Posted on 06/03/2002 11:07:37 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
My psychological batteries were just recharged by attending a remarkable convention of Florida home schoolers in Orlando. The 10,000 conventioneers, who overflowed the Gaylord Palms Resort, should have been serenaded with "You've come a long way, baby."
The Florida Parent-Educators Association has grown from a handful of parents 15 years ago to a three-day convention with 100 workshops, 131 booths selling curricula and software, high school graduation ceremonies, and a college scholarship to Harvard. Home schooling has become big business.
The Florida Department of Education reports that the number of Florida children registered in home-education programs has grown from 5,313 in 1990-91 to 41,128 in 2000-01. The number is probably even higher because not everyone registers.
Parents who have been home schooling since the early 1980s can remember less happy times when they felt it advisable to conceal what they were doing. In 1984, five Florida home schooling families were prosecuted for truancy and one family temporarily lost custody of its children. Home-schooling parents often had to suffer the disdain of neighbors, ignorant accusations of child abuse, and the hostility of the teachers union. The Florida State Legislature got the message in 1985 and legalized home schooling.
It takes uncommon commitment by parents to undertake a home-school regimen, but they soon discover that they can do in a couple of hours what takes all day at regular school. Home-schooling parents can save lots of time since there are so many courses they don't have to teach.
They don't have to teach multiculturalism, the peculiar notion that other cultures should be preferred to our own, or teach a course in Islam, such as is now taught in California schools. Home-schooling parents are free to teach that their religion and their country are the best.
Home-schooling parents do not have to teach political correctness, such as the dogma that all academic subjects must be taught through the prism of gender and race oppression. They are free to teach that America is not a land of victims but a country of freedom and opportunity for all.
Home-schooling parents do not have to teach the androgyny demanded by radical feminism. They are free to teach boys and girls separately and differently and let their boys enjoy plenty of recess to work off their excess energy and avoid giving them Ritalin to make them behave like girls.
Home schoolers do not have to take a course every year in diversity, the code word for gay rights, as is now mandated K-12 by the California State Legislature. Parent educators are free to teach that it is OK to be judgmental about illegal and immoral acts.
Home-schooling parents don't have to teach revisionist history that deletes mention of Washington, Jefferson and Franklin, as the New Jersey State Department of Education tried to do, but had to back down after a parental uproar. Home schoolers have academic freedom to study the Founding Fathers and read the writings of the DWEMs (Dead White European Males) who contributed so much to Western Civilization.
Home schoolers do not have to study global education that is designed to promote global interdependence and citizens of the world instead of the U.S.A. Home-schooling parents do not have to teach environmental education fantasies, such as that humans exist to serve the earth instead of vice versa.
Home schoolers don't have to study fuzzy math, whole math, new math, new new math, or rain forest math. They won't waste math time discussing, coloring, playing games or telling their parents how good they feel about incorrect answers.
Home-schooled children will learn to read using authentic phonics as their first order of business, so they won't have to take remedial reading after three years of failure. They won't be inflicted with whole language, which fraudulently teaches children to guess at words from the pictures, skip over difficult words, and substitute any words that seem to fit the context.
Home schoolers will save lots of time because they don't have to read typical middle school assignments of depressing modern fiction by "nobody" authors writing about drugs, violence, sex, runaway teens, witchcraft and other depressing subjects. Home schoolers can read books about heroes and stories that build character, courage, patriotism and virtue.
Home schoolers won't have to spend time filling out nosy questionnaires about sex, drugs and suicide. The public schools are obsessed with asking students impudent personal questions, such as how many times have you felt depressed and tried to commit suicide.
There are many more worthless courses taught in public schools on which home schoolers will not spend their precious time, such as courses in murder (forensics is the latest fad), suicide, death and dying, evolution and self-esteem. Home-schooled students won't have any problem with self-esteem because their self-esteem will be earned by achievement in mastering the important truths of history, literature, math and science.
That's the way I see it. I don't really care what anyone thinks of me. They can buzz off for all I care. I'm having fun with my kids and they are jealous. :)
Huzzah! I love hearing this! I feel the same way. I have only 18 years (or so) out of my whole life to enjoy these little Jedis and I intend to make the very most of it!
Institutional school just seems like such a waste of time to me. I've said it before, I'll say it again...if you can't get my kids taught within a couple of hours and no homework, give 'em to me and I'll do it!
LOL!!
Ah another case of,
IF IT BLEEDS, IT LEADS...even on FOX!
It still may be on.
Thank you for giving me hope for the future.
OUTLAW CAR CHASES.
At any rate, his summer reading list consisted of:
Murder on the Orient Express
Screwtape Letters
The Old Man and the Sea
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Uncle Tom's Cabin
All Quiet on the Western Front.
When I went to pick these up from our local book store, the proprietor gave me a hard time about letting a 14 year old read Uncle Tom's Cabin. Told me that I needed to put it in context, how a child might misunderstand it, even told me to have him watch the King and I in order to get a better grasp of the issue. He was very condescending in his attitude toward me as a homeschooler, and in the fact that I was allowing my son to read a book that he felt should be "sanitized."
Two groups (but not all of these groups) will still be left: the idiot middle-class liberal's kids and the ignorant poor folk's kids.
The former's parents ignore their children or live vicariously through them. They will keep sending their kids to public schools because they mindlessly follow whatever the government tells them to do, and they *certainly* don't want to be bothered having to actually raise their kids themselves. That's what the government is *for*, after all. (To them.)
The latter usually don't have direct access to the internet, are too busy slaving away at crappy jobs to devote the time necessary, and, out of ignorance to what is being done to their kids, wont see the importance of pulling their kids out of school. Finally, as many of them don't have a lot of education, it may be hard for them to teach their children anything...even though, if they believed in themselves, I think they could both learn and teach their kids a great deal, more than they think they can.
Tuor
You can download the curriculum guide. The reading list alone is rigorous.
Another site is Classical Christian Homeschooling.
Good luck with Latin next year!
Right. But it's not just the commitment and the hard work by the parents but also home schooling inherently focuses on the individual child, while public-school reformers try to devise plans for all children that lead to mediocrity.
The last study I read said that the majority of homeschool parents choose homeschooling primarily for religious reasons. Second was academic. Way down the list was safety. Has safety moved up the list? Which study says so?I think I said that we do it for "educational" - not POLITICAL - reasons. Homeschooling is being used by people outside of homeschooling to promote a political agenda; yet, the HSers I've met - many of whom have adopted a religious curriculum - just want what's best for our children. That's the bottom line. What we each consider as best for our kids. You can put "religious reasons" under "educational reasons", as far as I'm concerned. I don't care how surveys want to break it down.
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