Government, Week 16

[BLT]

We're doing our government discussion for Week 16, and I'm having a tough time answering some of the questions using the online document. For example, I can't find a section which addresses Luther's recommendations for a prince, or whether subjects need to obey when a prince does what is wrong. Is this in the reading?

This was a little frustrating today, because in the teacher's notes are full of quotes from On Secular Authority, and I kept thinking that we could find the quotes in the reading, but many of them aren't there. "There has to be someone to catch the wicked, to accuse them, and execute them, and to protect, acquit, defend and save the good." "They had the same spirit and faith in Christ that we have, and were just as much Christians as we are." "Rest assured that those who avenge themselves and litigate and quarrel in the courts for their goods..." "Christians are neither to employ nor to call on the sword for themselves and in their own concerns." "It is always better that a villain should live than that a just man should be killed." "Secular government has laws that extend no further than the body, goods, and outward, earthly matters."
and a couple more; none of these I can find in the reading.

Once I figured this out, our discussion went much better, though it turned into more of a lecture.

Thanks for this government program! Normally we haven't had any troubles at all.

[Somerschool]

As a general rule, the questions in the government discussion closely track the reading. We try to find easily recognizable words or phrases in the reading and write them into the questions so that you can "find your place," so to speak.

In general, it should be possible to take a highlighter and mark the sentence that Question 1 is focused on, then find the sentence Question 2 deals with, and so forth. If you can't figure out what a particular question is addressing, look at the one before it and the one after it... the text you're looking for will almost always fall between those two.

It would probably be useful to train your children to read the document carefully with a pen or highlighter in hand to try to find those bits. It should make them more active readers, and it will definitely help you find your place.

[BLT]

Yes, and as a general rule, that's been exactly what has happened. My point, here, is that the reading as given in the online "CD" for government year 2 has NOT addressed all the questions (as far as I can tell), and the words listed as quotes in the teacher's manual aren't in the reading at all (I tried to "find" them with my search command).

What I'm wondering, I guess, is whether the person who wrote the questions, and the person who put the document on the (eventual) CD, had different selections in mind for the reading.

[Deborah Knits]

We have found the same problem for this week. While I could go online and find an 'open source' document from which they could find the answers, I decided to just have my children skip those questions. They just don't have enough time to do that kind of research in a document that would be significantly longer.