Home education revolution! Samuel Blumenfeld warns of damage to kids from public instruction

The only effective group of citizens today in open opposition to big government are the home schoolers. They are the only Americans willing to take on the public education system that props up the entire statist enterprise of big, intrusive government. Forget about conservative politicians. They are more concerned about conserving their legislative privileges than rolling back increasingly intrusive government

Although President Bush has said nice things about home schoolers, he is doing more to expand federal control over education than any previous Republican president. His call for standardized testing is, in reality, a call for a federal curriculum, which will be used by the establishment to continue dumbing down the nation.

In the last two months, I've spoken at four home-school conventions in liberal New England, and there is no doubt that those who attend the conventions are revolutionaries in the true sense of the word. They have rejected the tax-supported school system, which is the chief instrument the totalitarians are using to construct a socially controlled society.

Only by reasserting the need for educational freedom can this nation restore its adherence to the principles of a free society. Leading in that fight is the Home School Legal Defense Association, founded by Michael Farris and other home-schooling attorneys, to defend the rights of American parents to educate their children at home in accordance with their own values. Two years ago, Farris founded Patrick Henry College to educate home schoolers in constitutional law and to train them to serve as aides to conservative congressmen.

The fact that parents can still legally take their children out of the government schools and educate them at home is an indication that this revolution can be won peacefully. The simple fact is that the home-school movement has reached critical mass and cannot be destroyed without causing a civil upheaval, and no politician can afford to let that happen.

Why are so many parents home schooling? Because they've come to the realization that the schools are destroying the brains of American children. It all starts in the first grade where teaching methods are used to deliberately cause dyslexia and reading disability. The method is popularly known as whole language, or the sight method, in which children are required to memorize a sight vocabulary. That is, they are required to memorize English printed words as whole configurations, like Chinese characters. Sounds harmless enough, unless you understand what that kind of memorization results in: a holistic reflex.

What's wrong with a holistic reflex? It becomes an obstacle to learning to read phonetically. An alphabet is a phonetic system in which letters represent language sounds. To become a fluent reader, you must develop a phonetic reflex, not a holistic one. With a phonetic reflex, achieved through phonics drill, the reader can easily see the phonetic structure of the words he is reading and discern the syllabic units that make up the word. But a reader with a holistic reflex cannot see the phonetic structure of the words, because he has the automatic habit of looking at words as whole configurations.

In other words, the holistic reflex and the phonetic reflex are mutually exclusive. And it was Ivan Pavlov, in his pysch lab in Moscow in the 1920s, who proved that when an animal is subjected to two mutually exclusive reflexes, it has a nervous breakdown. All of this is known to American psychologists, for the results of Pavlov's experiments were published in 1932 in a book, "The Nature of Human Conflicts: Researches in Disorganization and Control of Human Behavior," by A. R. Luria, professor of psychology, State Institute of Experimental Psychology in Moscow. It was translated by an American student of Pavlov's, W. Horsley Gantt.

The other day, a mother called me on a radio talk show. She complained that her son was having trouble with reading. It turned out that the school was teaching phonics and also requiring the child to memorize a sight vocabulary. I told her that her son was experiencing a collision of reflexes, which was causing his confusion and difficulty. I told her to get my Alpha-Phonics program and teach her child to read at home.

The literacy scandal is only one reason why parents are now home schooling. There are over four million kids on Ritalin, academic chaos in the classroom, a curriculum of boredom, pornographic sex education, school massacres and more. If you love your kids, get them out!

As a homeschooling parent, I really appreciate these remarks. Very encouraging to those of us who have made this committment though I do believe that it is not an alternative for every parent. I've seen and know many parents that buck the system with their children in it. It's not easy for them. It's just about as much work.

It's been worth it for our family as well. (8years)

I told her to get my Alpha-Phonics program and teach her child to read at home.
It kind of bugs me that the author puts a plug in for his own material in an article like this.

In our family two of my sisters and I homeschool. The fourth sister was convinced she lived in a very conservative school district and opted not to homeschool.

Now that her child is a little older (5th grade) she is CONSTANTLY having to monitor what is being said and done in the classroom.

She had to opt her daughter out of a session that was to be held today on sexuality.

The note the school sent home explaining what was going to be taught was downright degrading to the parents. It insinuated that the parents wouldn't know how to talk to their children about these issues, etc.

She's beginning to realize that she's spending so much time staying on top of the issues and volunteering at the school so she can monitor what's going on, that she might as well homeschool.

Finally, she sees the light, LOL!!!

Thomas Sowell has repeatedly made the point that the people who become "professional educators":

are in the bottom fifth of their college graduating classes,
tend to be much more authoritarian than average,
are frequently overtly hostile to academics and intellectual inquiry.

Hm, let's see: stupid dictators who actively despise knowledge and the thought process. Yup, that's who I want teaching my kids. You bet.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com

One of the bright-spots / reasons for hope for the future of this country is the surge in homeschooling and private schools.

Even at the nominally conservative private school we attend, the younger teachers often have been indoctrinated with leftist thought. My son has been trained to watch for liberal slant by my running commentary on current events, so he dissects the liberal slant from this year's history teacher immediately. In fairness, I should point out that a previous Civics teacher was a retired Navy LtCdr or Cdr, still serving in the Reserves. Good stuff!, unlikely to be found in government ~~schools~~ re-education camps.

I know what you mean about these parents who have to constantly watch over what goes on in the public school. It's a big job. I hesitate to say that it's more work than homeschooling but it is time consuming without the real benefits of home learning.

Excellent venue for a few salient quotes like these....

Peter Hoaglund - Nebraska Senator and Humanist member of the Nebraska Board of Education said this in 1983 … Fundamentalists have no right to indoctrinate their children in their beliefs. We are preparing their children for the year 2000 and life in a global one-world society and those children will not fit in!

Adolph Hitler said….”Let me control the textbooks and I will control the state. The state will take youth and give to youth it’s own education and it’s own upbringing. Your child belongs to us already….what are you?”

Dr. W. Pierce of Harvard University said in 1973…”Every 5 year old student is mentally ill, because he comes to school with allegiance toward elected officials, founding fathers, institutions, government, patriotism, nationalism and sovereignty - all of these prove the child is sick because the well individual is one who has rejected all of these things and is what I call a true international child of the future”.

We've homeschooled for 7 or more years and I can say that even with homeschooling, we still have a battle with the constant indoctrination of leftist thought patterns with our kids' friends and every outlet of government indoctrination, i.e. - newspapers, radio, TV, etc.

I can't understand why "public" schools even exist.

I had the pleasure of hearing Sam Blumenfeld speak several years ago.

I personally know of what he speaks. I nearly learned not to read in public school and it was quite traumatic. If I wasn't privately tutored when I was six I would've been a functional illiterate.

I can never forget the horrified feelings the look/say method instilled in me at the time.

With a phonetic reflex, achieved through phonics drill, the reader can easily see the phonetic structure of the words he is reading and discern the syllabic units that make up the word.

This is what you call giving a child the tools of learning. This is the driving philosophy behind the growing classical Christian school movement. The kids are taught grammar, logic, and rhetoric at the appropriate ages. There is a lot of memorization in the early grades (because kids of that age are good at that) and there is an emphasis on the classic languages of latin and greek. All of this is taught with a Biblical worldview.

Yesterday was dress-up day at my 8 year old son's school. Everybody got to dress up as their favorite literary character. My boy was Legolas. He got up in the assembly and (with a British accent) described his role in the Lord Of The Rings.

Check out this website. I believe they also have a home school curriculum.

You are right! Monitoring what the kids are doing at school is more rigorous than homeschool. They send homework that the child hasn't been taught, and so the parent must figure out the convoluted material, and then teach it. The idea that dyslexia is fomented by "whole language" is so true. My 5th grader is STILL affected by his time there. Thank God for this silent reveolution. (Not so silent, by the way).

A true international child of the future

What a perfect quote. This sums up the leftist agenda very concisely.

In one local library they had pictures drawn by school children hanging on the wall. Cute, huh?

Guess again. The kids drew pictures of white, black, brown, and yellow (and some pink--so appropriate! :-)) stick figures holding hands while they stood on the Earth with a United Nations symbol in the background.

How do the liberals propose to accomplish this without massive brainwashing and concentration camps?

Answer: to the leftys the ends justifies the means.

They view our children as their property. Hmm--there seems to be a similarity to the pedophile's view of th world. No wonder the libs are so squishy soft on that issue.

Ditto your comments about plugging one's own products in a published article.

While I am inclined to agree with most of the article, the following snippet really turned me off:

It all starts in the first grade where teaching methods are used to deliberately cause dyslexia and reading disability. Note: underline added for emphasis.

I'm glad we homeshool for a lot of reasons. It has been rewarding in many, many ways. I have problems with state-sponsored education, but I don't think that public school teachers are deliberately trying to give children dyslexia and reading disabilities (whatever that means).

I've heard good things about the author, but this is the first of his articles I've read. I'm willing to give him and his views another chance, but I'm not impressed with his work thus far.

News starting to sink in: Many students won't pass*** "When you show the parents what their children are capable of reading and comprehending and that the students are reading that much below grade level, their eyes really open to see that their children need some assistance," Jones said. Principals said many parents tell them to do what's best for their children. Others are furious, even desperate. They are threatening to transfer their children to private or charter schools. Some have asked if they could enroll their children in private tutoring centers to bring them up to speed.***

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