Posted on 01/20/2009 3:08:35 PM PST by Sopater
Having been through this process with our kids' Catholic School, I can tell you that it doesn't mean that much, except to be able to SAY you're accredited.
Most of the efforts put into accreditation have NOTHING to do with what the kids are being taught, and how, but about the Staff and the Physical Plant. So requiring that schools be accredited will do nothing to raise the level of actual education.
Your problem, not mine. My guns are in a strong safe with a combination lock. Unless the little shits are mind readers, they're definitely out of reach. Plus the kids are quite knowledgeable about how to handle a gun safely when they are under adult supervision, and have been through Eddie Eagle training and know what to do when they are not so supervised. I don't worry a bit.
I don’t tell my kids how hard we had it when I was a kid. They don’t believe us anyway.
While they are wasting time and tax payers money investigating a normal family, some other family is REALLY abusing their kids.
Boy are you bringing back the memories.
My poor parents. They actually believed that they taught me the birds and the bees, and that santa doesn’t exist, blah blah blah.
That stuff was figured out way before they ever got around to telling me. I remember learning how to drive the car (sort of) when waiting for my sister’s piano lesson to end. My mom sent me outside to get her checkbook out of the car. It was parked on a hill(pointing uphill). She gave me the keys to get into the car. Mom wasn’t mechanically smart enough to know how to turn the wheels to the curb on hills...unfortunately.
Back in those days, the gear selector on automatics would move without stepping on the brake, and without even starting the car up. Also, nowdays, the gear selector lever must be pulled towards you before moving it from one gear to the other. Not back then. Back then all you had to do was slide it side to side.
Well, I climbed over the front seat and bumped the gear lever with my foot as I did so and knocked it out of park. The car started rolling backwards down hill. I don’t remember why I needed in the back seat. But I was a kid, I didn’t need a reason, right?
Oh, mom also wasn’t mechanically smart enough to use the emergency brake.
I knew immediately what happened because I had put my foot on the steering wheel on purpose and knew it slipped off and hit the gear lever. And I had a pretty good idea that I was about to crash if I didn’t do something fast. I jumped into the driver’s seat and grabbed the wheel and stomped on the brake. NO GOOD! A little kid can’t budge either the steering wheel or the brake without power assist. I knew I had to put the gear selector back into park, but I didn’t know which way or how to find park(I didn’t yet know about the PRNDL indicator yet). I grabbed it and jammed it one way(nothing) then jammed it the other way. Whammo, car stopped with a horrible grinding/clunking. THANK GOODNESS I didn’t have to do a dive-roll out the car door, like I saw all the time on TV.
Now, I didn’t know what to do. THe car wasn’t where my mom parked it. I was terrified of being in trouble for moving the car. I thought there’s a definite possibility that i just ruined the car making it stop with that horrible noise. tHere’s no way mom wouldn’t notice the car wasn’t where she parked it.
I had to think fast.
Piano lesson would be over soon. Mom would be wondering what’s taking so long. Just incase I did damage the transmission, I HAD to put the car back where it was so mom would think SHE ruined the transmission herself. If she found it in a different spot, she’d KNOW I did it.
I decided I’d put the car back where it was so no one would notice. How hard could it be? All I had to do was move straight ahead. No steering required.
I found the right key, and put it in the ignition. I watched mom and dad do it thousands of times. I was fairly certain I could do it. If not, I now knew how to stop the car from rolling down the hill out of control. worst case scenario, I screw up and park the car further away than it currently is.
So it’s “double or nothing”...I’M IN!
So, I turn the key, pump the gas, and let go of the key, and hold the gas down part way as soon as it catches...VROOOM! It’s running! THen let up on the gas. Now, the hard part. Drive.
I thought about quitting right there...just turning the engine off and taking my lumps for what had already transpired. NOPE! I’m going through with this!
I realized real quick that I couldn’t reach the gas while seeing out the windshield. So I guessed. The house was up higher than the street. I looked out the passenger window up at the house and used that to gauge my distance traveled. I still didn’t know about that PRNDL thing. So I yanked down on the gear selector real hard. The engine was running. Car isn’t going anywhere. I slide down off the seat and hit the gas pedal...Whoa! we take off like crazy! I get off the gas real fast and jam the gear back into park and stop with a clunk.
It takes a few seconds to recover from the heart attack I just had.
I’m still alive, no crashes, no visible damage, look around and assess the situation...NOT FAR ENOUGH.
I do that at least one more time. It seems like I did it a total of 3 times before I decided I was in the right spot.
To this day, I never told mom about that. Also, the transmission was fine...somehow. For days I expected the car to break down and I rehearsed in my mind the best way to be surprised and play dumb.
Yep, that would be your kids!
<grin>
That's a pretty typical approach, but soon to be illegal in New Hampshire unless we can defeat HB 367. Apart from the inconvenience and expense of having to have a "credentialed educator" - i.e. a teacher administer the test, there is the even bigger issue of HB 367 repealing the existing, objective standards for approval of a student's progress. Right now in our state if you choose to use a standardized test, and if your child scores above the 40th percentile that is considered "adequate educational progress". Under the new law the local school superintendent gets to decide what he or she considers "adequate".
HSLDA is on the case, we'll all be working with them to defeat the bill.
“As for firearms...I am getting really disgusted at people who say that it’s “ok to keep firearms in the house with children if the guns are out of the reach of children.”
My two cents, get over it.
Well writ, though that’s a pretty common experience as part of growing up (chaos with the car). I object to your parents actually lecturing you on Santa not being real. That’s just not right. Next I suppose you’ll tell us how parents are filling in for the Easter Bunny.
Nope. I got a real good story about the easter bunny.
Easter bunny detail was always my mom’s responsibility. She hid the eggs. She bought the candy. She kept it hid from us until easter sunday. She made up the baskets, She hid the baskets. she shopped for easter sunday clothes...Blah blah blah.
Mom helped us make the colored eggs. Then in the middle of the night...before easter sunday...she would get up and swipe all the colored eggs and hide them.
Ok, now this is really funny, and I’m getting giddy just anticipating telling this story.
One year, she fell asleep on the couch and didn’t wake up in time to hide everything! I know, hilarious huh?
It gets way better. Trust me.
Little kids are known to get up REAL early, right? Especially for saturday morning cartoons. And REALLY especially for christmas and such.
Well, I got up before everyone in the house(still dark I think) and I found my mom sound asleep on the couch and no easter baskets anywhere. Rather than wake my mom up(I was already onto their scams and was already pretty sure santa wasn’t real), I went into the kitchen and checked for our easter eggs. THey were still where we left them!
I decided “I can do this! And it will be a funny joke” I hid all the easter eggs. Then I searched all the closets and all the super secret hiding places and found two great big easter baskets filled with candy. I hid the baskets in the same place they were hid EVERY year...behind the couch.
Then I went back to bed.
Pretty soon I start to hear the usual morning sounds. I get up and act like nothing happened. My mom has this funny look on her face. She keeps looking at my dad and laughing.(naturally thinking that he took over her job this year). Me and my sister go about searching for the eggs like nothing was out of the ordinary. My sister finds the baskets behind the couch like they are every year. I pretend to find a few easter eggs.
My mom kept saying all these silly things about the EASTER BUNNY. Like “wow, the easter bunny sure did out-do himself this year”. “I wonder how he hid all these eggs without waking me?” “I wonder if dad helped the easter bunny this year?”
etc etc
I loved it.
This is another one of those things I’ve never told my parents about. I may have told my sister about it once though. Can’t remember for sure.
I have to presume that you're totally ignorant regarding gun safes -- ever heard of a combination lock? They're the most common type of lock used on gun safes. I'd suspect that's the case specifically so that kids (and thieves) can't just use the key.
You are correct. I do not own a gun safe. I own a wall hung gun rack, and a gun cabinet(with windows, one window is missing). the gun cabinet has a lock, and the key sits just inside the missing window of the cabinet. The gun rack has no lock.
Going to bed early is torture ... followed closely by being required to get up in the morning.
Sounded like you were writing my biography. That is why once a month my kids and I went to the range. Not only did they know the rules of gun safety by heart, they are really good shots. Guns in our house were no mystery.
Regarding TV, we had a TV but only got three channels and they were fuzzy. As a result, my kids became pretty good poker players.
We home schooled for 12 years.
Thank you!
Homeschooling is why I don’t get to respond quiet as quickly as I should.
We happen to be in the last 5 months of our 10 year journey. My daughter will graduate in May, and has already begun college classes.
I’m just thankful I live in a state which allows homeschooling without a lot of interference.
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