If you follow various storylines of the episode....this family....the Nauglers....go by a method call “unschooling” which basically means natural experiences (games, play, household chores, travel, and personal courses of study). Note, they don’t mention home-schooling which tends to require basic degrees of normal topics that most all home-schooling parents incorporate into their efforts, along with booklets and text.
The problem with this is that once the kids get to eighteen....then what? No one will be able to attest to their reading level. One kid might read at the 3rd grade level and the next kid might read at the 9nd grade level. One kid might have a 12th grade grasp of math and the next kid might have the 4th grade grasp of math. If they came to your factory, shop or office....applying for a job...maybe you’d accept them, but then four weeks later....ask them to leave because they can’t write basic English text at even the 9th grade level.
All these parents are doing....are setting the kids up for stocking shelves, pumping gas, and mowing grass. Beyond that...when the kid reaches thirty and becomes aware of his/her shortfallings...now what? Who screwed up this?
Don’t lecture me over home-schooling....if you go by the method, you aren’t selling the kids short. These parents aren’t home-schooling. They simply letting the kids tag along and just catch things as they occur. That might be ok for 1815, but here in 2015....you kinda need a decent basic education or you get screwed.
I actually get all of that and I agree with your concerns, seriously.
But my core beliefs that come from my understanding of bible teaching, the constitution of the country I live in, and everything every other information source I respect causes me to come to this conclusion:
They are not my kids and it is none of my business. It doesn’t mean I can’t, if so inclined, try to counsel the parents to better prepare their children for adulthood, but that’s all I should be allowed to do. Nobody should be allowed to interfere via the Power of the Gun, which is the technical definition of what the government is doing.
Nobody.
“All these parents are doing....are setting the kids up for stocking shelves, pumping gas, and mowing grass.”
That’s a nice story, but do you have any empirical evidence of that? I mean, can you cite any instances of that ever happening?
Because I know a kid who was essentially unschooled, and he now works for a US congressmen, and pols are constantly calling him to help in their campaigns.
Unschooling and homeschooling are very different.
No offense, but if you think a diploma from a public school guarantees some level of acedemic competence, you are sadly mistaken. Public schools regularly grant diplomas to “students” where “One kid might read at the 3rd grade level and the next kid might read at the 9nd grade level. One kid might have a 12th grade grasp of math and the next kid might have the 4th grade grasp of math.”
Unschooling is certainly not my preferred method, but at least the children aren’t being indoctrinated under the guise of “education.” When a public school teacher is brought up on charges for constant failure, then I will believe the state cares about education. Until that happens, every “educational” kidnapping is patently a witch hunt.
Would you presume them more or less fit for citizenry than the bottom 50% of urban children that have attended public school?
stocking shelves, pumping gas, and mowing grass. —
Won’t all these soon be done by robots?
Hate to tell you, but most of America can’t read at the 9th grade level. Math, I don’t know about, except to say that Common Core is making sure we have no research scientists or accountants or physicists in the next generation.
There was a time when your kids helped with farm chores from an early age. When the "old man" finally died the eldest son would take over the operation.
I graduated High School in 1961. My graduating class had several boys over 20 years old. These boys weren't stupid or held back, they were pulled from school by their fathers to do farm work or logging to earn cash for their families.
After graduation I worked for a year or so in the woods to earn cash for my first year of college. I cut pulp wood for the paper industry and scrub oak for the Kingsford Chemical plant, you probably know of them for their charcoal...
I made enough to carry me through my first year, after that it was student loans w/ interest deferred 'till graduation (good deal!)
Regards,
GtG
I’m TOTALLY with you regarding unschooling.
Any parent with ANY COMMON SENSE knows that kids have NO IDEA why they need to be educated in our world - it is us adults that have to drag them through it. If some of us want to do that through government schools, private schools, or home schooling, that is fine. But if some parents REFUSE to do that, they need to be in a business other than raising kids.
Secondly, ‘unschoolers’ do TREMENDOUS DAMAGE to the home schooling movement - where people have fought for decades to be allowed to educate their own kids, in their own ways, and not have to hide them in the attic (like runaway slaves) when authorities show up. Hell, us home schoolers are even permitted to teach math WITHOUT calculators and reading using PHONICS - two methods that would get you jailed if you tried that in public schools.
These ‘unschoolers’ take advantage of our home schooling gains, but turn around and give government VALID JUSTIFICATION to start taking back those gains. We have to be just as tough on these clowns as government wants to be on us.
(obviously I don’t know the specifics of this case...if they are actually being home schooled...then the government has committed a crime, but if they’re not being educated, they need to be moved into an environment where that will happen)
I think I agree with you.
It’s just that the state has ALL the leverage when they take the kids away and the agony to the kids and parents is off the charts.
Why not let the kids stay with one parent for 30 days while the other parent goes to a mandatory, 8 hours per day combination of “interviews” and “ training” about parenting. This might need to be done in tandem with incarceration. Then that parent goes home and takes care of the kids and the other parent goes.
With this much “interviewing” by competent unbiased and sincere pros, a fairly close plan of action should result.
It may be that the kids still need to be taken away and if the parents won’t see to their basic education they should. But, taking the kids away, which is brutal, should be “last thing” not “first thing”.
Oh yeah, Oh YEAH. And we all know how good a basic education the government schools deliver!!! I homeschooled, and don’t go along with unschooling but it can’t do any worse than the government schools are doing with so many of those kids that are trapped there.
Reading level? Grasp of math? Can’t write basic English text? Jobs are being given to people who don’t have these requirements every day because of Liberal Affirmative Action policies and “equality” for minorities. Why don’t we just make “free range” another one of those categories? Problem solved.
As for your distain for pumping gas, mowing grass and stocking shelves? It’s another Liberal pomposity to intimate that people who do those kinds of jobs are anything less than a lump with a college degree who runs the copy machine. Everyone in the world can’t be white collar and all work is necessary and honorable. It’s finding people honorable enough to do it that’s the problem nowadays.
YOU have a reading assignment.
Begin here:
https://archive.lewrockwell.com/gatto/gatto-uhae-pre.html
Links to subsequent chapters and the Epilogue are at the bottom of the page.
When did you last spend any time in a public school? It’s no longer the 1950’s or 1960’s.