Homeschoolers Disrespected on Ebert & Roeper

Ebert & Roeper ^ | 6/18/07

[twinzmommy]

LOL okay I had to giggle at your comment — my 12 year old twins (who are homeschooled) and I were just discussing navel rings. Honestly I have no problem with them and if they want them *shrug*

That being said, I had a nose ring for awhile *laugh* And my girls go to concerts and things with my hubby. They are overall, pretty normal, and probably a little “weird” in the things they like/enjoy in the world. But then, hubby is a techno-geek type and I’m a college student (at 35).

On top of that, they have no interest in the Nancy Drew movie — which bummed ME out! I love Nancy Drew! The previews for the movie look a little ummmm. . . stupid though.

My girls would rather go to the skating rink or water park — or see Shrek 3 for the umpteenth time.

[SoftballMominVA]

I'm with you on the navel rings. My girls (17 and 20) don't have them, but I wouldn't much care if they did. I draw the absolute line at anything in the mouth. I paid nearly 10k for their teeth and a lip stud would send me ballistic.

Two years ago, my younger (who plays softball) was injured in a game. When her teammate called me to tell me to come and get her the first thing she said was "She said to tell you her teeth are okay, her nose might be broken, but the teeth are good" Turned out to be a broken cheekbone, but the teeth are still good :)

[BlackElk]

Let us start by abolishing the gummint "grammar" skewels and high skewels and Head Start and other programs for kids of tender years. That does not equate to having "no schools whatsoever." It means no tax-supported leftist brainwashing institutions for kids up to 18, no National Education Association commissars teaching kids that they are nothing but trousered or skirted apes or that abortion is peachy keen or that the school nurse can help little Jezebel get one without Dad and Mom finding out or that "fisting" with Bruce is somehow "sexual" activity opposed only by bigots, that the USA is always wrong, etc.

Homeschooling is the option of any parent as is private schooling. On the question of who pays the cost, parents ought to be the first to pay. It will cost MUCH LESS (say, $3000 per child per year as opposed to as much as $10-12,000 per year) to educate children than the gummint skewels charge to babysit and brainwash them, because we will be able to forego the NEA union extortion, the entertainment programs that keep Junior and Missie from physical revolution against the insult to his and her intelligence posed by the brainwashing programs and PC nonsense.

If the parents CANNOT pay, then that is why God invented fundraising (Bingo, direct mail, financial advisory boards, business sources, churchgoers, churches, civic minded types who will now be able to control the expenditure of their contributions by taking their cash elsewhere when dissatisfied, and (for the atheists/agnostics and other fruits, nuts and vegetables who will feel "dispossessed" by being barred from farming by taxes those among us who resent their fantasies) our "elitist" enemies can better afford to pay for their kids' "educations" than we can afford to subsidize them.

"Higher Education" (a reference to recreational pharmaceuticals????) poses less of an immediate threat to the kids and to our nation although it thoroughly deserves to be reformed as well. Just what do community colleges accomplish???? Remedial alphabet??? Remedial counting on the fingers of two hands? Football and basketball programs for older teenagers? Lower tuition costs for inferior education???? I taught at one and was not impressed. I did note that graduates of local gummint high skewels were often functionally illiterate and that the administration lived off the fat of the land. One student asked that I literally read the assigned readings in class "because we understand it so much better when you read it to us." And she was a well-spoken middle-aged mother of some intelligence going back to school to set an example for her kids and trying to get enough education to get off welfare. The course was a simple one in business law. The assignment in question was fewer than ten pages and the class had from Thursday to Tuesday to read it. My impression was that many of my students were more serious about their educations than their gummint skewel teachers had been. I offered to be available to any student(s) one hour per class night or at my law office by appointment for what amounted to unpaid tutoring. A few took me up on it.

You would do well to read what the late Russell Kirk had to say about the travesty of gigantic state universities posing as educational institutions and what he wrote about what he called "The Permanent Things." We should make a special case of medical schools, keep them out of gummint hands, see to it that medical student are treated humanely, reform internship and residency to limit the hours to 40 or so per week to protect doctors and patients alike. Law schools are not terribly necessary. We need not have gummint law skewels either unless you want a homogenized legal profession which dances to gummint's desired tune. The old and better method of five years or so of paid legal internship under licensed lawyers, again with limitations on time demanded consistent with the best interests of the law candidates and clients, followed by rigorous bar examinations, can easily and meritoriously turn out better lawyers than law schools do. By abolishing gummint skewels generally, we can do away with "education" degrees altogether and let the market decide where the education deserves patronage.

But, but....

[SoftballMominVA]

So, to make a long post short, you are in the camp that feels that parents should provide for their child's education through their own means, rather than through taxes levied onto the general population. This belief is extended through to all forms of higher learning, especially medical schools which should be kept in private hands to prevent any government influence. For those parents without the financial means to provide a private education, these parents should rely on private fundraising, rather than the government. You believe this because in your experiences these schools provide no benefit to either the student or the public at-large.

Have I misrepresented you in any way? A simple yes or no will suffice.

[BlackElk]

SOME of what you have understandably neglected follows:

Your summary is certainly a partial one. You neglect to repeat the reasons why any conservative or religious or patriotic parent would want to avoid dumping their children into gummint brainwashing factories, why secular humanism is not good for children or other living things, why med school ought particularly not to be influenced by gummint when the Herod Blackmuns set the standards for gummint interference, and a wide variety of other aspects. You also neglect to note that you have no business using gummint to fleece unwilling taxpayers and rob them at gunpoint so that your children can enjoy the dubious benefit of a gummint "education" and become obedient robots of the state. Those are a few examples of the inadequacy of your summary.

What's your point?

[BlackElk]

Also, to make a long story short, you apparently see body mutilation by navel rings as no big deal. I disagree. I suspect the law may allow that leeway just as it imagines that your kids have an absolute fight to do away with your grandchildren by abortion. You may rest assured that my kids won't be so mutilated.

Want to know more about the roots of today's body piercing fad and the ideology behind it? Read The Story of O by Pauline Reage (published in the 1950s or 1960s) but, if you have any sense of responsibility, keep it from your kids until the body piercing issue arises with their kids.

[BlackElk]

#326: “fight” = right

[wardaddy]

can you elaborate in a nutshell..save me the research time please

piercings and body ink are a friggin plague today

[Melas]

As a homeschooling parent, I have to say that you can be too sensitive and too quick to take offense. Yeah, he said it, and yeah, it was insulting, but who cares? He’s a film critic and nothing more.

[SoftballMominVA]

My point? I'm trying to see what your position is - to cut through all of the hyperbole to understand how it is you think the 57 million school age children should be educated. I'm doing this without using exaggeration, but by using simple questions. I'm not asking why you think there should be no public schools, but if you think there should be public schools. You are avoiding giving me a direct answer, which I find odd.

So, here is the question for a third time. Do you think that parents should be 100% responsible for paying for their child's education from K on up, including college, with no government tax dollars in play. Can you answer that question with a yes or no. I don't want a statement with all this fluff about why, just yes or no will do nicely.

[SoftballMominVA]

Body piercings are a side issue and have nothing to do with schooling. That you bring it up is tangental at best to the discussion and shows weakness on your part that you wish to bring this to a more lurid level with which you seem quite comfortable discussing.

I do not wish to read any literature you suggest as I suspect it is as full of foul details as your posts are. Your attempt to connect body rings with abortion is an incredible reach, but typical of your style.

My girls do not have navel rings, as they don't want them. I just wouldn't have a problem if they chose to get them as adults. Your kids aren't "mutilated" huh? No earrings either I suppose?