Maxwell 58: What Will Anna Do? Plus Anna Marie Gives Birth

[Caroline]

11 minutes ago, mango_fandango said:

I did do languages, although I’m not an expert. It would really depend on how much time one spends on learning the language. Just using a book probably wouldn’t be enough; one would need a way to listen to the language/practise speaking. Even something basic like Duolingo would be a way of listening to people saying different phrases. There’s probably stuff on YouTube too. 

I teach other languages and speak, read, and write in two other languages well and can read and understand two others.  I think it depends on your reason for learning. I personally want to communicate in all forms and read things in their original language. I also want to watch films in their original version. But I know people who are content with just being able to read and don't care about the other skills. I know for me it took a lot of time, study and exposure, especially in the places where these languages are spoken, to become really proficient. There is no way Phillip can learn Hungarian in a short amount of time and use it to save Hungarians. His native language skills are questionable if Jill was his teacher.

 I do have one Hungarian acquaintance who attended college in the US. Her English skills are perfect and she knows other languages as well.  She would have quite a negative reaction to an American hick like Phillip who thinks he's heard the voice of God telling him to save her countrymen.  

[Zebedee]

I only really bring up languages because I find them interesting, and love grammar, but I can’t speak any very well. So, I did Latin at school, for six years, and loved it. I learned ancient greek, mainly through “teach yourself” type books. So, yes, I can read it ok, and can write it (poorly). I need a teacher to get better at that. It’s not a big deal, since I never have to write/listen/speak it. Same with Egyptian, though I have forgotten most of it since. I am one of those people who @Caroline correctly identifies as being happy to read only  grammar and vocab come easily, all the other skills do not. So, I see it as something that needs a teacher for proficiency.

Now, French I did for six years too. I pity my French teachers, as I cannot speak it at all. I can read it fine, back in school I could write it ok, and understand it, I just can’t pronounce it! Polish I learned through books and CDs etc. I could get to B2/C1 ok, except for speaking. German, since I moved here, I can read and understand, though not write well, and speak very badly. Understandable, but bad. I need a teacher, especially for colloquial stuff, and the normal writing. 
 

I think you can learn to read, maybe understand too, by teaching yourself. There are probably some amazing language  learners who can learn to speak/write at passable native levels without a teacher, but very very few people. Especially writing, getting it all right is hard without real feedback and criticism.
 

(As an aside: There was a language challenge at my uni, late 90s-2010s, maybe they still do it, that people applied to do, mostly people already learning a language or two, you got assigned a random language. You had one term/8 weeks,plus a 4 week vacation, alongside normal studies, to learn as much as possible. I guess, to get to B1/B2 ish. Everyone got a different language, with tasks at the end, a conversation about current affairs after reading a newspaper, a debate, reciting a poem, writing about something you read in that country’s national paper. It was self-led, but you were put in touch with a native speaker online, it was hard! People did get to that level that fast, but they were all linguists already. My friend did Russian and Czech, and got assigned Mandarin, though! He came second, but I think the assessments also took into account the difficulties. Some people really did manage to get to B2 alone in that length of time, which is amazing, but they still had some teaching, and were all already multilingual.)

But, most people, especially wannabe missionaries want to speak and converse, not write legal documents and poetry. And, without being too harsh, fundies are coming from a very low level of education in the first place, as @Carolineput so nicely, and a little scathingly. And there are plenty of self taught computer geniuses. But still, most people either cannot teach themselves everything, or do, but wish they had a teacher. That saves so much time, and for the 99.999% who are not geniuses, having a teacher makes us much  better.

I know, this is really unrelated to Maxwells, and is more of a rant. But, speaking as a person who has taught, and more as a person who was taught by some amazing teachers, this fundie attitude of just getting a book and teaching yourself really pisses me off. If for no other reason than that most of us who can teach ourselves something, have learned how to learn from…being taught by professionals.
 I don’t really care if my IT guy is self taught, because she/he learned by doing and making mistakes as a kid, and if they mess up now, they know how to fix it, no one dies, it’s not a multi billion dollar business, or terribly high security. If my doctor is self taught, I care. Ok, if it’s an emergency, and my best option is a self taught surgeon, I will take that. The rest of the time, no.

Actually, if my teacher is self taught in teaching, I care (or would, if they were teaching my hypothetical children). It’s just the way that they denigrate actual professionals and their training and education, because “you can teach yourself”.
 

It’s the total disregard for the fact that other people are better trained, know more, are better educated in something, that gets me. And the complete inability to accept that “heathens” may have something to offer, when it comes to subjunctive verbs or vector calculus (and any of the many things Terri Maxwell et al are ignorant of).

Especially when said people deny these opportunities of learning to their kids, with their “superior” homeschooling, but when, say Steve or John schrader needed a doctor or surgeon, did they let their kids medicate/operate on them? Or JimBob needing a lawyer for Josh? I mean, IBLP Wisdom booklets are basically self-teaching to pre-med and pre-law, so they could just have their kids read a couple of law or medicine textbooks to get up to speed, right? Hahaha. Nope. They went for people who were emphatically not self taught.
 

Sorry for the tirade, but sometimes, overly arrogant, ignorant people really get on my wick (see the measles outbreak in PA yesterday) and fundies just epitomise this. Although, obviously, teaching yourself how to be a (bad) wedding photographer isn’t really in the same league as everything I am mad about.

[hoipolloi]

5 hours ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

I like this couple just based on the fact that she’s taller than him and they don’t seem to give a single solitary fuck. Good for them. 

The wedding is an interesting mixture of traditions - the groom looks like he is wearing a mariachi band outfit and some of the women are wearing Mennonite-style head-coverings.

Sarah is a much better photographer.

 

Edited January 10 by hoipolloi

[GreenBeans]

3 hours ago, Zebedee said:

with their “superior” homeschooling,

I think the appropriate term for fundie homeschooling is “subpar-ior”. 😂

3 hours ago, Zebedee said:

but when, say Steve or John schrader needed a doctor or surgeon, did they let their kids medicate/operate on them? Or JimBob needing a lawyer for Josh? I mean, IBLP Wisdom booklets are basically self-teaching to pre-med and pre-law, so they could just have their kids read a couple of law or medicine textbooks to get up to speed, right? Hahaha. Nope. They went for people who were emphatically not self taught.

I am a lawyer (not in the US though), and people who think they know everything because they’ve read an online article or googled the topic or had a basic workshop on some legal topic at work are my pet peeve. There’s a reason you need to go to university and study the subject for several years, and will typically only become a really good lawyer if you specialize and have a couple of years of post qualification experience.

[theologygeek]

9 hours ago, Caroline said:

It's hard to not giggle at a few of these pictures...

What in the heck is this mess???  He slapped some paint in photoshop on the left hand side.  

[Unlurkly]

8 hours ago, Zebedee said:

(As an aside: There was a language challenge at my uni, late 90s-2010s, maybe they still do it, that people applied to do, mostly people already learning a language or two, you got assigned a random language. You had one term/8 weeks,plus a 4 week vacation, alongside normal studies, to learn as much as possible. I guess, to get to B1/B2 ish. Everyone got a different language, with tasks at the end, a conversation about current affairs after reading a newspaper, a debate, reciting a poem, writing about something you read in that country’s national paper. It was self-led, but you were put in touch with a native speaker online, it was hard! People did get to that level that fast, but they were all linguists already. My friend did Russian and Czech, and got assigned Mandarin, though! He came second, but I think the assessments also took into account the difficulties. Some people really did manage to get to B2 alone in that length of time, which is amazing, but they still had some teaching, and were all already multilingual.)

That's such a cool challenge!

I'd be so bad at it though. I can get to a basic (possibly can survive in the country) level on my own, but I hit a plateau pretty fast and will lose it unless I have a teacher and/or am living in the country itself.

Everyone learns differently and some things are learned through time and experience, so it's actually really helpful to have someone guiding you.

Hard work is all and well but there are times when talent or an eye would be very helpful. Like in those wedding photos. 😏

[JermajestyDuggar]

6 hours ago, GreenBeans said:

I think the appropriate term for fundie homeschooling is “subpar-ior”. 😂

I am a lawyer (not in the US though), and people who think they know everything because they’ve read an online article or googled the topic or had a basic workshop on some legal topic at work are my pet peeve. There’s a reason you need to go to university and study the subject for several years, and will typically only become a really good lawyer if you specialize and have a couple of years of post qualification experience.

It’s funny because when I was young and Google wasn’t a thing, I assumed I knew a lot. Because I knew more than a lot of my peers. But once google became a thing, I realized how much I didn’t know! And couldn’t know! Because there’s just not enough time in the world to learn it all!  Google made me feel ignorant! But I guess Google makes fundies think they are experts.

[Red Hair, Black Dress]

14 hours ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

I like this couple just based on the fact that she’s taller than him and they don’t seem to give a single solitary fuck. Good for them. 

So true.   Beyond Christopher's very sub-par photos, what I liked was the groom's outfit and that the couple seems very happy, Their happiness shines through whatever darkening filter Chris uses. (He needs to stop that.)

And Yes!! There was the obligatory shot of the wedding dress hanging on a wire hanger.

[JermajestyDuggar]

1 hour ago, Red Hair, Black Dress said:

So true.   Beyond Christopher's very sub-par photos, what I liked was the groom's outfit and that the couple seems very happy, Their happiness shines through whatever darkening filter Chris uses. (He needs to stop that.)

And Yes!! There was the obligatory shot of the wedding dress hanging on a wire hanger.

The worst wedding dress hanging picture was from the Boners wedding (Bowers Bontrager double wedding). The Bowers sisters had their dresses hanging in a random tree. It looked fucking weird. And morbid. Like it was a Halloween decoration. As an aside, the two brides pictured together before the wedding made it look like a lesbian wedding. Which tickled me a bit. 

[hoipolloi]

2 hours ago, Red Hair, Black Dress said:

There was the obligatory shot of the wedding dress hanging on a wire hanger.

Wonder why Christopher didn't use the infamous around-the-corner shot.

[GreenBeans]

5 hours ago, Unlurkly said:

You had one term/8 weeks,plus a 4 week vacation, alongside normal studies, to learn as much as possible. I guess, to get to B1/B2 ish. Everyone got a different language, with tasks at the end, a conversation about current affairs after reading a newspaper, a debate, reciting a poem, writing about something you read in that country’s national paper. It was self-led, but you were put in touch with a native speaker online, it was hard! People did get to that level that fast, but they were all linguists already. My friend did Russian and Czech, and got assigned Mandarin, though! He came second, but I think the assessments also took into account the difficulties.

I love love LOVE learning foreign languages. German is my native language, I’m pretty much fluent in English, studied French and Latin in school (common here), but never used it. I learned Swedish when I went to study abroad (I felt it was really easy for Germans), and picked up Danish when I lived in Denmark for a couple of months (very similar to Swedish). I started studying Spanish, just for fun (fairly easy to get to a basic level, but at some point you need to put in more time and I just didn’t have that after work).

Then came Mandarin. And it is definitely the toughest language I’ve ever studied! It was so different from every other language I knew, not even just the characters, but also the grammatical concepts. I lived in China for 3 months, fully immersed in a Chinese family that did not know any English, and had 6 hours of mostly one-on-one Chinese classes plus homework every day. It was the most challenging (but also intellectually satisfying!) thing I’ve ever done! I made it to HSK 4 (I think around B1?) level and passed the test in those 3 months, but it was TOUGH! And I can’t imagine getting to that level without being fully immersed in a Mandarin-speaking community.

[Caroline]

11 hours ago, GreenBeans said:

14 hours ago, Zebedee said:

but when, say Steve or John schrader needed a doctor or surgeon, did they let their kids medicate/operate on them? Or JimBob needing a lawyer for Josh? I mean, IBLP Wisdom booklets are basically self-teaching to pre-med and pre-law, so they could just have their kids read a couple of law or medicine textbooks to get up to speed, right? Hahaha. Nope. They went for people who were emphatically not self taught.

It's interesting that fundies think it's okay to go to college/ grad school for certain professions (medicine, law, engineering) because they KNOW that being an expert takes time and study. 

But they definitely don't think people need to have a higher education to be teachers. Anybody's mother can do it whether she's intellectually limited or not. Teaching is an art and it takes years of practice and higher education to teach all of the individual disciplines a high school student needs. I have two advanced degrees but would never have attempted to teach my daughter science or math at a high level. English, history, and languages -sure, because I have a lot of experience teaching in those areas and a lot of acquired knowledge. 

[HereticHick]

12 hours ago, hoipolloi said:

The wedding is an interesting mixture of traditions - the groom looks like he is wearing a mariachi band outfit and some of the women are wearing Mennonite-style head-coverings.

Sarah is a much better photographer.

 

I am assuming that the groom is in a mariachi band-- hence the outfit, which I love. It doesn't look like the band performed at the reception (oh no! there might have been dancing!) though.

But so many of his pics are just bad and/or lazy--like, why not move the thermal coffee tumbler out of the picture, Christopher? 

[kpmom]

20 hours ago, Markie said:

Chris isn't very good; hope he's cheap. 

What do the Maxwell sons do for a living? Nathan - ? IT stuff? Christopher - very part-time wedding photographer and ? John - irrigation?  Joseph - IT? Has his own business, right? Jesse - IT? 

I think pretty much everyone works for Joseph. Nathan might be the exception. The last I looked at Joseph’s web site everyone else was listed as an employee. 

1 minute ago, kpmom said:

I think pretty much everyone works for Joseph. Nathan might be the exception. The last I looked at Joseph’s web site everyone else was listed as an employee. 

ETA:  Looked at Swift Otter just now and it looks like Joseph and Jesse are co-owners. 

[GreenBeans]

2 hours ago, Caroline said:

I have two advanced degrees but would never have attempted to teach my daughter science or math at a high level. English, history, and languages -sure, because I have a lot of experience teaching in those areas and a lot of acquired knowledge. 

I think it is a sign that you’re a professional when you have enough expertise to know your limits.

For example, as a lawyer, I am technically qualified and allowed to advise clients on employment law issues. Will I do that? No, because I know very well that I am not specialized enough to be confident to give legal advice in this field.

I guess self taught fundie homeschoolers benefit from the old saying “ignorance is bliss”. They know so little that they don’t even realize how much they are lacking.

[Maggie Mae]

2 hours ago, Markie said:

Chris isn't very good; hope he's cheap. 

You mean to tell me this isn't an excellent photo? It clearly shows something that happened. Maybe.

[formerhsfundie]

21 minutes ago, Maggie Mae said:

You mean to tell me this isn't an excellent photo? It clearly shows something that happened. Maybe.

Definitely shows off their height difference (or is the groom seated?). Not something I'd be stoked about as the couple.

[HereticHick]

35 minutes ago, formerhsfundie said:

Definitely shows off their height difference (or is the groom seated?). Not something I'd be stoked about as the couple.

It doesn't like the couple cares. Which is quite healthy for them.

[noseybutt]

3 hours ago, Caroline said:

It's interesting that fundies think it's okay to go to college/ grad school for certain professions (medicine, law, engineering) because they KNOW that being an expert takes time and study. 

But they definitely don't think people need to have a higher education to be teachers. Anybody's mother can do it whether she's intellectually limited or not. Teaching is an art and it takes years of practice and higher education to teach all of the individual disciplines a high school student needs. I have two advanced degrees but would never have attempted to teach my daughter science or math at a high level. English, history, and languages -sure, because I have a lot of experience teaching in those areas and a lot of acquired knowledge. 

I never know whether to respond or not to homeschooling threads as a homeschooling parent who has advanced degrees and is not fundamentalist. (Also, the offspring have successfully completed higher education including graduate school and careers in highly competitive fields.)

Here's my take on the bolded. It kind of misses the point. In a healthy educational environment, a parent/teacher acts as a guide to help the teen learn what they need to learn. It can never be about centering the parent/teacher. Instead, you have to center what it is the teen needs or wants to learn.

This can involve finding curriculum, local classes or tutors, online classes, or self-teaching. 

Most teenagers are very very capable to learning how to self-educate. For each of my kids, I intentionally would encourage them to pick one subject that they wanted to self-teach and then would turn them loose---adding in structure and resources as necessary. This included math up through Calculus I and II.

You get no argument from me that many SODRT are not healthy precisely because the parents are centering themselves. It's very narcissistic. They are also often isolating the kids socially and intellectually. Also, they are taking self-teaching to a level that is extreme and not developmentally appropriate. 

But, the other extreme that education must be in a classroom with someone with a credential---that is simply not accurate. Learning can occur in many different ways and in many different circumstances.

A shocking amount of my professional career has been self-taught or at least self-directed, to the point that my second half of my career means I am back teaching early career professionals because learning in a more structured setting sometimes is the most efficient. But part of what I do with early career professionals is help them map out their own professional development. It's almost the exact process I used with homeschooling my own kids with the exception that I refuse to check in with them. Ha!

 

[formerhsfundie]

36 minutes ago, HereticHick said:

It doesn't like the couple cares. Which is quite healthy for them.

 The photographer is going out of their way to accentuate it, though. Made me think of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman and how there are angles you can choose to minimize the difference rather than highlight it.  

[Milly-Molly-Mandy]

52 minutes ago, formerhsfundie said:

 The photographer is going out of their way to accentuate it, though. Made me think of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman and how there are angles you can choose to minimize the difference rather than highlight it.  

Woah those are some terrible photos. But honestly with that massive height difference you may as well embrace it. Angles won't make a difference with these two! 

[Maggie Mae]

5 hours ago, formerhsfundie said:

Definitely shows off their height difference (or is the groom seated?). Not something I'd be stoked about as the couple.

I'm more concerned that it is literally the back of people's heads. In theatre, we were trained to never put your back to the audience. Why would the bride and groom want a photo of their backs, with the guests blurred out? And half eaten dessert on the table. 

Maybe I'm just bougie about my photography. 

I also think it's the photographer's responsibility to get people to look at the camera, to crop/process, and to pay attention to framing and ratios.

The other thing I noticed was that there were a lot more photos of the brides relatives vs the grooms family and friends. 

[kpmom]

22 hours ago, hoipolloi said:

Wonder why Christopher didn't use the infamous around-the-corner shot.

I thought he was kind of going for that here, but he ended up showing her coming all the way down and ended with a picture of the couple hugging.  It would have made such a nice picture if he had gotten a close-up of the groom’s face when he turned and first  saw her, but nope.

[AverageGiraffe]

19 minutes ago, kpmom said:

I thought he was kind of going for that here, but he ended up showing her coming all the way down and ended with a picture of the couple hugging.  It would have made such a nice picture if he had gotten a close-up of the groom’s face when he turned and first  saw her, but nope.

I was also thinking it would have been nice to get that first reaction but in the next few where he's looking at and adjusting her dress, all I could think was "that man LOVE loves her". He looks like he won the lottery in every picture. I love that for her. 

[Red Hair, Black Dress]

I did think the photo of the couple kissing behind the sombrero was cute.

But over all there were sooooooo many shots that could have been taken -- and that Christopher as a supposedly professional photographer should have taken. Random phone photos by guests would have been better.

The issue here is Christopher Maxwell is not even a mediocre photographer -- he's sub-par. And........ I think this stems from the fact photographer was not what he wanted to be. It's what he was pushed (forced?) in to. He wanted to be an EMT  He has no interest in photography.

It's like Sarah being pushing into writing the Moody books when her interest is photography. Fortunately now she's left Stevehovah World (TM) she's establishing herself in what she's interested in and does best.

Edited January 11 by Red Hair, Black Dress