Posted on 06/18/2007 12:21:52 AM PDT by LibertyRocks
Edited on 06/18/2007 1:15:58 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
I was just watching Ebert & Roeper and would like to report to my fellow homeschoolers that the guest host taking Roger Ebert's place tonight, Robert Wilonsky, made a very disrespectful and rude comment in relation to homeschoolers...
While reviewing the upcoming movie "Nancy Drew" Roeper made a comment that Nancy was a 1950's girl in relation to what she thought constituted a birthday party. When Roeper said that this would be a good movie that would be liked by 12-year-old girls, Wilonsky replied, "Maybe Homeschooled 12-year-olds"...
I found this to be a very ignorant and disrespectful comment, and I am left wondering what Mr. Wilonsky thinks would be better suited for 12-year-old Public Schooled/Private Schooled students to be watching (Sex, Drinking & Drugs???)?
I would like to ask my fellow homeschool parents to write to both Ebert & Roeper (Buena Vista Entertainment) as well as Mr. Wilonsky himself, and express your displeasure with this disrespectful comment.
Here is how to contact the show & Mr. Wilonsky...
Ebert & Roeper Show: http://bventertainment.go.com/tv/buenavista/ebertandroeper/ Use the "Feedback" link at the top navigation bar to submit a comment.
Mr. Wilonsky: I could only find one email address online for Mr. Wilonsky (he also writes at RottenTomatoes.com, as well as the Village Voice, L.A. Weekly, and the Phoenix New Times). Here is his email address through his employer the Dallas Observer:
Robert.Wilonsky@dallasobserver.com
In my comment to the Ebert & Roeper show I requested not only that they do not bring Mr. Wilonsky back for any more co-hosting gigs, but also that they issue an on-air apology to all homeschooled students.
Right now we have a labrador retriever. The plan is to say, “You can take her out if you can get along with the dog.” Of course, they’ll get along with the labrador. “No. Not that dog. The other dog.” LOL!
I've never heard of a school in Virginia that gave out condoms to 5th graders. We are a pretty conservative state. Even Family Life Education is an option that is easily opted out of. If you don't like your surroundings, what is keeping you there? Move to a more conservative state.
Evolution is a theory, not a religon. It was not taught to my children, it was presented. As with everything else in our world from music to tv to school to movies, my children listened, weighed it out against what they were taught at church and can discuss it, but do not believe it. I would never willingly withhold scientific information from them.
Did you attend a public university? Will any of your children? What about a community college? What about roads or parks? Do you use those? What about the police, rescue squads, and fire services. What about the local jail/prison? Do you begrudge that money also? Money for those services are also taken from you and your neighbors. We don't have the luxury of living in a bubble or a mountain on a hill completely away from others. There is a certain interdependency at work in a civilized society. I wasn't aware that one had to be a hermit to be a conservative. Did I miss that memo?
I understand your experiences. Although I know in my heart that not all Christian schools are like the ones I attended, I would have never, ever, for one moment allowed either of my girls to attend one. What I experienced was clear-cut sexual/sadistic abuse. No grown man should ever, ever hand spank a child’s bare bottom, over his knee. No grown man should paddle a 16 year old in front of a class with her skirt pulled up. No grown woman should slap a 17 year old across the face for ‘sassing her.’Unfortunately, it happened at 3 different schools in 2 different states (GA and CO), therefore, I hold a strong personal bias against Christian schools and not much anyone says to me can change it. So I actually completely understand your position. Because of your experiences, nothing could have forced you to send your kids to a public school and nothing could have forced me to send mine to a Christian school. I’m glad we have options and I’m one of those that believes those option should always stay.
Another one that I just cringe at is when the head goes back ever so slightly, the eyes narrow, and I hear: “Ohhhh, so you hoooomeschooool”, usually done by those in educational fields.
Except that any parent caught doing that would be branded a child abuser, likely have their kids put in foster care, and be thrown in jail themselves.
I personally know some homeschoolers who were accused of child abuse by an anonymous tip (unsubstantiated, of course), and the original homeschool pioneers had no support from anyone, not family, friends, church, no one. There are still people accused of child abuse because they homeschool, the authorities keep trying.
As a matter of fact, I believe that one of the reasons homeschoolers react so strongly to the socialization issue is because in it lies the not so subtle suggestions that we are still abusing our children, by not allowing *proper* social development; and that we're not good parents because we're raising a bunch of geeky social misfits who won't be able to function is society as adults. People are bound to get a little defensive when accused of that.
As far as whether sending kids to public school is *child abuse*, well, I have yet to see any family investigated by DSS for the *abuse* of sending their kids to public school. Public school parents do not live under that cloud because the authorities will NEVER believe that sending a kid to public school is child abuse.
It was in large part the discipline issue that kept me from sending my kids to a private Christian school. I was not going to hand over authority to spank my kids without my permission before hand, and that does not include just signing a form. And to enroll your kids in the school, you had to sign the form allowing corporal punishment.
I am very in favor of spanking but only from a parent (or grandparent), but I don’t know what criteria they would use and I was not going to be notified AFTER the fact.
The other factors that led use to homeschooling were the cost, required fund-raisers, required lunchroom and janitorial duty, the cost, and the hour long bus ride each way in a NY lake effect snow belt. There are times kids would be going to school in weather I wouldn’t drive in, and I’ll tackle just about anything.
We kind of fell into homeschooling because the public school was so bad and the private schools just wouldn’t have worked. It was just getting off the ground at that time and boy did we face resistance from family.
It doesn’t stop anytime. My nearly 18yo son asked me Saturday night if I was going to the store Sunday afternoon. Yeah, I needed to get something, well take him along.
Every once in awhile a movie comes out that both of them pester me about going with them to see.
The enjoyment of being their parent is amazing. I cannot imagine that my parents could say that about our relationship during those years. Not much to look back on in fondness.
I saw the trailor for this travesty; Nancy Drew it is not. An agendized version, that would be unrecognizable to its author? Definitely.
Required janitorial duties? for parents? woah
With my in-laws it’s all about money and status (my parents are both dead). When the oldest got to nursery school age, they were unhappy that we weren’t sending her to nursery school, aghast that she wasn’t going to pre-school and mortified when we told them that we were homeschooling.
When we got the results back from her first standardized test and mailed them to my in-laws, they backed off (90+%), but I don’t believe that it was until 7th grade when our oldest went to the National Spelling Bee that things really changed. It gave my M-i-l something to be proud of to her friends and I think that was part of the issue.
We have since moved to a better community, one that I may never have homeschooled in if we had been here in the first place, so when my daughter finished high school in three years, she went there for a year for school experience and did very well. My son will be going for his senior year as well. We’re not near enough to a community college for it to be feasible. Matter of fact, we’re not near anything.
Anyway, I sure can identify with the family problems and be grateful that they’re snowbirds.
Are you on drugs?
Fill the bunker with supplies? Why would I want to do that?
The truth is worrying about folks who have made up their minds about a subject is not a profitable way to spend my time. I would rather spend my time living a good example and letting people learn for themselves. Many folks no matter how good the argument will never change their minds and for the vast majority of folks arguing with them is like beating your head against the wall. It only feels good when you stop.
Sorry, but you sound like the manager who surrounds himself with lesser intellects just to make the manager look like a genius. I, OTOH, prefer surrounding myself with the smartest people I can find so that we all prosper.
hehe..You are on drugs.
You really need to read a history of public schooling in this country in order to appreciate why it is important to defend homeschooling. By doing so you are defending liberty and individualism versus collectivism and big government. So then you ARE making the comparison between the Holocaust and Homeschooling...wow. And you are an angry person on top of it. Lighten up. Sometimes its easier to convince a person of your point of view by releasing their arm instead of twisting tighter behind their backs.
no pretending here, my friend. Just choosing my battles more carefully. I teach my children the same things. There is no impact made on the world greater than showing people by example how their prejudices are wrong. Attitudes about homeschooling are something I deal with every day. My kids don’t need to see them or know about them at their tender ages. Parenting is about screening and monitoring and teaching according to emotional age, not just chronological. Homeschooling allows me to be more attentive and tuned into my family.
I fight other battles that are bigger, but I’m a huge advocate of homeschooling and have opportunities every single day to have a voice to those who see what a good job I’m doing with my own. We deal with crazy beliefs (that people voice to me right in front of my children!) about foster kids, and adoption, that I do battle with readily. Homeschooling is down on the list, but it’s definitely on the list. (Not with a movie critic, though. Waste of time.)
By the way, I’m a single (only) parent teaching all four of mine. So I know about sacrifice.
Your comments show your ignorance.
Do you read your own comments ?
You can’t defend your position with facts or logic, so you just make up a personal attack on the person making the argument.
Your post is pathetic.
Radio...thats all I’ll say....(chuckle)
LOL...I can top that....After my children finished their schooling, our family started attending church....When the people at the church found out we had homeschooled our children before we joined a church we got a lot of “you homeschooled your children but you weren’t saved” in an incredulous tone....I found this attitude a bit annoying. Like only “saved” people could possibly have the best interest of their children in mind. A bit snobbish, IMO.
Becky
Abolishing gummint skewels is only one of many steps needed. Social workers need to be defanged as well rather than being given broad and unconstitutional "powers" to act to change the status quo without previous due process and hearings in any but extreme emergencies. We need a wall of separation between law and emotionalism. Even (particularly???) the courts need much more objective standards as judges often feel free to act on gut instinct or merely to take the path of least threat to the judge's own future. No judge loses his/her job taking kids from allegedly abusive parents when the parents did nothing wrong as easily as a judge will lose his/her job leaving the kid with the parents who might subsequently fail to protect their kids or even do them harm. Judges will justify pro-abortion decisions by saying that SCOTUS and Roe vs. Wade have tied their hands. They need to have their hands tied on other subjects instead.
Why were your homeschooling friends without support? Maybe homeschoolers need a substantial injection of courage in the face of bureaucracy. Truth matters and so does justice.
I don't think that I specifically called it "child abuse" too send one's children to gummint skewels. Negligent parenting??? Perhaps, but not always. My eldest was sent to a rural gummint skewel for her last two years of high school as a response to continual dissatisfaction with every other form of education. She was given a choice of returning to homeschooling or public high school (which she was requesting). "If we enroll you there, you will stay there for the remaining two years until graduation." By that time, she was well-enough prepared and had so inherited her parents' stubborn genes that her belief structure was in less jeopardy than that of most of her teachers. In retrospect, sending her to the local mild form of PS 666 was really a bit of gummint skewel abuse. Even the atheist science teachers had to militantly recruit her to interscholastic "Academic Bowl" and other academic competitions where she did quite well even against the privately schooled. Of course, those teachers lived in terror that my eldest might be asked about monkeys as ancestors and publicly exhibit her refusal to worship false gods such as Darwin and his love slaves.
When that daughter entered gummint skewel, some of our friends were appalled and convinced that she would be a pregnant (or lesbian), alcoholic, narcotics-addicted, Darwin/ape worship and otherwise heathen, modernist Demonrat wind tunnel moments after arrival at the gummint skewel (where, academically, she spent the two years bored stiff and reading whatever book she pleased hidden inside the text book in class). She was and remains quite convinced of the truths of the Teaching Magisterium, Scripture, Western Civilization generally and music far too high class for my wide-ranging Buddy Holly/Beach Boys/Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin/Nat King Cole/Al Jolson/PPM tastes. I do agree with her on polyphony and Gregorian Chant in their place.
God bless you and yours.
You can’t defend your position with facts or logic, so you just make up a personal attack on the person making the argument.
Follows this earlier post
You might want to buy that compound now and begin filling the bunker with supplies, because “they” will be coming for your money, your property, and your rights.
and this
Sorry, but you sound like the manager who surrounds himself with lesser intellects just to make the manager look like a genius. I, OTOH, prefer surrounding myself with the smartest people I can find so that we all prosper.
Which was in response to this...You have a point but the problem I see is denying the holocaust and contrasting public and home schooled children are not quite the same thing.
Project much?
Listen we can dance if you want to but based on my limited reading of your inane posts it won't be much fun for you. But if you must please respond.
Comparing the Holocaust with Homeschooling shows me that your perspective has not yet been tempered by life. Live a while longer then come back and play...or not.
“Why were your homeschooling friends without support?”
The friends that had no support were the pioneers in our state. In the EARLY days of homeschooling, virtually nobody supported those folks. All they had was each other. The families were charged either with child abuse or educational neglect and were threatened with the removal of their children from their homes. The trial one of the families went through, with the support of HSLDA, was responsible for the homeschool laws that were drafted to regulate homeschooling in NY.
Here’s a link to the case:
http://www.mainstream.com/nhpolitics/blackwelder1.html
I know you were being sarcastic. I was just recognizing the irony of a system that condemns one set of people who do something and ignores another set who do the same thing.
My comments about child abuse were simply that people sending their kids to public schools would never get charged with child abuse for the educational option they chose, unlike homeschoolers who still live under the cloud of that threat some twenty years later. I didn’t mean that sending you child to PS is child abuse, just that the system would NEVER recognize or acknowledge it as such.
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