ping
We are planning to homeschool. Had our first dispute about it last night. I was watching Barbarians II, which is an awesome History Channel series, and said it would be great to burn to a CD for homeschooling. Lots of battles and blood; my wife did not approve. She said middle school level, not elementary. I thought 5th grade would be right for the boys anyway.
1. Homeschoolers usually dodge many of the quack teaching methods popular in “teacher education”.
2. Homeschoolers usually dodge incompetent/uncaring teachers or as Bobby Fisher put it “teachers are jerks”.
3. Homeschoolers usually dodge many of the excesses of political correctness.
4. Homeschoolers usually dodge the secularism of public schools and can speak freely of the Bible, God, and Christian philosophy.
Home school bump.
“Institutionalizing” children is a good way of putting it. There is no reason a first grader should be “chained” to their desk for hours and hours a day, when the entire day’s lessons could be done much more quickly with an adult paying more attention to them 1 on 1. Less pressure, more time to play.
Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Senator John Edwards (D-North Carolina) told the Wall Street Journal that this fall she plans to home educate the couple’s two youngest children “with the help of a tutor.”
I guess they don’t want their kids to associate with the “back woods redneck” types in their new neighborhood.
“...The Burns family, of Alaska, set out on a 36-foot sailboat this summer to travel the world for three years...”
Now this is an advantage of homeschooling over private schools. For the tuition/expenses ($5K or more per student) paid for a private school the whole family can take a nice field trip. In our case it was not so adventurous as the Burns family but we did do some educational touring and backpacking.
Snort. I shall translate.
"I am an elitist politician's wife who wouldn't dare put my kids into public schools so we have a tutor teach them at home...wait, we HOMESCHOOL! I can pander to the dirty masses! Now where's that reporter from the Wall Street Journal..."
(Do I seem a little too cynical?)
I read Drs. Moore and Moore’s book, “Better Late than Early”.
Fantastic book.
I think that homeschooling might be over the hump.
All of the objections to it (”socialization!” “exposure to diversity!”) have become pro-forma. They are political theater, designed to keep the sluiceway between our bank accounts and the teacher unions’ bank accounts nice and smooth. They are no longer seriously intended to discourage homeschooling parents or inspire colleges to discriminate against homeschooled applicants.
It’s much the same as the pro forma protests against the allegedly anti-social impact of choosing to privately school your children. The goal is solely to keep up property taxes and resist vouchers, with no thought that it will reduce actual private school enrollment by one student. I actually like that particular political theater, it’s actually a great demonstration of the rottenness of the system: the UAW won’t stand for a Democrat politician driving a Toyota, but with all their power the NEA and AFT have to look the other way when virtually no Democrats will enroll their kids in the Washington DC public schools or in home district public schools if they are even slightly troubled.
Almost the entire Left in the US insists that a 12 year old girl has the right to contract for an abortion at a Planned Parenthood clinic. What happened to the idea that parents have an unalienable right to made decisions for their minor children. It seems the Left has been happy to ignore and destroy that right in their efforts to secure abortion.
In truth all parents homeschool until they surrender their children to a professional education establishment where leftists hold the keys to the education and the credential-granting mechanisms of the State, who insists that all teachers must be “certified”. But who defines what is “certified”? The leftists who control the State agency that grants the certificate.
Having successfully homeschooled my daughter, who left home to earn two undergraduate degrees with honors and then a graduate degree with honors, I would urge all parents to consider homeschooling for as long as they can do so successfully. Every year they keep their children out of the government indoctrination factory will decrease the likelihood that their children will be consigned to the dark dungeon of leftist thinking, or worse- will turn out to be leftists themselves.
Ping of interest.
“Another reason to homeschool” ping.
I can’t wait to start homeschooling my babies! (well, I only have one baby right now..more to come in the future!!)
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Institutionalization! I hope to see that term used commonly.
Homeschooling is the best way to raise and educate a child. It is a shame that some children will need to be institutionalized for their education. We need orphanages too, but no one is arguing that orphanages are the best way to raise up a child.