Posted on 12/29/2016 3:08:53 AM PST by usafa92
Upon reflection this is a woman who successfully helped Trump win the Presidency and she is going to be stymied over this? I think not.
agreed
Bravo, big boy! Khan is awesome. We are loving Life of Fred. How can anyone not? Hard bound math books by a mathematician from first grade through college. Filled with funny stories and relevant life lessons. Ever used it?
All my little ones used the wonderful Miquon workbooks early on. Math books SHOULD BE MADE BY MATH GENIUSES. Too bad none of the school ones ever are.
The Democrat Thug Party.
We have not used Life of Fred, but I know people who love it. We use Saxon or Khan Academy or MCP for basic drills. The hard part is getting the boys through the arithmetic drills when they’d rather go outside. I rely on “Better Late Than Early” with the ones who aren’t freak geniuses.
Thank you so much for your kind words. And I understand....there is always the sadness & worry of maybe it being the last time. Thanks again, meant a lot. (I am sitting on the couch having tea as my husband puts a cheapo grill together. The last one grilled its last supper weeks ago. Hope you had a wonderful Christmas.)
Totally agree. Better late than early. I know you have a lot of kids - I only have four but I am much less concerned about actual facts they have and more interested in them as good people, and feeling capable at their levels. I feel like the two olders, at the very least, have been helped to be the best THEM that they can be, by homeschooling.
Our children pick up facts from the atmosphere: there’s always some kind of instruction going on, and even if they can’t read (which is only Kathleen, now), they are always looking through books with pictures, charts, diagrams.
My goal for the second half of the year is to get Frank (who is 7) up to speed on arithmetic facts.
Trump has the bucks to establish a private school for his staffers. If he allowed to be located in the White House the meltdown of public educrats would be epic. Let’s hope he does it.
LOL, I hope the “Common Core” math isn’t one of those!
I will say, I was (and am) a lucky, lucky, man. I wanted to go to college in the sciences when I was in the Navy, but I knew I could never do any of the math. While on a deployment, I was assigned to work directly with a civilian contractor who was pioneering the placement of monitoring systems on combat jet aircraft that could record parameters (temperature, vibration, etc) throughout a flight which could be downloaded and analyzed to try to predict in advance when a jet engine might potentially fail. (I was a jet mechanic) This was back in the mid-Seventies, so I was working with mainframe computers, maintaining the monitoring systems in the planes, changing the tapes, manipulating the data, it was a great experience! (and important, too...trying to figure out how to change a jet engine in a single engine plane before it fails!) What a job I had.
The contractor taught courses on the ship for college credits, and when I told him I didn’t think I could go to college because I couldn’t do math, he cheerfully offered to tutor me at no charge. He got me over the hump, and I got a degree in Chemistry (for me, the crowning challenge was to pass Physical Chemistry, which employs a huge amount of math at pretty high levels...and I did it.)
That man changed my life.
We wrote a few letters after I got out, and I lost touch with him. But I kept looking, and as the Internet progressed, I would take up the search every few years, unsuccessfully. Then, just a couple of years ago, I found his address online. I wrote him a long letter to thank him for making such a difference in my life, but never heard back. I was a 20 year old, and he was in his thirties, so it is possible he might have passed on. But the debt of gratitude I have to him can only be paid by the use of the skills he gave me, so that is how I roll!
Honestly, I love being proficient at math now. It is as if that experience as a kid put a huge chip on my shoulder that I enjoy having there every time I successfully use some concept of math in everyday life or my job.
Just tweeted it to him
I will answer your questions in reverse order.
No, we do not have school age children.
No, we do not (currently) home school.
Yes, we do know both the time & effort required to home school AND the rewards from home schooling.
Our four children range in age from 36 to 43. All are college graduates with 5 Bachelor's degrees and two Master's degrees between them. Our eldest is starting her Doctorate.
They were home schooled in their early years while we lived in Africa. That task primarily fell to my wife since I was flying a missionary helicopter and away from home a good bit of the time. Some of their home schooling took place while living in tents in a very remote village in Uganda.
Yes, we fully understand the commitment of time & energy required for parents to home school their children.
My original comment was meant to accentuate the demands upon the time and energy of a Cabinet Secretary with a comparison to the amount of time & energy requires to home school children. If Mrs. DeVos were to attempt to do BOTH jobs simultaneously, one or the other would be neglected, at least partially.
If a loving parent who has advocated home schooling chooses, for a time, to place their children in an outside school, it does not mean that they have "lost the faith" or are neglecting their children.
thank you.
Good answer.
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