Posted on 05/17/2002 3:57:59 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
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!
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.
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!!!
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
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.
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 its own education and its 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.
I can't understand why "public" schools even exist.
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.
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.
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.
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