is the story about how a good mother, ,with flexibility and good material, can do a better job of educating her children than a second-rate school.

There's no denying that Thomas Edison had his flaws.

[Reily]

I am not denying the what a good mother can do.
I am tired of people holding Edison up as such a perfect example of American ingenuity.

[Born Conservative]

[freema]

Would Jesus do?

[wintertime]

Nancy Edison- Homeschooling Pioneer Woman

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Actually, Nancy Edison wasn't a pioneer in homeschooling. Homeschooling was the norm for most of the 200,000 years of human existence.

It is the factory-like institutionalization of children for their education that is really abnormal. Even my 93 year old parents and many of their generation educated in one room school houses would barely recognize the monstrous system of indoctrination ( mis-named "education") that our nation's children must endure today.

[Clintonfatigued]

Good point, but it had ceased to be the norm when she took it up. Yet she was willing to go against the norm and take up her bright but unusual son's education herself.

It is worth noting that Nancy Edison herself was of high intelligence, well above average. Nevertheless, IMHO there is a valuable lesson to be learned from her example.