The Homeschool Apologist

Blog Contest Winner

2012-02-16T19:11:00.000-06:00

Congratulations to Jill Schwarz! Jill is the first (only, and last) winner of a blog contest here at The HomeSchool Apologist.

Jill, send me an email so that I can forward your email address to Lakeshore Learning. They will send you a link for a free download from their online catalogue.

I hope you enjoy your selection.

A CONTEST! (after a brief product review)

2012-02-11T10:32:00.001-06:00

Captain Chaos’s new favorite math activity is making a talking pig say, “Oops, try again!” She giggles, and then tries again. Who can blame her? The pig is funny. It’s a character found in a math game on the Lakeshore Learning Material’s computer based Interactive Calendar Math program.

I was recently contacted by Lakeshore Learning and offered the opportunity to review any educational software title in their catalogue in exchange for a review on this blog. Normally, offers such as these go straight into my virtual trashcan. In 4 ½ years of blogging, this is the first such offer I have accepted. I did so because we need to shake up our homeschool curriculum. We need variety in how we present concepts. We need presentations that area good fit for Captain Chaos. The girl simply cannot sit and write out an endless series of workbooks and worksheets as found in our A Beka and Saxon math curriculum. We are turning our attention more often towards computer based learning. That’s where Lakeshore Learning Materials enters the equation. (I slipped-in that math reference for The Boss)

Interactive Calendar Math is a program for the first and second grades that teaches calendar concepts on a customizable classroom calendar, allows students to practice counting money as they drop coins into a talking piggy bank, practice skip counting with an interactive hundreds chart, and even write and solve their own math equations. There are also daily math problems for children to complete.   Each section is brightly colored, easy to read, easy to use, and has a button so students can check their answers. The skip counting page is customizable to your child’s favorite color.

The first thing my kids did when they discovered the perpetual calendar was to check the days for their birthday this year, next year, and each year forward until they collect social security.   Well, okay, it really stops at 2030, but if you’re still homeschooling first graders in 2030, you have bigger concerns than running out of virtual calendar space.   By far their greatest discovery was the money counting page, where they must drag and drop coins into a talking piggy bank to equal a predetermined value up to $2.00. If they get the correct combination of coins, Wilbur rewards them with a hearty “great job!”   If they miss, they are treated to an “ooo” face reminiscent of Gary Larson as the pig says, “Oops, try again!” For some reason, neither my first nor fourth grader can manage to get a single money question correct. But they have loads of fun!

We are still exploring this program’s uses, but I like the skip counting page. By selecting any one number between 1 and 10, the 100 number chart can be highlighted to show counting by 2’s, 3’s, 4’s, 5’s, etc.   The page is colorful, and I can have this handy visual aid on a laptop on the kitchen table, which saves me from the trouble of decorating my kitchen in an early American classroom theme.    Educational posters clash with my cast iron collection.

There are two flaws in the program. The first is in the instructions for each section. They cannot be turned off, so you have to find and click the “X” in the dialogue box the first time you use a feature each visit. If you flip between features without exiting the program, you will not have to repeat this step.   I hope that this is corrected in future versions.   When I first looked through the program, I found myself asking, “Is this all there is?” But honestly, I have no idea what I would add. Using the virtual pencil to write numbers is challenging for little fingers, but I count it as OT. I do recommend this program for anyone looking for variety in their daily math instruction. It is available in CD ROM or download for $19.95. The download is fast, simple, and easy to use. During the month of February there is a buy one, get a second half-off sale. It had to be, because I made it work.    Lakeshore’s website even has a Free Resources page that is loaded with material we have yet to fully explore. It’s well worth your time to check it out!

Now comes the contest part. If you leave a comment on this blog post, I will enter your name in a drawing for a free software download of your choice from LakeshoreLearning Material. Share this drawing on your blog and I’ll give you a second entry. You can get another entry by sharing the news on Facebook. Send a link for each additional entry to writearby@gmail.com. The deadline for entries is Thursday, February 16, 2012, at 6:00 p.m. CST. I will put all the names in a hat and draw a winner. I will post the drawing results on Friday’s blog (the 17^th).

Good luck!

Homeschool Myths Debunked

2012-01-20T10:21:00.000-06:00

Some of you have probably seen this, but if you haven't, you HAVE to watch!! I haven't laughed this hard in a long time!

Enjoy and thanks for stopping by!!

A Prayer Request for a Homeschooler

2012-01-10T10:29:00.000-06:00

I’d like to ask everyone for their prayers this morning.

Michelle, a homeschooler who writes over at Eagle EyeAcademy, had a niece in a bad car accident last week. Bailey broke her clavicle and pelvis in three places. Last week she had surgery to repair her pelvis. Doctors inserted one plate, eight screws, and external hardware. Yesterday, Bailey had surgery for her clavicle. Doctors inserted one plate and seven screws. This young lady has a long road of healing and physical therapy in front of her.

Michelle will be on the road to Iowa from the west coast in order to help her family.

Please say a prayer for Bailey’s recovery, for guidance for her doctors and nurses, for strength for Bailey’s family, and for Michelle’s safe travels to Iowa. I will keep you updated on Bailey’s progress as I receive news.

Thanks!

Happy New Year

2012-01-04T09:26:00.000-06:00

Arby was standing at the stove cooking dinner, listening to the sounds of the kids playing in the living room, when the house became deathly silent. He heard General Mayhem say, “Oh, Captain Chaos! Oh, Captain Chaos! I am SO sorry! Are you okay?” Captain Chaos wasn’t answering. It was one of those parenting moments when you have to choke down the rising panic, force yourself to remain calm, and face the unknown. Our source of perpetual sound and motion was silent. As he turned from the stove, Captain Chaos walked into the kitchen, walked directly up to her dad, and held out her hand. He reached out, and she deposited her two front teeth in his palm. Flashing a bloody smile, she said, “General Mayhem kicked my two front teeth out.” Then she threw her arms straight in the air and shouted, “YES!”

You read that correctly.

Our little girl had her front teeth kicked right out of her mouth and she was celebrating. If her teeth were a football she would have spiked them. Apparently, while play fighting, General Mayhem performed a front snap kick at the exact instant that Captain Chaos leaned forward. He claimed he barely touched her teeth with his big toe. The resulting double extraction was fine with Captain Chaos. She hates “wiggly teeth.” Both were already loose. General Mayhem saved her the effort of playing with them until she could pull them out with her fingers, something she did earlier in the year with a lower tooth.

That’s our ~~boy~~ girl!

Captain Chaos charged into 2011. Last January she walked into her bedroom, saw an Eveready CR2032 wafer battery on the floor, and thought, “Hey, that looks good enough to eat!” Why did the Eveready CR2032 wafer battery look good enough to eat? We’ll never know. The girl isn’t saying. We’re just happy that she told her mom after she enjoyed her snack. That gave the ladies an opportunity for an extended ambulance ride while the driver became lost and took them to the wrong hospital. Captain Chaos enjoyed three days at Children’s Mercy and a procedure to remove the battery that was lodged in her esophagus. Blessedly, the battery was dead, so it did not discharge in her body. Two months later, at her annual cardiac exam, Dr. Drake told her he had read her recent medical history. “What did you eat?” he asked her. Tired of lectures on what she should and shouldn’t put in her mouth, Captain Chaos dropped her chin to her chest and replied with equal parts resignation and disgust, “A battery!”

And we always thought it would be one of the boys who kept us visiting the emergency room.

2011 was a busy year. The Boss travelled more last year than any other year in her twelve years at TRAC. She started a second Masters Degree program, because you can never have enough degrees. She’s studying geospatial information systems through the University of Denver. For the first time in a decade Arby understands what she is talking about when she speaks of work. That’s because he understands the word “map.” The Boss also started an American Heritage Girls Troop. The boys have Boy Scouts. We wanted a scouting experience for Captain Chaos. She loves it. AHG is a Christ centered girl’s scouting program “dedicated to the mission of building women of integrity through service to God, family, community, and country.” Their first meeting was held in September. The troop filled to capacity on the first night and has been very active this fall. Between work, school, and scouting, The Boss has been very busy, so she suspended her karate studies.

General Mayhem’s feet made it to the end of 2011 without causing any more trouble.   It was during the summer of 2010 that his big toe and its nail parted company on a water slide at General Mayhem’s Ark water park. The new nail required more real estate than its predecessor, so it grew in.   The subsequent infections required frequent trips to the podiatrist. His foot finally healed last July, after he repeatedly soaked it in warm Epsom salted water in hopes that he would be healthy enough to swim in the hotel swimming pool on his Space Camp trip to the Johnson Space Center in Houston last July.   Honestly, some parents have to talk to their teenagers about safe sex. We have to talk to ours about safe toe. General Mayhem started his freshman year of high school last August. He advance to Life Scout in Boy Scouts, and became his troop’s Assistant Senior Patrol Leader. He’s looking forward to testing for his Black Belt in Karate this March. It’s been a long journey. He started the martial arts when he was in the first grade.

Major Havoc’s favorite memory of 2011 was fishing with Grandpa Mares in Wisconsin. Major Havoc loves fishing, a trait he did not inherit from his father. Arby fishes like his dad. That involves maliciously drowning live bait while pre-battered fish jump into the frying pans of fishermen a few feet away. Major Havoc will catch fish with anything on hand, including string tied to a stick or to a soda can.   He’s done both last year.   Santa brought the Major his first fishing pole in December. Major Havoc became a Webelos I in Cub Scouts last year, and enjoyed camping with his den. He’s still studying Karate. He tested for orange belt in December.    The results will be announced soon.

The biggest change at home last year was in our homeschool. We added Captain Chaos as our third fulltime student last fall at the same time that General Mayhem started his freshman year of homeschool high school. Teaching three at home changed the dynamic, but this is our eighth year of home education. It gets easier each year.   Last year, Captain Chaos spent half a day at our local public school taking art, computers, gym, and music classes along with her therapy. Some of them were successful while others less so. She had to learn that she could not vigorously shake the computer monitor in computer class when it wouldn’t talk for her, and that she shouldn’t exit programs with which she was bored. She was quite adept at getting herself kicked out of gym class, too. Captain Chaos is fun to work with. Her learning style is a lot like General Mayhem’s was at that age. Major Havoc is at the point of the school year where he has completed some of his third grade work. He will start fourth grade math, spelling, and vocabulary after the holiday break, which effectively makes him a 3 ½ grader.   General Mayhem is working hard in his course work, and still prefers learning at home rather than attending our local public school.

It was with a bit of sadness that we ended the year without George, aka The Big Fuzzy Rock. Our 11 ½ year old husky/lab mix spent a great deal of his life curled-up and asleep in the back yard. He developed an extremely bad case of arthritis that left his hind legs paralyzed. Properly medicated, he was bright and alert, but walking was a real drag. We made the difficult decision to put him down after Thanksgiving. George was a good beast. We added George to the family when General Mayhem was four.   It was General Mayhem who named George weeks before we knew whether the next dog would be a boy or a girl. “What will you call the dog if it is a girl?” we asked him. “George,” he replied.    After George’s departure, our black lab Reggie immediately claimed her spot as canine queen of the household and chief chicken herder. We still enjoy our flock of birds.

2011 was a year filled with blessings. We hope that yours was, too. We hope you had a very merry Christmas and a safe and Happy New Year. We pray your life will be filled with God’s blessings.

Arby, The Boss, General Mayhem, Major Havoc, Captain Chaos, and 2nd LT Henry Flipper

Amy Speaks about Christmas, Christianity, and Santa

2011-12-23T08:39:00.001-06:00

I am a grown woman, a mother to four little angels. Even at my ripe old age of 30-something, I’d bet one of those little angels that if I were to ask my mom if she was the one who filled my childhood stocking, she would feign great shock and offense at such an accusation. “Me?” she would say, “Santa Claus? Not a chance!” In the same breath as her bold denial, she would probably whisper, “Here are some things for the children’s stockings.” And she would hand me a bag chock full of trinkets for her beloved grandchildren.

My mom always kept the magic of Christmas alive. Is she a liar because of claims that a jolly fat man dressed in a red and white suit was the one who filled our stockings every Christmas Eve? Did the fun we shared as a family diminish the REAL Reason for the season? Of course not! I treasure the memories of anticipation and then excitement in discovering what lay deep in my wooly red and white stocking on Christmas morning.

There are many people who feel that allowing such secular things as Santa Claus to be a part of their Christmas is in some way offensive to Jesus Christ whose birthday we celebrate on December 25. I know there are people with this view because I know some of those people. Some of these people have, in fact, looked with disapproval upon my own family’s tradition of hanging stockings by the chimney with care.

No one likes to be judged, and I especially do not like to be judged with a “Good/Bad Christian” measuring stick. It’s unfair to assume that our adding a delightful – albeit secular – dimension to our family tradition means that we have pushed aside Christ and the miracle of that birth in Bethlehem so long ago. Quite the contrary, it is, after all, God who created us in His image. We who love to be delighted, who love to be part of relationships. Family traditions are all a part of relationships. God is the God of relationships. And I picture Him in Heaven looking down on His children celebrating His birthday. I picture Him with a smile and a twinkle in His eyes as He watches the absolute delight on children’s faces as they uncover the treasures in their stockings. I can hear Him saying, “Wow! What a fun way to celebrate a birthday!”

I want nothing more than to honor God on Christmas, and I strive to do so as I build traditions with my family. Santa Claus happens to be one of those traditions. Please don’t judge me for it.

Amy is a homeschooling mother of four children. You can read more of her writing at Treasured Chapters...of Life and Family. (Images courtesy of Turn Back to God at www.turnbacktogod.com)

God Hates Homeschooling

2011-12-15T10:41:00.001-06:00

“God hates homeschooling.” That was the seventh of ten reasons “why homeschooling parents are doing the wrong thing” as explained by blogger and teacher Jesse Scaccia in a May 2009 blog post titled “The Case Against Homeschooling” that appeared on the blog Teacher, Revised. The emphasis on “hate” was his. The blog post was recently forwarded to me by an alert reader who thought it might be good fodder for Amy. Mr. Scaccia offered as proof of God’s hatred of homeschooling Matthew 28:19, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” He added an abbreviated Acts 1:8, “Ye shall be witnesses unto me,” in support of his claim. It appears that the self-identified “agnostic” Mr. Scaccia believes that homeschoolers have an obligation to attend public schools in order to evangelize. Never mind the fact that atheists and the ACLU are working hard to stamp out prayer in public schools across the nation. Apparently, Mr. Scaccia operates under the mistaken belief that all homeschoolers are Christian. That’ll rankle more than a few secular homeschoolers, not to mention our Jewish and Muslim home educators.

I experience equal measures of amusement and disappointment while reading arguments such as Mr. Scaccia’s when the author boasts of such an impressive list of academic achievements. He is a published journalist who “holds dual degrees in English and education from the University of Connecticut, a master’s in education from Connecticut, and a master’s in journalism from New York University.” That makes my BA from the University of Illinois at Chicago seem paltry by comparison. Still, I find his discourse against homeschooling vacuous. He wrote that “a students’ classroom shouldn’t also be where they eat Fruit Loops and meat loaf,” “homeschooling parent/teachers are arrogant to the point of lunacy,” and “As a teacher, homeschooling kind of pisses me off.” How can anyone refute those arguments? As soon as I finish writing, I’m running off to enroll my kids in the Apathy School District.

It is hard to tell whether Mr. Scaccia was attempting humor or offering serious thoughts on a controversial subject. His post garnered 1,065 comments and spurred four follow-up posts. It took a lot of writing to walk-back his original comments. Everything that needs to be said about his writing was probably written 2 ½ years ago. Be forewarned: read at your own risk. When you've finished, hug your kids. Then give them a pop quiz. Mr. Scaccia may think that “homeschooling [is] great for self-aggrandizing, society-phobic mother[s] but not quite so good for the kid,” but this homeschooling dad thinks we’re doing just fine.

Trumping the Socialization Card

2011-12-12T08:58:00.003-06:00

Saturday night, The Boss told me an entertaining story about a homeschooling conversation she had Saturday afternoon. The conversation took place in the Fellowship Hall at our church, where twenty American Heritage Girls between the ages of six and sixteen were working together to bake pies and cookies for shut-ins and people who will attend our church’s Christmas holiday meal. There was a lot of laughing and joking taking place. The girls were loud and clearly having fun. Some of the younger kids completed their work and started a game of tag while the others continued baking. Almost half of the girls in the troop are homeschoolers.

The Boss was working on troop paperwork at a table where Jillian sat with her mother. Jillian is in-charge of camping for the troop. She had said something to her mother along the lines of “They homeschool their children,” or “The Boss is the one I told you about. She homeschools her kids.” Her mother (a friendly, plump, white-haired senior citizen) responded with hesitant approval. “I guess it is okay, as long as they get out and spend time with other children.”

Yes, she played the socialization card.

The Boss stopped what she was doing and turned to Jillian’s mother. “Do you see the girls mixing pie crust at that table over there?” She pointed to a table where six girls were in various stages of mixing and rolling pie crusts. “Three of those girls are homeschooled. Can you tell me which ones?”

Then she directed Jillian’s mom to the group of younger girls who were playing at the far end of the hall. “Do you see those girls over there? Half of that group is homeschoolers. Can you tell me which ones?”

In neither instance could Jillian’s mother separate the homeschoolers from the non-homeschoolers.

“I’m really tired of the socialization argument,” the Boss concluded. “Cleary, homeschoolers get out and interact with their community.”

Enough said!

Remember Banita Jacks?

2011-12-08T16:15:00.003-06:00

Ms. Jacks was the Washington, D.C., mother of four who lived with the decomposing bodies of her four children. She had killed them, claiming that they were demon possessed. Ms. Jacks had removed her children from D.C. public schools, claiming to be homeschooling them. Not surprisingly, this grisly murder immediately elicited calls to rewrite homeschooling laws, tightening restrictions on how and where homeschooling took place. As more details from the investigation emerged, we learned that Ms. Jacks was well known to D.C. police and the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency. CFS had failed to make their regularly scheduled inspections of Ms. Jacks' home. Calmer legislative heads prevailed, and onerous restrictions were not placed on homeschoolers as a result of Ms. Jacks’ actions. She is currently serving a 120 year prison sentence.

This case came to mind when I read a Yahoo! Answers question posted by “Johnny Poopster.” Yes, that is his online name. Mr. Poopster explained that he was “writing a research argument against homeschooIing. The type of argument is ethicaI/evaluation--and my stance is that homeschooling goes against the human principles of equality for all, freedom of choice, and goes in support of tyranny of the majority, etc.” But Mr. Poopster had a problem. “I can think of dozens of hypothetical situations that are bound to happen at some time, but I am having trouble researching it on the web. I don't know what particular keywords to put in that would bring up articles on that. Are there any specific cases you can find of homeschooled children who were abused and it was not taken care of appropriately? It needs to be documented in the media, somehow.”

I can think of half a dozen cases where “homeschooled” children have died in horrendous circumstances, but I’m not going to share them with Mr. Poopster. I write in defense of homeschooling when knees begin jerking in response to cases such as Ms. Jacks, Nubia Barahona, or Matthew Degner. My reason for not assisting the young man isn’t that I am afraid of a rational discussion of homeschooling. My problem with Mr. Poopster is the manner in which he is researching his topic.

In research, a conclusion should be based on the results of the research rather than conducting research to look for evidence in support of a predetermined conclusion. What happens to the validity of the writer’s argument if the researcher cannot find evidence to support the conclusion at which he or she hopes to arrive? Does the writer stubbornly cling to his belief, or does he change his ideas based on the results of his research? How would Mr. Poopster handle the Banita Jacks case? Does her crime justify the claim that homeschooling “goes against the human principles of equality for all, freedom of choice, and goes in support of tyranny of the majority?” Does he acknowledge that CFS failed to protect four children? Does he realize that even if the children were enrolled in a public school that Ms. Jacks could have killed them? There are many questions to be answered in a difficult case such as the Banita Jacks case, but Mr. Poopster won’t honestly and fairly discuss them. He has reached his conclusion. Someone failed miserably in teaching this young man critical thinking skills, and how to conduct research.

Mr. Poopster is full of crap.

Follow-up: On Thursday night the original question was deleted from Yahoo! Answers for violating their "Community Guidelines."

Thank You for Your Editorial Feedback, Please Return to Your Regularly Scheduled Math Assignment

2011-12-08T09:08:00.000-06:00

I glanced at Captain Chaos' math paper yesterday afternoon. I am slowly transitioning my first grader from closely supervised instruction to slightly more independent work. Let’s face it, after working with her on simple addition and subtraction equations for four months, she should be able to complete one digit problems on her own. When I checked her paper, I was looking to see whether or not she had properly numbered the clock face on problem number 3. She had, with the addition of her well stated feelings concerning the problem.

"Poo!"

There’s never a dull moment with this girl.

"Amy" Speaks Out in Defense of Homeschooling

2011-12-06T22:32:00.000-06:00

I remember when the command career counselor paid me a visit in the McMurdo bakery. I was 22, a second class petty officer in the US Navy serving in Antarctica, and I was less than a year from being discharged from a five-year tour of duty. When the Radioman Chief asked me about my future plans, I politely told him that I was leaving the navy to attend college. His reply was to tell me how he left the navy after his first tour of duty, attended college, dropped out, and returned to active duty. He honestly thought that he had a convincing argument to make me reenlist. I may have been less than politic when I replied, “So, what you are telling me is that since you failed, I will too?” The conversation quickly soured, and Chief never spoke to me again. I went on to fail miserably, graduating with honors and teaching professionally for seven years.

I recently encountered the same quality of thinking in the comments of two articles concerning homeschooling written by Jeff Mangum and published online in the Pomerado News. Mr. Mangum is a “Poway [California] resident, attorney and former PUSD board member.” In his original article, “To homeschool or not to homeschool,” Mr. Mangum attempted to offer a balanced analysis of the pros and cons of homeschooling. I believed his analysis was seriously flawed, and wrote my lengthy response in the comments section. Because of length restrictions in the software of the comments section, I was forced to leave my response in four separate comments. It was obvious from one of the replies, as well as Mr. Mangum’s second article, that three fourths of my response was completely ignored. I quickly realized that ignorance was a preferred tactic in the Pomerado News homeschooling discussion.

The anti-homeschooling arguments were the usual clichés that can be summed up in one word: socialization. We’ve read and heard them all before, and answered them repeatedly here at THA. In discussing whether or not homeschooling was advantageous, Mr. Mangum wrote that, “the homeschool community has strenuously opposed mandatory standardized testing. As a consequence, there is simply no reliable data available to compare the academic performance of homeschooled students to public school students.” That’s just wrong. But when I cited Dr. Lawrence Rudner ‘s 1998 study Homeschooling Works and Dr. Brian Ray’s Progress Report 2009: Homeschool Academic Achievement and Demographics, both sources were simply dismissed in the follow-up article “Readers speak out – loudly – on homeschooling” as ”statistically flawed and unreliable.” That made them, in Mr. Mangum’s opinion, not worth mentioning. It’s amazing how some people who truly believe that they are rational, reasonable thinkers simply dismiss out-of-hand that which is inconvenient. That’s ignorant.

The basis for most of the anti-homeschooling comments appeared to be anecdotal. This shouldn’t be surprising. What is left after you dismiss the studies? I particularly enjoyed the commenter who wrote, “When I homeschooled my daughter, I learned that distractions at home make it difficult to accomplish much, even with a motivated student. (My daughter credits that year of being home-schooled for having destroyed her good study habits.)” Basically, what that commenter wrote is that since he failed at homeschooling his daughter, the rest of us will fail, too. With apologies to Michelle over at Eagle Eye Academy, that person is a prime candidate for a career in the Navy.

I’m not going to rehash standard replies to the anti-homeschooling arguments. If you desire, you can read the two articles, and my replies, here and here. Please let us know if you leave a reply. You will find that in his second article, Mr. Mangum changed my name from “Arby” to “Amy.” Anonymity, you know. Because I tried so hard to hide my name when I left my original comment. Four times.

Sigh.

This Homeschooler Has Style!

2011-12-02T09:00:00.005-06:00

You would think that since I am home teaching my kids every day of the week, I’d have a clue as to the latest styles and trends and where my kids learn of them. You’d think. You’d be wrong.

Captain Chaos awoke last Monday morning and begged me to put her in a dress for her trip to the therapist. Then she promptly accessorized with my old Midwest Airlines hearing protection ear muffs and an old hunting bow. The kids painted them for me. And yes, I wore them on the ramp at MCI for five years.

A week earlier she decided to dress herself, including black shoes, pink Capri’s, a green shirt that reads “90% Angel,” a superhero cape, a baseball helmet, and a stick horse.

I fear she’s inherited my sense of style.

But the best of the week has to be the Turkey Crown.

Any princess of any value absolutely must wear a turkey crown. After resolutely petitioning me for 24 hours to make a turkey crown, I sat down with her yesterday morning to craft the fowl diadem. She wore it all day, along with her princess gown. If only I had video of her shouting “Kia!” as she practiced karate in this royal attire.

Have a good weekend, every one!

The Guilty until Proven Innocent Act

2011-11-30T09:11:00.001-06:00

I’d like to propose a new bill for the New Jersey state legislature. Titled the “Guilty until Proven Innocent Act,” my bill would require all public employees (people who receive all or part of their income from tax-payers in the form of a state, county, or municipal salary) to submit an annual audit of their finances to the local media, as well as publish the results of the audit online. Any politician who maintains a campaign fund separate from their private finances must annually submit an audit for their campaign, too. These public employees will also be required to submit an annual letter of intent to continue receiving tax-payer funded salary and benefits, as well as a portfolio of financial records and materials including, but not limited to, an itemized list of financial expenditures, and samples of purchases, investments, stocks and bonds, or other financial transactions.

Maybe Loretta Weinberg will sponsor it.

State Senator Weinberg is the legislator who sponsored S-3105, the bill that would require New Jersey homeschoolers to submit to the local school district an annual letter of intent to homeschool, an extensive portfolio, and proof of an annual physical by a medical doctor for each homeschooled child. The local school district is the eyes of the state, able to peer into the family in ways the US Constitution prohibits police and prosecutors. S-3105 is Senator Weinberg’s second attempt at passing such legislation. The first was eight years ago. Both came in response to horrible situations where parents claiming that they were homeschooling their children were, in fact, physically abusing them. In both cases, children died. The logical conclusion to such situations is that all homeschoolers are potential abusers, and so must prove to the state that they are not if they wish to continue homeschooling. The Guilty until Proven Innocent Act applies that same logic to public employees.

If you Google the terms “New Jersey,” “politics,” “Governor,” and “corruption,” you will find enough reading to fill your time until the second coming. From former Governor Bob Corzine (refused to release his income tax returns during his 2000 election campaign for the US Senate; head of now bankrupt MF Global holdings; gave $441,600 in personal money to convicted Democratic machine Boss Joseph Ferriero) to Assemblymen Daniel Van Pelt (convicted, along with 19 others, in an FBI sting for money laundering and racketeering), and many in between, New Jersey gives both Chicago and Washington, D.C., a genuine challenge for the title of Dirtiest in Politics. It is not my intent to trivialize the tragic deaths of children, but if a couple of abuse cases amongst the thousands of New Jersey homeschooling families justifies the intrusion of the state into all homeschooling families, then the criminal actions of some state employees and politicians, which affects far more lives and occurs far more frequently, justifies the same level of scrutiny. In politics, money is everything.

Guilty until proven innocent.

Scotch, Pain Meds, and the Happy Husky

2011-11-26T08:21:00.003-06:00

Now that the leftovers have been put away and the guests have departed; the house is clean and the remainder of the weekend is open for rest and relaxation; it is a good time to sit and reflect on all for which I should be thankful.

I am thankful that George, aka The Big Fuzzy Rock, once again chose Thanksgiving week to have a near death experience.   Last year on the day before Thanksgiving, The Boss awoke to find that our living room looked like a scene from a Quentin Tarantino movie. She found George sitting next to the kitchen door, wagging his tail. His head had exploded. A week ago Friday, the Husky decided that the arthritis in his hips was too much to live with, so he stopped eating and drinking. Of course, every vet in the two state area was double booked and couldn’t squeeze him into their schedule.

I am thankful that Major Havoc’s den leader chose the weekend before Thanksgiving to host a campout. It’s not like we needed that weekend to clean the house or shop for groceries or anything. He also failed to heed my advice to bring a chainsaw, preferring two bow saws to carve up our fire wood.   As the temperature dropped he discovered that his saws were very good at scoring wood. I had to fight hard to convince both him and my oldest son (their Life Scout Den Chief) that if his scouts wished to remain warm, we would need a pile of wood the size of a water buffalo. They were content with a pile of wood the size of a chipmunk.

I am grateful for the two old ladies with the chainsaw who agreed to cut wood for us in exchange for our loading their pick-up with their cut wood. Nothing teaches manliness to young boys on the cusp of manhood more than asking a couple of women to cut fire wood for them. The only thing missing to prepare them for marriage was a can of Schlitz for each boy and a NASCAR race on TV. They would have learned how to yell, “Can you turn down the chainsaw? I can’t hear the race. And bring me a sandwich!”

I am grateful for the roofing nail that lodged itself in the right rear tire of my van last Sunday. I needed a flat tire that afternoon.

I am also grateful that my garbage disposal chose last Sunday to quit working. Right after the warranty expired.

I am grateful that the employees at Walmart were able to fix my flat. For free.   This came after a near smack-down between three employees as they argued over a tread gauge in an attempt to determine whether or not there was enough remaining tread on the tire to legally repair the flat. As I waited their decision, Captain Chaos turned pirouettes next to me and repeatedly asked, “Can we go see the video games now?” Once the thumbs-up was given to the repair and a team of computer technicians recovered my maintenance records, we were good to go.

I am grateful that our vet treated George last Monday. She gave us pain meds for his arthritis. By Thursday he was wobbling, eating (after I poured turkey gravy on his food), and drinking, although I’m not certain Scotch is the best thing to wash down pain killers. If he can live on narcotics for his remaining time on earth he’ll do alright.

I am grateful that God has brought me to a place in life were these events were something to take in stride with humor rather than get upset or experience stress. And we were able to maintain our homeschooling schedule through it all.

Blessings to you all.

Have a good weekend.

Proclamation of Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T12:06:00.000-06:00

Washington, D.C.
October 3, 1863

This is the proclamation which set the precedent for America's national day of Thanksgiving. During his administration, President Lincoln issued many orders similar to this. For example, on November 28, 1861, he ordered government departments closed for a local day of thanksgiving.

Sarah Josepha Hale, a 74-year-old magazine editor, wrote a letter to Lincoln on September 28, 1863, urging him to have the "day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival." She explained, "You may have observed that, for some years past, there has been an increasing interest felt in our land to have the Thanksgiving held on the same day, in all the States; it now needs National recognition and authoritive fixation, only, to become permanently, an American custom and institution."

Prior to this, each state scheduled its own Thanksgiving holiday at different times, mainly in New England and other Northern states. President Lincoln responded to Mrs. Hale's request immediately, unlike several of his predecessors, who ignored her petitions altogether. In her letter to Lincoln she mentioned that she had been advocating a national thanksgiving date for 15 years as the editor of Godey's Lady's Book.

The document below sets apart the last Thursday of November "as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise." According to an April 1, 1864, letter from John Nicolay, one of President Lincoln's secretaries, this document was written by Secretary of State William Seward, and the original was in his handwriting. On October 3, 1863, fellow Cabinet member Gideon Welles recorded in his diary how he complimented Seward on his work. A year later the manuscript was sold to benefit Union troops.

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

Are We Losing our Rights as Parents?

2011-11-22T09:51:00.000-06:00

How Much Do Grades Cost In Your Homeschool?

2011-11-21T00:00:00.000-06:00

I don’t know about you, fellow homeschoolers, but when my children fail a math test, I review the concepts they do not understand, make them complete additional exercises covering those concepts, and make them retake the test. That is, of course, if the test doesn’t reveal that the incorrect answers were the result of simple math errors that could have been corrected by double-checking their work before handing in the test. One thing I do NOT do is ask my children to empty their piggy banks in order to purchase a higher score. It’s too bad The Charlotte County School District cannot say the same thing.

Charlotte High School math teacher Jeff Spires allowed students to purchase higher grades on tests and quizzes by stapling cash to the back of the paper in question and returning it to him. This must be another example of new math. For amounts ranging from $10 to $70, this math teacher raised student grades. One student offered him $200 to raise her grade for the quarter, but Mr. Spires turned her down. Far from experiencing Sudden Onset Conscience Syndrome, the reason for denying the young lady the opportunity to buy her math grade was that the grades for the quarter had already been submitted to the administration. It is safe to assume that if the student had made the offer earlier, Mr. Spires would have accepted. You can read news reports for this story here, here, or here.

Now, the National Education Association firmly believes that “home schooling programs based on parental choice cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience.” For once, I must agree with them. My children will NEVER learn how to buy grades for cash in my homeschool. I believe in a comprehensive education, but I have my limits. So, I cannot provide my children with the comprehensive education on how to cheat in school that is being taught to the math students at Charlotte High School.

Occupy Math Work Sheet - The Homeschooling Protest

2011-11-18T11:09:00.005-06:00

My children are an active, energetic, and imaginative lot. Frequently, our days are filled with the adventures of super heroes, kings, and queens, questing against the villain du jour. In order to prevent these adventures from consuming our entire day, I find that I must be a bit of a task master. Keeping this lot focused on their school work is a challenge. If I allowed them to have their way, we would have too much home and not enough school. Let’s face it (and this is not a criticism of my homeschooling brethren), we aren’t unschoolers.

So, after we completed our third page of math this morning, Captain Chaos decided that she needed a break. She didn’t ask for a break. She gave herself a break. She jumped out of her chair and ran to her bedroom. The girl reappeared a few moments later wearing her super hero cape and mask and carrying two Twister Hoopla rings.

“I’m off to slay the dragon!” she exclaimed, running through the kitchen to the basement steps. As shedescended the steps she cried, “Not a real dragon. The plastic dragon!”

This came right after her OMWS math protest.

The Occupy Math Work Sheet movement is a daily affair that begins with the Captain deciding which problems she will and will not agree to complete, as well as deciding whether or not she will write her answers in the spaces provided by the evil, greedy, corporate math teachers from Saxon. When she doesn’t want to complete her math work, the Captain will write the largest, sloppiest numbers she can possibly create, frequently obliterating the equations below and to the sides of the problem she is answering. Since I have stock in erasers (there’s a lot of money to be made in BIG ERASER), there’s always a large square block eraser on hand to obliterate her protest numbers. At some point during each worksheet, she will look at an upcoming question, draw a squiggly line through the problem, and write “Bah!” (her version of “Blah!”), in vain hope that I will allow her to skip that exercise.

Today was no different. The Captain began her math day writing humungous numbers. After the obligatory erasing she settled into a more cooperative mood, completing three pages of math exercises. She abandoned all efforts at cooperating when she saw a row of addition problems at the bottom of the third page. While I was refilling my coffee cup, she drew her squiggly line through the equations and wrote “blah.” Returning to the table, I once again deployed BIG ERASER. After much complaining, she started the problems. As she wrote her final answers I heard her mutter, “I’m writing the biggest numbers that I can write.” And she did. Across the bottom of the page. Because this girl is going to make her feelings known no matter what.

I’m just happy she doesn’t have any drums.

They Make It Far Too Easy

2011-11-17T08:00:00.005-06:00

Some days I read the news and think, “They just make it far too easy.” Take the case of the first grade teacher in Lexington County School District Three in Lexington, South Carolina, who was accused of making her students rub her bare feet in class. The school district claims they took appropriate action when they disciplined the teacher, but the parents are furious that the teacher hasn’t been fired. I’m curious about how bad her corns were. The answer to that question might be the difference between poor judgment on her part or cruel and unusual punishment.

Then I discovered that a teacher in a suburban Chicago Christian school has been charged with masturbating behind a podium while teaching his math class. I tried to write a couple of math jokes about poles for this story but the obscenity is simply too great for humor. Police believe that he may have been doing this on and off for the past ten years. Ten years!

While I was reading through these stories I discovered a story about a teacher who was arrested for having sex with one her 14 year old students. I lost the link when I went shut down the computer to make dinner. Later, when I searched for the story, I typed the words “teacher” and “sex” and “14-year-old” into a Google search engine. I received 32,800,000 results in 0.24 seconds. I decided at that point that I didn’t want to read anymore. 32,800,000 hits about teachers having sex with 14-year-olds is 32,800,000 hits too many.

Homeschooling critics may believe that we are harming our children by keeping them out of the halls of public academia, but I am 100% certain that as long as my children are homeschooled their teacher will never ask them to rub his feet. He will never practice self-gratification during math class, or conduct himself in a manner that will garner 32.8 million hits on Google. While I still believe that the perpetrators of these incidents are in the vast minority of professional teachers, that’s little consolation for the students involved. Quite frankly, I’m not willing to gamble my children’s health and safety on the hope that their public or private school teacher is one of the good ones. They are far too valuable to me.

Is THIS is the "Real World" Homeschooled Kids Are Missing?

2011-11-15T23:51:00.003-06:00

Tell me again why I should be concerned that my children are not learning how to function in the "real world?"

Family: Teasing pushed 10-year-old to suicide

"The family of a 10-year-old Illinois girl found hanging in her closet believes teasing and bullying by classmates drove the little girl to kill herself.

Vermilion County Coroner Peggy Johnson said Tuesday that the final results of the autopsy on Ashlynn Conner won't be ready for some time but it appears she took her own life Friday night.

Ashlynn's family said she had been teased by children at Ridge Farm Elementary School and in her neighborhood in the small town for several years. Ridge Farm is about 45 miles southeast of Champaign.

"When she started cheering for youth football, we'd gotten her hair cut in a bob," Ashlynn's grandmother, Lory Hackney said. "The kids started making fun of her then. They started calling her a boy.'' Since then, she'd often been called fat or ugly, her family said.

Ashlynn was a fifth-grader at Ridge Farm and did well in school, her family said, making the honor roll in the most recent quarter. She talked about becoming a veterinarian when she grew up.

But she complained Thursday after school about other girls picking on her that day and asked if she could be home-schooled, her mother said at a candlelight service for her daughter at a local church. Conner said she told Ashlynn they'd talk to the school principal this week about the problem.

Conner said she heard her daughter on the phone with a friend Friday night talking about being teased. A half-hour later, Ashlynn's 14-year-old sister found her hanging in her bedroom closet, Conner said.

"I don't know what was so bad she couldn't wait," Hackney said. She's a retired nurse and tried to give her granddaughter CPR, she said."

14-Year-Old Special Needs Student Speaks Out On TODAY About Being Bullied By Teachers (VIDEO)

"We were shocked ... we didn't know," 14-year-old Cheyenne's father tearfully said in an interview on the TODAY show Tuesday.

After their complaints to the school board reportedly went uninvestigated, the parents of the special needs student decided to hide a tape recorder in their daughter's clothes. What they captured left them upset -- and angry.

"Don't you want to do something about that belly?" teaching aide Kelly Chaffins said to Cheyenne, according to the recording.

"Yes," the girl responded.

"Well, evidently you don't because you don't do anything at home," Chaffins said. "You sit at home and watch TV."

In his emotional interview, Cheyenne's father told NBC's Ann Curry that his daughter started to react to the stress.

"She got to where she didn't want to go to school," he said. "She was ... starting to harm herself to keep from going to school and we knew we had to do something at that point."

After bringing the recordings to the school board, officials demanded that Chaffins resign. Chaffins subsequently announced her resignation while Christy Wilt, the classroom teacher, has been put on unpaid leave and ordered to undergo eight hours of training on how to stop child abuse. But these consequences aren't enough for the family's attorneys.

"There's no good solution, but we don't think that this teacher and this aide should be working with students, especially special needs students," one of the attorneys told Curry. "We would like her to be terminated."

Cheyenne's parents sued the school district and received $300,000 in damages."

In the "Real World"

2011-11-14T00:01:00.008-06:00

you need to be socaila and confident about talking in front of peopl and being around everyone and when your homeschooled it doesnt prepare you for that. — Chelsea

My sincerest thanks to Susannah L. Griffee, Katherine Schulten, and the entire staff at the New York Times for publishing their Saturday article “Would You Want to Be Home-Schooled?” In a follow-up piece to Margaret Heidenry’s “My Parents Were Home-Schooling Anarchists,” the Times encouraged students 13 and older to comment on the following question:

Tell us about your experiences and thoughts about home-schooling. Do you think this type of education can prepare children for the “real world”? How might it be better than traditional schooling? What might children miss from not attending a regular school? Do you agree with the writer’s mother that working at one’s own pace and following one’s genuine interests is the best way to learn?

In publishing the comments, Ms. Griffee and Ms. Schulten clearly demonstrated why homeschooling must remain a freedom for all Americans. The results are both stunning and sad. I am sharing some of them here, unedited, as they appear on the NYT website. They speak for themselves.

AJ did not think “that home schooling is a good thing because it will not prepare a certain child for the world.” He did not tell us who the certain child is, so we are left to trust that there is one child who should remain in a public school. Leslie thought “homeschooling is dumb.” She continued, “I think homeschooling doesn’t prepare kids for the real world. they don’t learn how to socialize with other people. Some parents may sugar code the kids. So they might not know everything there suppose to know. no i do not agree.”

“Sugar code” their kids?

The “real world” theme of criticism ran through mulitple comments. Kristen expressed her concerns that “homeschooling is ok but public schools are better because its almost like life you are going to have to deal with people that you dont like in life and school shows this at times.i dont think this could preper us for the real world because your not comunicatingi with people as much as you would at school.for most people it is a good learning activity” Kristen, learn how to write well. It is an important skill that you need for college and the work force. Your comment has so many errors, I’m thinking of making my homeschooled children correct it as a grammar exercise. If you believe that you do write well, your teachers are sugar coding your grades.

Brandon was “not in favor of home schooling. I think that it is important for a student to attend a regular school. This is because it will allow them to become more prepared for the real world. When you think about it, home schooling only encorages children to stay at home, instead of preparing them to leave. It gets them used to the comfortable living arangements at home more than usual.” He expressed his fears for the future of all homeschoolers when he wrote that “…if they do go outside, they have no personal confrontations with other children, so they will not easily develope speaking to other people, which means no friends, no girl/boyfriend, no husbands or wives, their lives would be pretty much empty.”

What a tragedy! All homeschooled children are condemned to a life of hermitude, living in their parent’s basements, passing the years playing Xbox and Wii, knowing that their lives would have had purpose and meaning if their parents had only sent them to a real school. Oh, the humanity!

I’m not certain where these kids think homeschoolers live, if not in the “real world.” Is there a secret “unreal world” in which all homeschoolers reside? If there is, I did not get the memo. Is there a secret handshake or password that I need to get inside? In fact, homeschoolers do live in the real world, and in doing so, we have to deal with the results of the average public school education as demonstrated in the comments section of the NYT article. Alas, I must take great comfort in the knowledge that my homeschooled children will grow up to run the company where these kids will sweep the floors.

Comparing Homeschoolers with Public Schoolers

2011-11-12T22:24:00.000-06:00

Our good friend Cindy from Get Along Home, posted an article at High Country Mom Squad this week. It raises a concern that many of us homeschoolers struggle with from time to time. Comparing. How do our kids measure up?

Should we compare our kids with their public school counterparts? Cindy (in classic Cindy fashion) digs into that question in this GREAT post. Here's an excerpt. But definitely don't stop here...go read the rest!!

A few weeks ago I was talking—more accurately, moaning–to my husband about our second-grader’s lackluster progress in math. I’m not really sure what to try next, or if we just need to stick with what we’re doing, so I was just kind of thinking out loud about my options. My husband, because he likes to know these kinds of things (geeks like data, you know) asked how David’s progress would compare to that of school children his own age. So I did what any rational, confident homeschooling mom would do when faced with such an innocuous question: I freaked out.

KEEP READING...

An Impromptu Homeschooling Field Trip

2011-11-09T22:41:00.002-06:00

I took the kids to Kansas City this morning.

Tater dropped off donations for homeless veterans from her American Heritage Girls Troop. We had the honor of dropping off the donations because her mother runs the troop.

On the way home we found the Union Hill Cemetery. After the cholera epidemic of 1849 filled the cemeteries of the towns of Westport, Missouri, and Kansas, Missouri, a new cemetery was needed. In 1857, 49 acres of land was donated for a new cemetery. That was the start of Union Hill. There are lots of old and interesting graves in this cemetery. I liked the gravestones shaped like tree stumps.

I enjoyed the Chinese gravestone, which apparently is rare for a 19^th century cemetery.

According to the cemetery’s brochure, deceased Chinese immigrants were usually shipped back to China to be buried with their ancestors. We stopped at a Chinese restaurant for lunch and I asked the hostess if she could translate for me, but despite all the conversation she held in Chinese with her husband, all she could say to me was, “I don’t know.”

The interesting surprise of this visit was discovering the grave of James Silas Calhoun, the first Territorial Governor of New Mexico. How he went from a guy who served as a Colonel in the Mexican War to a territorial governor to dead on the Santa Fe Trail and buried in the town of Kansas, Missouri, is anyone’s guess.

Eventually, the town of Kansas, Missouri, became the town of Kansas City, Missouri, and annexed the town of Westport, which is now a neighborhood.

We missed one tombstone that we’ll have to return to see (and we drove right past it!). There’s a grave for Joseph Boggs, a man who was born in 1749, served in the Revolutionary War militia, and died in 1843. Pretty cool.

We also saw tent city, also known as Kansas City’s Occupy Wall Street.

It’s located in a park across from the Federal Reserve. The group is smaller than it was a week ago. They don’t do much, but the American flags are new.

The kids got to see protest in action and learn about the freedom to assemble when you should be searching for a job.

These things happen when you chuck your school work and head off on an impromptu homeschooling field trip.

Thank You for Your Kindness

2011-11-08T12:56:00.002-06:00

I would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you who took the time to nominate this blog for the annual homeschool blog awards hosted at The Homeschool Post. Thank you, also, to everyone who took the time to cast a vote for The Homeschool Apologist.   I appreciate the compliment and the vote of support.

Now, please stop.

Four years ago, I wrote about my inner curmudgeon on a post appropriately titled “Crank.”   In that post, I shared the fact that deep down inside, I’m really a very cranky person. I’ve reposted the article here if you have the time (or desire) for a good laugh at my expense. Four years later, a lot has changed, but not my inner crankiness. I share this with you in order to tell you that I really, really, ~~loathe~~, ~~dislike~~, ~~despise~~, ~~abhor~~, don’t like the annual homeschool blog awards. I dislike most blog awards programs. I’m not going to go into the reasons why.   I haven’t written about it over the years simply because I’ve tried to accept the kindness extended to me by the people who took the time to nominate and vote for my blogs in their various incarnations. What has ended up happening over the years is that the folks who run the HSBA announced the nominees, and I immediately wrote them to request that my blog be removed from their contest. I will give them credit where credit is due: they’ve always honored my request.

This year it got out of hand. The Homeschool Apologist wasn’t just nominated in one category, but three. This madness must end!   Please, whoever you are, stop nominating this blog for awards. Instead, leave a comment! Comments are far better than the emptiness that commonly follows posts. Heck, even being told that my writing reminds someone of their uncle’s smelly socks is better than silence.   I will say that I appreciate the person who nominated The Homeschool Apologist for Best Group/Family Blog.   Together, Linda and I are not large enough to be a group, but she’s definitely family.   And for the record, Linda agreed with me. She beat me to the punch Monday morning, requesting our blog to be removed from the voting rolls before I could.

For those of you who are interested in the annual homeschool blog awards, pretend you’re in Chicago. Vote early and vote often! And good luck to the remaining nominees.

Crank - An Arby's Archives Repost from 11/7/07

2011-11-08T12:52:00.001-06:00

cur•mudg•eon kərˈmʌdʒ ən - [ker-muhj-uh n]
–noun
A bad-tempered, difficult, cantankerous person
[Origin: 1570–80; unexplained; perh. cur- repr. CUR ]

—Related forms
cur•mudg•eon•ly, adjective

—Synonyms grouch, crank, bear, Arby, sourpuss, crosspatch.

I’ve often wondered what my children will say when they put their heads together as adults and complete the sentence, “Dad is a...” I wonder how long it will take them to figure out that underneath all of the layers of Dad, underneath all of the one-liners, the wrestling on the floor in the middle of Kmart, his obsessions over baking the perfect loaf of bread and making lump-free gravy, and a multitude of other quirks and idiosyncrasies, there lays a crank. At heart, I’m a really grumpy person. I was born a toothless, wrinkly curmudgeon. It’ll just take another 30 or 40 years for my features to catch-up.

Yesterday I had one of those days that are ideal for blogging about if I can get up a good head of steam, but I have no steam today. I’m steamless. I lost all of my steam yesterday. It was one of those days where I found myself spinning in circles. Captain Chaos took the opportunity of my being momentarily distracted by laundry to locate a large purple crayon and a freshly painted wall. Her artwork extended from the base of the basement stairs to the very top. I’m thinking that if I can teach her to sign her name at the bottom I won’t have to wash off her artistic endeavors. While I scrubbed away her mural she went into our classroom and began her daily task of dismantling the shelves. While I cleaned up her mess in the classroom she ran into our den in order to stand in front of the TV and wet her pants. In the middle of all of this came the perfectly normal cries of “Dad, I need some help with this problem!” I cleaned her up, helped the General, and then took the opportunity during the momentary lull in the action to cut and hang a few small pieces of drywall for my a-little-bit-at-a-time basement remodeling project. Captain chaos decided to help by using my drywall saws as drum sticks and then dumping a bucket of drywall screws on the classroom carpeting.

Major Havoc made his presence known. His one goal in life yesterday was to play Mousetrap with his brother and then ride bikes. He made his wishes known by asking every thirty seconds, “Is he done yet?” There was no amount of alternate activities that I could offer that would distract him long enough to give me five minutes without saying, “No, not yet.” and “I’ll tell you as soon as he is done.” And so the cycle of clean a room, move on to another room, have the previous room messed-up by the kids, teach a lesson (and yesterday was a day for remedial work) and get something productive accomplished like doing the laundry was dotted with six “accidents” by the Captain and I spent a good portion of the day fighting the urge to dive head-first into a quart bottle of Old English 800 which you can still get for a dollar forty at the local distillery complete with mandatory brown paper bag wrapping.

Whew!

After dinner, we attended the activity that General Mayhem and the Boss had been waiting for, for an entire week. Last night was the General’s first-ever Boy Scout meeting. We finally found a Boy Scout troop in a five-hundred mile radius of our home that doesn’t meet on Monday nights. On Monday nights the General has his Karate class. It was love-at-first sight for the kid. He walked in, was assigned to a patrol, and instantly started learning about extreme cold weather survival tips for the camping trip that he is attending this weekend while I absorbed Boy Scout sticker shock and the knowledge that I, too, would be enjoying Jack Frost and the great outdoors from Friday night until Sunday evening. I fought the overwhelming urge to shout “You’ve gotta be #$%*%$# kidding me!” It was so cold last night my nipples had stiff nipples. The novelty of cold weather camping wore off twenty years ago when a group of Aussie survival specialists dropped me off with four other guys, two shovels and an ice saw, on the arid plains of Antarctica with the line, “We’ll come get you sometime tomorrow.” We had plenty of snow, plenty of ice, and plenty of sunshine to build an ice house for five and start thawing dinner.

The General looked at me expectantly and asked “Can I go?” and I flashed a reassuring smile that hid my initial deeply seated skepticism and otherwise sour outlook on a weekend sitting with nine complete strangers in sub zero temperatures for two days and confidently said, “We’ll talk to your mother,” knowing full well that she would say, “I’ll pack your bag.”

We returned home and talked to his mother and sent him to bed. I hit the wine bottle for a couple of glasses of White Zinfandel, safe in knowledge that drinking liquor from a bottle that has a cork is far superior and more socially acceptable than consuming a liquor that is stoppered by a screw-cap.

The funny thing is that the Boss knows the cranky side of my personality and she loves me in spite of it. I’m blessed that way. We talked about the coming weekend and she let me say everything that I wanted to say, knowing that I wasn’t really putting up a fight about going camping. I just had to get the crankiness out of my system. It had been a long day. She listened patiently and assured me that I will have a good time and then said, “I’ll pack your bag.” So I’m going camping this weekend.

My biggest fear in acknowledging that I am, at heart, cranky, is that we tend to have our true natures exposed and magnified in our elderly years. I do not wish to be an old difficult person dependent upon my wife and children for care only to have them dread being around me because I am cranky. So I work regularly on approaching life through prayer and humor, softening my otherwise surly disposition. It has to be working. I don’t think the Boss would have me if it wasn’t. And my little girl, who wormed her way into my heart the first time I held her, can soften the distempered beast with a quick smile and a soft “Daddy!” in her sing-song voice; although, I still reserve the right to stand in front of her TV set when I’m 96, wet my pants, and skip merrily through her house.

If You Don't Like Homeschooling, Just Blame Asperger's Syndrome

2011-11-02T16:39:00.000-05:00

Having made the gross tactical error of admitting to Linda that I didn’t have much about which to write, I received in reply a link to an anti-homeschooling blog post on the Parents Educating at Home (PEAH) website that must be read to be believed. The PEAH website is dedicated to providing resources for the homeschooling community. I still haven’t decided whether or not to take the letter seriously. It was so poorly written, I suspect it was a parody. If you have even a rudimentary grasp of the English language your head will hurt after digesting a Seattle public school teacher’s reasons why homeschooling is bad. I attempted to number the spelling and grammatical errors in the original post in a futile effort to identify all of them, but I ran out of numbers.

Karen is a mom of four “highly capable children” and a Seattle, Washington, public school teacher who explained that the hidden agenda of public education is “how to be a member of a large complex social group "society".” The main thrust of her reasoning was the commonly misunderstood and misapplied “socialization” argument. She expressed concern that homeschooled children will be unable to “understand proper chain of command (who to go to first and why), following directions of those placed in charge of you, or trying to be a part of the society in which you live.” She explained that, “we are judged every minute of every day by friends, peers, clients, even the cashier at the grocery store. “ Karen may have a point. We all know how devastating it can be when the elderly lady running the express checkout lane at Wal*Mart disapproves of your pants.

Karen’s evidence for her concerns was completely anecdotal. If we take her observations seriously, all homeschooled sixth grade boys wear “bedazzled pants,” are incapable of “dealing with peers in small and large groups,” are incapable of “dealing with adults” on their own, struggle with “puncuality,” do not smile when they do not want to smile (there’s a capital offense), believe that everyone loves them unconditionally, and do not finish their homework when they are too tired to think. The answer to those flaws is for the parents of homeschoolers to volunteer their free time at the local school. Homeschoolers should attend a public school, maintain “perfect attendance,” and take “pride for their social group like the school's football team or drumline.” She explained that this drum line fervor “will serve them well as CEO's physicians and leaders.” She'll get no argument from me. I do believe that the late Steve Jobs’ last words were, “God, I loved my high school’s drum line!”

As if Karen did not already supply ample evidence in favor of mandatory homeschooling for all Seattle area children (would you want your children taught by a woman who thinks and writes so well?), she saved her best comments for the end of her blog post when she explained that “many homeschooled students who attempt to go to public high school and a large majority are like a fish out of water. They missed their learning window and may never be able to be a part of the social world that is thriving around them.They do not speak and are filled with anxiety or they are so inappropriate they have had referrals for aspergers.” Did you catch that? Many and a large majority. Does anyone outside of her faculty lounge take this woman seriously? I’m not certain who should be more insulted, homeschoolers or Aspy kids. I can’t wait to read the responses when the autism crowd reads this one.

Karen’s own words speak for her. They speak volumes. They reflect arrogance and ignorance, as well as a lack of critical thinking skills, writing skills, discernment, and judgment. After you visit her post and leave your comments, please share them below.

Halloween Fun

2011-11-01T15:39:00.002-05:00

Last night, the Boss and I escorted Harry Potter and his little sister, Powerpuff Girl “Blossom,” through the neighborhood to beg for candy door-to-door.

We noticed quite quickly that our children spent far more time at each door than the average child. The average kid ran up to the door, yelled “trick or treat!” and bolted for the next house before the candy hit the bottom of their bag. Several kids lapped us on a rather large cul-de-sac. The reason for the delay was twofold. When friendly neighbors told our daughter to pick whatever piece of candy she wanted, the girl went shopping. She dug through each bowl, carefully searching through the cornucopia of confectionaries until she discovered the perfect sweet. The second reason for their leisurely stroll through the neighborhood was their chattiness. Yes, our two social misfits - those strange, unsocialized homeschoolers - enjoyed talking to the homeowners dolling out the goods. They explained their costumes, who made them, etc. It was one gigantic social event. And they said, “Thank you.”

Score one for the homeschoolers!

Homeschoolers are Amazing!

2011-10-27T09:29:00.002-05:00

It's always refreshing when someone from outside the homeschooling world shares some positive thoughts about homeschooling and homeschoolers.

Years ago, a public high school teacher friend of ours told us that he could always pick out the kids in his classes that had been homeschooled prior to entering high school. He said that he had found that homeschooled kids had a level of social and academic maturity that went far beyond the level of maturity displayed by the other kids in his classes. He had found homeschooled kids to be much better equipped to handle the academic AND social pressures of high school. That sure was nice to hear from a public school teacher. While most homeschoolers don't "need" reassurance from their non-homeschooling friends, it's sure encouraging to hear it from time to time!

For the last several years, it has been my privilege to help administrate the social media outlets for a large homeschool curriculum publisher. During that time I worked closely with social media expert, Ryan Egan. Though Ryan didn't come to his job with a background rich in homeschool knowledge or experience, his focus on ministry and his passion for people very quickly became very evident to every homeschoolers that he began to interact with on a daily basis. The homeschoolers that got to know Ryan on Twitter and Facebook soon realized that they had a great friend and advocate in him!

But it would seem that while we were being encouraged by Ryan, he was learning from us. During his time working in the "homeschool world" (he recently moved on to a new job), Ryan discovered a few things about homeschoolers. A recent post on his blog, Homeschoolers are Amazing--What I Learned from Working for a Homeschool Curriculum Company, shares some of what he learned from us.

Let me tell you what homeschoolers aren’t:
Unsocialized – Kill this stereotype immediately. The majority of homeschoolers I interacted with were easy to talk to, easy to work with, and had kids that could hold intelligent conversations with adults while still being able to play with infants and toddlers.
Behind the times – There are some incredibly tech and web-savvy people homeschooling their children. To be honest, many were utilizing way more technology than the average family does.
Boring – In a word….no. Many of these families do more in one year than many families do in an entire lifetime.
Lazy – Many people think that homeschoolers don’t work hard and just want to let their kids slide through education. That is SO far from the case. You would not believe the organizational skills everyone has and the immense concern for making sure their children are properly educated.

It's a wonderful...and very encouraging post! There's more, so I would encourage you to go read the rest of what Ryan learned about homeschoolers during his years working for a homeschool publishing company!

Thanks for being a part of our world for 3 years, Ryan! We think you're pretty amazing, too!

A Homeschooler Goes to College

2011-10-13T11:11:00.000-05:00

Kate Fridkis, blogger at Eat The Damn Cake and Skipping School, has written for Jezebel, The Forward, the Huffington Post, and more. She lives in Brooklyn, and is writing a book about her experiences as a homeschooler.

In "A Homeschooler Goes to College" (excerpted below), Kate shares some of her experiences as a homeschooled student in the sometimes hostile, always boring college world. It's well worth reading!

I went to college when I was 18, like everyone else. But unlike other people, I had never been to school before. The first standardized test I ever took was the SAT. The day I took it was the first time I’d ever been in a high school classroom. It didn’t seem like a fun place.

I started college as a Music Ed major, because while I didn’t know what I wanted to study, I knew I liked music. The Intro to Music Education teacher, a woman I’ll call Mrs. Grimini, had taught kindergarten at a local school before joining the university faculty. She led us in songs like “The wheels on the bus go round and round!” She wanted us to share a memory of our own music teachers from kindergarten and first grade.

Everyone had one: The triangle. Holding hands in a circle. Those rainbow xylophones.

“Actually,” I said, “I didn’t go to school. But my dad is a jazz pianist?”

He played every day when I was a little kid. I used to sit under the piano and he’d ask if I could remember the melody, or he’d teach me how to play a few notes. Sometimes I sat with him on the couch in the darkened living room and we listened to Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” together, talking about how scary Mars was, and how big Jupiter was. We were almost never not listening to music.

But before I could say any of that, Mrs. Grimini interrupted me. “Home-schooled?” she said tightly.

“Yes,” I said, offering my politest smile.

“OK, you don’t need to participate.” And she moved on....(read more)

I'm Outraged!

2011-10-10T09:36:00.004-05:00

A friend put a major damper on my day when she sent me a link to a poll in my local newspaper on Saturday morning. I just get so riled up by stuff like this. Here's the poll:

The recent death of 14-year-old Matthew Degner from Berwyn in a house of squalor has raised questions over how government officials can help children living in social isolation. Should families who are home-schooling their children be required to register with the state?
Yes, the state needs to know who these children are
No, the law allows families to keep this information private
Home-school families should establish a registry of their own
Neighbors must do more to socialize with families who keep to themselves

First. None of the possible responses accurately express my desired response. Second. There is no provision for responding publicly to the poll. That's very irritating. So I wrote to the editors and shared my thoughts. I started by asking a few questions...

Should the fact that this one child died in a "house of squalor" be the catalyst for regulation of an entire movement which is statistically more successful (socially and academically) than the public school system in America?
Isn't it likely that there are public school children living in squalor, neglect, and abuse? How has "knowing who these children are" helped them?
And what about the kids that are "living in social isolation" in public schools. There's no isolation worse than being in the middle of a group of people who ostracize you, ridicule you, and bully you. How did being "registered by the state" help the children who have taken their own lives as a result of living in this kind of isolation day after day?
Your poll intimates that the entire homeschooling movement should share the burden of guilt in the death of this child. The next time a child commits suicide as a direct result of being bullied by his school peers, will you publish a poll that places the burden of guilt at the feet of the institution of public education and call for greater regulation of that entire institution?
And what about the next time a public school child dies as a result of parental neglect/abuse, are you prepared to publish a poll that implies the child's school was complicit in the tragedy and should be more heavily regulated?

Because this poll was published with no facts or information of any kind, it leads its uninformed readers to draw the conclusion that greater regulation will save the lives of hundreds of thousands of abused and neglected homeschool children. What caring person wouldn't click the button next to "Yes, the state needs to know where these children are?" The reality is that most of "these children" are already registered by the state. The vast majority of abused, neglected children in the United States are not homeschooled children. They are children who attend public schools. The state of Illinois, where this tragedy took place, has huge problems with their public schools. The Illinois schools do NOT have the time, the manpower, or the money to address their own problems, let alone solve the perceived problem of the "danger" facing the children of the homeschool movement.

I am outraged when I read "news" that contains blatant (or thinly veiled) suggestions that tragedies like the death of Matthew Degner are a.) the result of homeschooling, and b.) preventable by the creation of more government regulation. It is nothing more than a fallacious attempt to sway public opinion for the sake of encouraging higher levels of government intrusion into our lives. Sadly, our world is full of abusive, neglectful parents. That is indeed a tragedy. And as sad as it is, the school system is not a social services agency. It's teachers are not sociologists. They are paid to teach children. Giving the schools the responsibility and the power to protect children from their parents is a very troubling trend. This poll takes advantage of the death of a child and uses it as a rallying cry to call for even greater levels of control.

They should be ashamed.

Dear Steve Cuckovich

2011-09-30T13:50:00.002-05:00

Dude, you decided to deduct points from your student’s grades for extending the common courtesy of saying “bless you” to another student who sneezes in your classroom. That’s fierce, man! Your Will C. Wood High School health students must be bummin’. So what if the original meaning of the phrase is outdated? Over time, its meaning has changed to a common courtesy extended between members of a decent, caring society. Don’t be such a square, man. You’re trying to nip the practice in the bud. You should be encouraging it.

I cannot help but wonder how saying “bless you” after someone sneezes is disrespectful and disruptive in the classroom. That is SO Gay! You claim that this has nothing to do with religion. You have a problem with just this one phrase. It sounds to me like you have an axe to grind. Is “gesundheit” verboten, too?

Your students and their parents are not happy campers. They probably think that grades should be based on academic performance and not on a student’s ability to conform to the whims of an individual teacher. Psyche! But what’s more disruptive to a learning environment, a sneeze followed by a blessing, or a teacher making a big deal over the use of a phrase that is not vulgar and wishes another student good health? Your behavior, and the righteous indignation it evokes in your students, is far more of a distraction to learning. You need to learn to chill, dude. Don’t have a cow.

Stevo, you’ve rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. You’ve brought national attention to yourself, and not the good kind. You made Drudge!You’ve brought unneeded attention to your Vacaville, California, high school. I bet your principal just loves that. It’s time to read the writing on the wall. Rather than promising to find another way to punish your students for blessing one another other than deducting points from a grade, it might be time to throw in the towel. Make like a tree and leave. More and more, people find attitudes like yours grody to the max. It’s one of the reasons why the number of homeschoolers in this nation is growing.

10-4 good buddy,

Arby

Wake Up, Homeschoolers! Socialization Isn’t Just Important. It’s Everything!

2011-09-28T00:01:00.004-05:00

If you think that “socialization” is important for the development of your homeschooled children, think again. It’s not just important. It’s everything! So says a retired Canadian public school teacher in a letter-to-the-editor of the Edmonton Journal. While discussing the recent Concordia University and Mount Allison University study that revealed Canadian homeschoolers academically outperformed their public school counterparts, Donna Martyn wrote, “Succeeding academically is probably less than 15 per cent of the value of public schooling. It is, however, a desirable byproduct.”

It’s a desirable byproduct. Like Spam.

So, what is important in Canadian education? It isn’t academics and it isn’t “the moral benefits of homeschooling.” The value of a Canadian public school education is that “when children come together at an early age, they are to be taught to learn, work, share, play (and otherwise cope) - in groups. Not just any group, but a microcosmic group of their fellow children - products of the society of which they are to become a part.” According to Ms. Martyn, “Home-schooling deprives children of the chance to do just that.”

A “microcosmic group.” They must have small class sizes.

Maybe Americans just don’t understand our cousins to the north. Maybe Canadians don’t interact inter-generationally. It is possible that peer groups remain intact for the life of the Canadian citizen with very little contact with Canadians outside of their age group. That’s why it is so important that “children must learn to get along with people of their own peer group.” It “is essential if they are to become functioning members of Canadian society.” Homeschoolers have a different understanding of what it means to prepare our children to participate in the greater world outside of the home.

If Donna Martyn is correct, I have to wonder about the curriculum content in Canadian public schools. Are they wasting valuable resources on reading, writing, and arithmetic if academics are only a 15% byproduct of a K-12 education? Is reading and math just a clever ploy to distract young children while they really learn to stand in line or share toys?

“No, Johnny, we are not carrying a one to the tens column when we add nine plus six. We are sharing the one with the tens column. Learning to share is important.”

The absurdity of Donna Martyn’s educational philosophy is clear. Her philosophy is the polar opposite of the “whole child” concerns Linda wrote about in yesterday’s post. Ms. Martyn doesn’t appear to be concerned about the intellectual development of children at all. It is a dangerous approach to education that reduces a human being to a simple cog in a societal wheel, depriving children of the ability (and quite possibly the desire) to become dynamic, well-rounded, moral, and successful adults. Her goal is for children to cope.

Maybe it’s a Canadian thing. I’ll take homeschooling.

Paying Attention to the "Whole Child"--Something Homeschoolers Already Knew

2011-09-26T00:02:00.039-05:00

Homeschooling is successful for a boatload of reasons. And some of its success may have something to do with a homeschooler's understanding of this: Testing is often a poor measure of academic success. A child's success as a student simply cannot be quantified by a grade received on a test. Yet in an academic culture that values test scores above all other measures, children who possess strengths and skills that cannot be measured by a test are at a distinct disadvantage. Marilyn Price-Mitchell, the sociologist who recently wrote The Fallacy of Good Grades was right on the money when she drew these conclusions in her article:

"Parents can make a difference by paying attention to the "whole child," - not just the child who attends school each day but to the child who participants in family life, reaches out to others, thinks creatively, acts wisely, collaborates, and shows respect. Parents have the capacity to nurture these qualities in children, to let them know they are more than a test score.

"We may be living in an age that is obsessed with numbers, but that doesn't mean we have to teach our children to measure their self-worth by grades or test scores alone. In fact, parents are in a position to nurture psychological literacy and help develop the internal strengths that determine a meaningful life." (emphasis mine)

Sadly, in an article that focuses heavily on parental influence in instilling necessary skills into children, the inherent strength of the homeschool environment to accomplish what the public school environment cannot (even with all its self-awarded superiority) is never mentioned. Homeschooling, by nature, provides an academic and emotional environment that is, at its very core, all about "paying attention to the 'whole child'." Parents who spend every day teaching their children are naturally in a position to nurture those qualities that matter...helping their children know that "they are more than a test score."

"To succeed in the 21st Century, students need a multitude of abilities that go beyond internal character and reading, math, and science skills. Today's young adults must be able to adapt to change, problem-solve, innovate, and manage large quantities of knowledge. To do so, they must learn to think critically about complex issues. How do we test critical thinking in schools? We don't. In fact, most schools don't even teach critical thinking skills, the art of analyzing and evaluating thinking with a goal of improving it."

Isn't it strange that a system that fails to instill the most valuable skills and qualities is esteemed as superior to a system that has been proven to be better equipped to instill those same qualities? Stranger still is the illogical reality that critics of homeschooling (did you read Arby's recent post) often bypass questions concerning academic development, and instead choose to raise questions of social development when addressing the effectiveness of homeschooling. And strangest of all is the ludicrous line of thinking that insists that the most valuable function of the public school system is raising socially capable people, when in fact, that very system seems to find its greatest "success" in instilling the most negative social values that children could ever acquire.

I am continually baffled that in the face of a growing body of evidence that public schools are failing in every way, people still seem to think that homeschooled children are missing out on something of critical importance in their development into capable members of society.

Does any of this make sense to you?

Hey, Homeschoolers! Where Do You Send Your Children To Learn To Be Bullied?

2011-09-23T09:43:00.006-05:00

I’ve always been staunchly opposed to homeschooling because I think schools, public or private, teach kids how to function in society as much as anything else.

-Kara Moore

Author Kara Moore listed her reasons for preferring a public school education over homeschooling in a benign essay titled “Is homeschooling the wave of the future?” on the Charleston Daily Mail’s Mommyhood Blog page. There’s nothing in her writing that is particularly troublesome for the homeschooling community. She isn’t an activist bent on outlawing home education. Mrs. Moore stated that her children are in a “quality” public school, and that if they lived in an area of the country like “Memphis or Washington, D.C.,” she might be more aware of a need to homeschool. She invested no time defining what makes a “quality” school or why Memphis and D.C. area schools fail to meet that standard. Her ultimate concern is whether or not public schools are simply a baby-sitting service while maintaining that (wait for it) “there’s an important socialization aspect of school.” Then, in the comments section of her post, she revealed the value of a public school education based on her memories of school life and the lessons she learned. None of them are academic.

She wrote:

I mean things that happen outside of lesson plans. I mean getting up at 6:30 to wait for the bus and sitting in pep assemblies and dealing with mean girl cliques and learning to eat school lunches when you’ve always been a picky eater, learning to take standardized tests in freezing cold classrooms, dealing with teachers who seem to have it out for you, or worse, who bore you. When I list them, they sound like the worst parts of school, but those are things that really prepare you for living in society with others. IMHO.

She added:

Though I want to be clear that I think there’s an excellent chance you’re right and I’m wrong.

I’m always fascinated by the “learn to deal with bullies” concept as expressed above. Where do people think members of “mean girl cliques” go to at night? Do they head home to sit and wait for the dawning of a new day in order to return to school and be a mean girl? Most bullies don’t leave their meanness in their school locker when they leave school at the end of the day. They participate in society outside of school, bringing their meanness to Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, church youth groups, athletic teams, the local park, etc. Homeschoolers get to learn to deal with jerks after school, where it isn’t a distraction to learning.

Most of the things that Kara Moore described as being valuable learning experiences are, in fact, simply distractions that prevent meaningful learning from taking place. Pep assemblies? Teachers who bore you? Teachers who dislike you? If that’s what people remember the most from attending 13 years worth of public schooling, then there is something seriously wrong with public education. Most students mentally tune out of classrooms where they dislike a teacher, or where they know a teacher dislikes them. And if taking tests in a cold classroom is critical to the academic and emotional development of my children, I will gladly turn off the furnace this February when my kids take their Iowa tests.

I educate my children at home because I want them to receive a high quality academic education. I want them to learn history without the political biases many public school teachers bring to the classroom. I want my children to master the skills they are being taught. I want them to learn critical thinking skills. Their education is tailored to their areas of interest as well as their overall ability levels and discipline specific ability levels. Why would I send my children to school for any reason other than receiving the best possible education? Preparing them to interact with society once they leave home? That’s a parent’s job.

The Needs of the One Cannot Define the Needs of the Many

2011-09-21T10:07:00.003-05:00

A writer by the name of Libby Anne wrote an excellent essay on growing up as a homeschooled child in a Christian patriarchal family. The title of her essay is “My Life as a Daughter of Christian Patriarchy.” It is a well written, refreshingly (and painfully) honest, and enlightening piece of writing that you can find here. Libby Anne explained and discussed the issues she faced growing up in a Quiverfull family. While explaining the challenges she faces as a young woman who disagrees with the religious tenants of her childhood, she made a startling and dangerous statement when she blamed homeschooling for the lifestyle in which she was raised.

The Quiverfull movement is a branch of the evangelical Christian community that strictly adheres to the standard of raising daughters to be helpmates for, and subjugated to, husbands and fathers. Boys are raised to become the head of the household and providers for a family. There are stringent rules for behavior in this movement that clash with modern sensibilities concerning life in a free and democratic society. Unsurprisingly, Quiverfull children are not allowed to interact with modern society in the same manner of the average American child. Frequently, Quiverfull girls are denied a college education, the rationale being that they don’t need one since they don’t need a career outside of the home.

Libby Anne wrote:

“By now, you may be wondering, how is this possible? How can parents indoctrinate their children in this way? The answer, I would argue, is simple: homeschooling. By homeschooling, these parents can control every interaction their children have and every piece of information their children come upon.

“By homeschooling us, my parents could completely control what we learned.”

But, homeschooling is not the issue here. The responsibility for Libby Anne’s childhood and the problems she faces as a young adult rest solely on her parents and their spiritual and lifestyle choices.

It doesn’t take a homeschooler to be a rigid and controlling parent. Many of us know of children who were or are raised by strict, domineering mothers and fathers. Two of my public high school classmates lived in such a household. Judy and Teresa were very smart girls. They graduated near the top of our class. Their every movement was also controlled by a father who demanded that if school dismissed at 3:15 they should be at home by 3:30. Boys were not allowed to call their house for any reason whatsoever. The girls were allowed out with groups of other girls once in awhile, but with a very early curfew. Dating was forbidden. They were not allowed to attend school dances, including prom, and other activities where boys were present. Weekly attendance at mass was mandatory. The church youth group was their only approved, non-school, coed activity. Would it be a surprise to learn that one of the girls rebelled at age 18? She left home, moved out of state, and got pregnant with her boy friend. Would it be a surprise to learn that she struggled with her self-image, lacked self-confidence, and had weight problems? Would it be a surprise to learn that she was estranged from her parents? Children who are raised in controlling, patriarchal families come from all educational backgrounds.

Libby Anne was raised in a patriarchal, Quiverfull family because her parents made a conscious choice to raise their children in such a manner, not because they chose to teach their children at home. Homeschooling was a tool they used to achieve their ends. It was an instrument for achieving a desired result. Can homeschooling be used to lock children away from the modern world while simultaneously indoctrinating them into an extreme religious lifestyle? Unfortunately, yes it can; but, it is irresponsible to lay the blame on homeschooling. Doing so errantly feeds the arguments of home education critics who believe that all homeschoolers are attempting to indoctrinate their children in radical Christianity while sheltering them from the real world. It ignores the thousands of secular homeschoolers who simply wish to provide their children with a better education than the one provided by their local public school. It ignores the needs of parents who choose homeschooling to address their children’s special needs, needs that the local school cannot or will not meet. Homeschooling is not Christianity, Christianity is not homeschooling, and allowing the two to become intricately intertwined in the public eye serves neither the homeschooling movement nor Christ. Libby Anne’s story will become the example du jour for those people who wish to outlaw home education for everyone. Her story cannot be allowed to become another arrow in the homeschooling critic’s quiver.

My heart goes out to Libby Anne. I am grateful that she shared her story. It is an important story. I know that regaining one’s voice and speaking out is a necessary step in the recovery process when one person feels like their voice has been silenced. Libby Anne did so eloquently and powerfully. I hope and pray that she finds peace with her past and her parents.

I Hate These Kinds Of Dilemmas

2011-09-15T12:58:00.007-05:00

If anyone lives in the greater Kansas City area they will be familiar with KMBZ radio at 980 on the AM dial. It’s one of two local news and talk radio stations. The 9-11 morning slot is currently filled by a guy named Chris Merrill. Being that I am a talk radio junkie, I tune in to his show when I can, which depends entirely on where my children have decided to complete their school work. If they are in the kitchen, the radio is off. This morning, I was washing dishes and cooking French toast BY MYSELF when Merrill started his show by talking about the new book on Sarah Palin. Stick with me here. This is not a blog about politics.

Joe McGinniss is the author who moved to Wasila, Alaska, and took up residence in a house right next door to the Palins. It was a creepy thing to do: legal but borderline stalking. While he spent his days researching the topic of his book, the Palins erected a privacy fence between the two properties and went about their lives. Mr. McGinniss’ book will go on sale on September 20th, but details about the contents have been leaked. Allegedly, the former Alaskan governor used cocaine in the past, had a pre-marital fling with then college basketball player Glen Rice, is attracted to black men, and had affairs on Todd Palin. I know, I know. Who cares?

In Merrill’s casual, “I’m just an average guy in a bar” style, he expounded on how this publicity, true or not, will only help Sarah Palin with the public. Snorted cocaine? Attracted to black men? A pre-marriage fling with a black man out behind the woodshed? Merrill thinks these are all pluses to the average guy who might think that Palin is “bootylicious.” He went on to explain the great PR black men get due to their reputation for having bigger…well, you probably know what he meant. And he explained the value of having a wood shed behind which two people can sneak off for some private time. And you’re asking, “Arby, where are you going with this?” I’m getting there.

Normally, I can hear my children coming long before they get to the kitchen, with enough time to change stations or turn off the radio before they arrive. Neither the seven nor the eight year old is quiet. The ninja teenager is entirely different. I turned around from flipping a slice of French toast right about the time Merrill was dropping the “bootylicious” line only to find the 14 year old sitting quietly at the kitchen table with a shocked expression on his face. And it was at this moment that I thought,

“Whoever said that you had to go to a public school to be socialized?”

I told you to trust me. I brought this back to homeschooling. And now I’m wondering, should I leave the radio off between 9-11 in the morning or should I assign two hour's worth of listening as a part of a social studies class?

I hate these kinds of dilemmas.

Let's Hear from the Homeschooled

2011-09-14T00:40:00.000-05:00

I stumbled across this video while conducting research on homeschooling. It’s a funny video well worth the five minutes it takes to watch. So, grab your favorite beverage, lock the kids in another room (give ‘em a worksheet – that’s what “real” teachers do), relax and enjoy!

The Ignorant Among Us

2011-09-13T13:22:00.001-05:00

“A lot of them [homeschooled children]are demented when they're homeschooled. They are afraid of children. They learn to be scared of other children. It’s all about mommy and daddy telling us everything.”

- Joy Behar, The View

November 2008

One possible response:

Your thoughts?

The Ignorable Pale Blue Dot

2011-09-08T23:36:00.002-05:00

My online friend Kid, who writes at Diary of a Right Wing Peace Loving Pussycat, loves to post pictures of space. His latest picture is a fantastic picture of Saturn, with earth in the background.

Underneath the picture is a caption written by someone from NASA.

"Explanation: In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn drifted in giant planet's shadow for about 12 hours in 2006 and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn, slightly scattering sunlight, in this exaggerated color image. Saturn's rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the image. Seen in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn's E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, at the left, just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth."

Click on the picture to see a better view. The last line of the caption caught my attention. “Far in the distance, at the left, just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.”

“Almost ignorable.”

Earth is almost ignorable. Except for that pesky created by God thing. That tiny “pale blue dot” is the most important spot in the universe.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis 1:1

See you on Monday.

Do You Trust Your Instincts?

2011-09-07T21:45:00.002-05:00

The biggest challenge in raising a special needs kiddo is deciding when to intervene with extra help and when to let a kid be a kid. I err (by choice) on the latter. The Boss is excellent at stepping in when a little extra help is needed. Our decisions are made with lots of discussion, prayerfully considered. I trust my wife’s instincts, which is why I agreed to her wishes over the last couple of years where our daughter’s education was concerned. The end result was that Captain Chaos spent far more time than I was comfortable with in our local elementary school. This year I decided to trust my instincts. We scaled back our time at the local school to only speech and occupational therapy. That made our daughter our third fulltime homeschooler.

I’m in my eighth year of homeschooling, but in some ways it feels like my first. Those same concerns (Can I do this?) that I experienced in my first year resurfaced when I realized that I was solely responsible for the education of my special needs daughter. I don’t usually define the Captain as “special needs.” She’s simply my daughter in the same way that my sons are my sons. She’s my child. I adore her. Where her education is concerned, there are other issues that must be addressed. Teaching her is not as easy as was teaching General Mayhem. I learned very quickly in this young school year that having three children with three distinctly different learning styles makes for quite the instructional juggling act. Of the three, the Captain needs the highest level of one-on-one instruction. Ultimately, the biggest question we had was whether or not we would be able to use the same curriculum with Captain Chaos that we used with her brothers. My gut told me the answer to that question was, “Yes.” I’m glad that I trusted my instincts.

Yesterday, Captain Chaos took her first math test. After spending the first nine days of the school year sitting by her side while she completed her math lessons, I spent most of lesson ten in another room while she completed the test on her own. We’ve suspected for a while that the Captain likes to keep her intelligence a closely guarded secret. She let that secret slip with this:

We are thrilled!

I learned two things about teaching my daughter from this test. The Captain caught her own mistake on the first tower. She corrected her mistake by writing X’s on the boxes that she should not have colored. Later on, she told her mother that her mistake bothered her a great deal. The Captain possesses a level of self-awareness about the accuracy of her work that she does not demonstrate on a daily basis. The second point of interest came from the third tower. At first glance, it appears that she sloppily colored two squares when she should have colored three. If you take a second look you will see that she colored four, put an X through the fourth box, and then decided to erase it. For reasons too silly to explain here, Dad hasn’t allowed her to use the block eraser very often. She doesn’t have much practice. She doesn’t have much control over the eraser, either. Lesson learned. Let the girl erase.

Captain Chaos will take her first grammar test tomorrow. It's the same curriculum we used with the boys. I’m hoping for similar results. Good instincts, prayerfully considered. Trust them.

Fighting the Good Fight

2011-09-06T00:22:00.002-05:00

It is a spectacularly poor piece of writing. A Mr. Brent Applegath of Vernon sent a letter to the editor of the bclocalnews.com to express his views concerning the benefits of a public school education over homeschooling. No new ground was covered in the arguments against homeschooling. The author believes that classroom teachers have special training, are passionate about providing only the best opportunities for their students, and provide opportunities that homeschoolers cannot provide. “Obvious pluses such as learning with friends, sharing in discussions where many varied opinions are offered, diversity of subject matter, resources, technology and working to make a school a community are aspects of public education that are not as readily available to homeschooled children.” I’ve seen this line of reasoning before. The thing that bothers me about his letter, and kept me revisiting it over the course of the weekend, is the author’s complete lack of desire to share his interests with his children.

“As a parent, I think the instruction of my children is better left to others who are qualified. I have found this when providing opportunities for music lessons, skiing and snow boarding instruction and driver training. These activities are all things which I am proficient at yet lack the proper qualifications to deliver the instruction. In short, I am not passionate about teaching my children old how to play guitar, drive or ski. The amount of whining and arguing is not worth the effort.” (Emphasis mine)

I wonder how many homeschooling critics share Mr. Applegath’s lack of passion concerning their children’s education, whether the subject is music, ski lessons, and snowboarding or math, history, and science. He appears to be saying that since his children can be difficult, they’re not worth the effort. It’s simply easier to let someone else do the hard work. It is easier to send a child to school and let someone else influence them than it is to wage a war for the child’s heart, mind, and soul. The cover story for that position is, “I am not qualified to teach my children.”

Several years ago, I came across an explanation for anti-homeschooling criticism that appears uncannily accurate in light of Mr. Applegath’s statement. Author Sonny Scott, writing in a Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal article titled, “Home-schoolers Threaten Our Cultural Comfort,” offered an excellent reason why homeschooling is disliked.

Why do we hate (or at least distrust) these people so much? Their very existence represents a rejection of our values, and an indictment of our lifestyles. Those families are willing to render unto Caesar the things that Caesar’s be, but they draw the line at their children. Those of us who have put our trust in the secular state (and effectively surrendered our children to it) recognize this act of defiance as a rejection of our values, and we reject them in return.

I am not sitting in judgment of Mr. Applegath. I am not going to waste a moment’s time wondering about whether or not he loves his children. That would be silly. I am completely incapable of relating to Mr. Applegath’s statements about participating in his children’s education. His lack of passion for teaching his children is as foreign to me as is Mandarin Chinese. Passion. That's a powerful word. If I am anything, I am passionate about my children and their education. What concerns me is that if the expressed sentiments about child rearing are as common as are the weak arguments for preferring a public school classroom over a homeschool, what does that say about the world in which we live? What does that say about the society in which we are raising our children?

The Kids Think It's Cool: Dad Has A Tattoo

2011-09-02T00:00:00.007-05:00

For the record, getting a tattoo does not feel like you are putting your arm through a sewing machine; although, Cristina, that was a funny line. I’ve had injuries that hurt far worse. Getting a tooth drilled hurts worse than does getting a tattoo. It feels like I have a sun burn. The only truly difficult part was inking Ada’s name. I’ll have to talk to her about the size of her letters. They are BIG. They hurt.

I sat last night looking at my arm with amusement. I actually did it. I have a tattoo. It’s pretty cool. The coolest part is that I don’t just have my children’s names on my arm. I have their signatures. I’ve captured their names as they write them at their current ages: 14, 8, and 7.

Aesthetically, this tattoo could be better. It probably would have been, too, if the first tattoo artist I spoke with was the guy who did the work. I don’t think I could have gotten a better tattoo to match my personality. I am not flashy. I have a blue collar approach to life. That’s why when the tattoo artist finished placing the stencils on my arm, I looked at it thinking, “It’s not exactly what I envisioned.” Then I said, “Eh, works for me.”

My choice of scripture verses was very personal. They were made with a lot of thought. Proverbs 22:6 and Ephesians 6:4 remind me of how I should parent my children. The Boss discovered 1 Samuel 1:27 while we were searching for another verse. It comes from the story of Hannah. When she went to Eli to present her son to the Lord, she said, “I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him.” While my use of the quote is out of context, I cannot think of a better reminder of how God answered my prayers when Ada was sick besides her gentle kisses on my cheek each morning. So, I placed that scripture below her name. The fact that the writing is not decorative fits my over all concern for this tattoo. I did not want the artwork to be the focus of attention. The scripture should be the focus of attention. That’s why my arm looks like it went through a typewriter.

Tattooing scripture on my arm raised a series of questions that caught me completely by surprise. I looked at my arm and thought, “What are you going to do with this arm? Are you going to use it in a way that is pleasing to God?” The answer is that I’d better. I permanently emblazoned His Word in my flesh. Can I use that arm to steal? Can I raise it in anger? I have a constant visual reminder of His presence in my life. It’s…humbling. Those questions and the answers to them are the biggest surprises of this process.

Eventually, I will have a little work added to this tattoo to fill the white space between words, but I waited a long time to get this tattoo. I can wait longer to complete it. I think the kids like it. They were all smiles when I took off the bandage, and again the following morning. Ultimately, I am glad that I did it.

Melissa, thank you for this fifteenth anniversary gift.

Communication 101

2011-09-01T00:00:00.003-05:00

My daughter is a slob: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. Just look at her room.

Her books are scattered across the floor, adorned with underwear, shoes, a Mr. Microphone, and toys of every sort. My in-laws have a favored picture from The Boss’ childhood. It’s a pair of nylons draped across a football. My daughter is headed in that direction. You can see a baseball cleat a short distance from the girl’s polka dotted Minnie Mouse dress. There’s a reason our daughter is called “Mini-Me.” So, I wasn’t surprised that her room was trashed when I entered it yesterday. She was playing on her bed when I stood in the doorway.

“Hey, Captain, why did you throw all your books on the floor?”

“Because mommy told me to,” she replied.

“Your mother told you to? I don’t think so.”

“Yeah, she did.” The Captain jumped off her bed and walked to the pile of books. Pointing at them, she said, “Mommy told me to put all my books on the floor right here.”

The problem was that she was so earnest in her delivery that I doubted she was lying, not that my daughter isn’t capable of looking me straight in the eye and denying something I watched her do. Her survival instinct is well developed.

“That’s kind of strange,” I told her. “We’ll have to talk to mommy, because you have a perfectly good book shelf right here with empty shelves where your books should be.”

“You do that!” she sang, before returning to her bed.

Now, the reason she was so confident in her mother’s instructions was because her mother did indeed tell her to stack all of her books on the floor in front of the book shelf. They were cleaning the room together while the boys and I were camping. My wife told our daughter to pick up all of the books that were already on the floor and stack them in front of the book shelf. The Captain missed that critical portion of the directions, “that were already on the floor.” Confidently believing that she understood her mother, Captain Chaos happily pulled all of the books off of the book shelf and dumped them on the floor where they remained until I cleaned her room today. I needed to do something while waiting for my tattoo appointment.

So, today’s homeschooling lesson comes from Communication 101. Make your directions perfectly clear the first time, or your husband will be stuck cleaning up the child’s understanding of what you meant.

I Don't Have a Title for This Post

2011-08-31T09:25:00.004-05:00

I wasn’t going to say anything. It’s a personal decision about a controversial topic that elicits strong reactions from supporters and opponents alike. It’s also one of only two topics this morning that come to mind as I stare at a blank Word page and ask myself, “Do you have anything to say?” I don’t want to write about the Alpha Omega Social Media Awards, which end today. The dominating thought in my mind is the steady tick-tock of our homeschool clock as it counts down the eight hours and twenty-three minutes until my appointment with destiny. I feel like Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus as midnight approaches. This afternoon I’m getting a tattoo.

Don’t worry; it’s nothing large or gaudy. I’m not getting arrows painted on my neck or my favorite sports team’s logo permanently emblazoned on my buttocks, which would be the appropriate place for a Cubs logo. Let’s face it: they’re 59 and 77, 22 games out of first place with a .434 winning percentage. The tattoo will be a simple double ring of lettering on my right arm, just below the elbow. It will be placed in such a way that I can cover it with a long sleeve shirt should I choose to, even if I roll up my sleeves (which is my preferred method for wearing a long sleeve shirt). I can put it on full display with a short sleeve shirt. The upper ring will read

Proverbs 22:6 Ephesians 6:4

Underneath that on the second ring I will have my children’s signatures. General Mayhem, Major Havoc, and Captain Chaos each signed their name in their favorite color on a piece of paper. The tattoo artist will be able to duplicate their names on my arm, so it will look like they signed my arm with a Sharpie. On a partial ring underneath the Captain’s name, will be printed

1 Samuel 1:27

Five or six years ago, while reading a magazine in the Midwest Airlines bag room, I came across an article about a musician who had his children’s names tattooed around his wrist. I loved the idea. Since then, The Boss and I have had several long conversations about tattoos, what we like and dislike about them, and their purpose, as well as what scripture has and doesn’t have to say on the subject. I’ve spent time reading about Christian perspectives on tattoos. I’ve spent time praying about this decision. Making this decision has been an interesting journey, but it has been neither quick nor easy.

The Boss has been teasing me about becoming a manly man. Yeah, I’ll look hot, riding down the street on her scooter, tat in full view. I might even get a biker wave from a couple of six year olds fresh off of their training wheels. I am happy that this decision has been a mutual decision. She accompanied me to the tattoo parlor to discuss the design with a tattoo artist. I mention this here today for no other reason than eventually it will come out. In a few hours I will have a constant reminder of two very important passages about parenting on full display on my arm, and one equally important reminder that God answered my prayers (not that the Captain’s antics doesn’t already do that).

Where the Homeschooler Socializes the Socialized

2011-08-29T15:08:00.010-05:00

I fell in a vat of chocolate.
I fell in a vat of chocolate.
What’d you do when you fell into the chocolate?
Laly do dum, laly do dum day.

Months of planning came to fruition last weekend when our Boy Scout Troop took our Webelos I & II’s from our Cub Scout Pack camping at Camp Bromelsik in Lawrence, Kansas. The camping trip was designed to help the cubs complete some requirements for their Arrow of Light award, give them an idea of what camping will be like when they cross over to the troop, and act as a recruiting tool. When the Webelos return to school and tell their friends that they learned how to throw a tomahawk last weekend, other kids might become interested.

I yelled fire when I fell into the chocolate.
I yelled fire when I fell into the chocolate.
Why’d you yell fire when you fell into the chocolate?
Laly do dum, laly do dum day.

Our troop has 4 homeschooled scouts. Our Cub Scout pack has two homeschooled scouts. One of them is Major Havoc. That means that scouting is one of those critical opportunities for the homeschooled boys to be socialized by their public and private schooled peers. This is where they will learn to give and receive wedgies, snap towels, swear, spit, and make inappropriate comments about girls. Homeschooling critics often fret about homeschooled children missing these opportunities, you know.

During the drive to the campsite, Major Havoc requested that I play my Smothers Brothers CD. Specifically, he wanted to hear Chocolate, a perfectly silly, clean, song about a man falling into a vat of chocolate. Two lines into the song and the van became silent. My camping hardened boy scouts were leaning towards the van speakers, straining to hear Tom Smothers explain why he yelled “FIRE!” when he fell into the chocolate. When they heard the answer, laughter erupted. Hours later, I knew that I had successfully warped another generation of children when I walked past a campsite deep in the woods and heard scouts singing I yelled fire because no one would save me if I yelled CHOCOLATE! I can cross off another entry on my bucket list.

It appears that the homeschooler socialized his fellow scouts instead of the other way around. Now, I don’t agree with the commonly accepted definition of socialization as it is used in discussions of homeschooling; but, in that context, the social misfit of the group - an 8-year-old, homeschooled, Christian boy - entertained his peers with a song that contained no swearing, no derogatory comments of any kind, without sexual references or suggestions of violence.

They enjoyed The Saga of John Henry, too.

Let’s hear it for the homeschooler!

He Said/She Said #2 - How Has Your Teaching Changed?

2011-08-25T09:18:00.001-05:00

"He Said/She Said" is a new feature here at The Homeschool Apologist. It started when Linda and Arby met for the first time.   Today we present our first reader submitted topic. It came from The Boss. She wrote:

Since you've both got a number of years of homeschooling under your belt, Arby is starting his 8th year and Linda's starting her *phlwash* th year, I'd like to know what you've significantly changed from the first year (or two) to now. For example, if an unnamed HS dad never wrote out lesson plans or organized early on but now finds himself writing out entire years and organizing history lessons to coincide with certain times of the year, that would be a significant change. I'm curious...

She Said:

Where do I begin?

Let’s start with the obvious.

First, I was 28 then. I’m 48 now.

My hair was brown then. Now it’s gray.

I was short then. And…well…I’m still short.

Okay, so not everything has changed. But the fact is, in the 20 years since my homeschooling journey began, there HAVE been many significant changes in how I homeschool. But more important than what has changed is the reality that I have changed. And inevitably, it is the changes in me that have brought about the biggest changes in the way I homeschool.

I’m older…and hopefully wiser.

I definitely apply more wisdom and “real world” experience to my teaching than I did when I was in my twenties. I find that the decisions I make are more intuitive and less agonizing than they were back then. Consequently, I second-guess myself much less.

I’m more confident.

Age and wisdom have increased my confidence. In the beginning, I was always looking for validation. I wanted proof that what I was doing was working. Today, I’m confident in my abilities and in the superiority of homeschooling. And I never—and yes, I mean never—doubt the effectiveness of my homeschooling.

I’m more relaxed.

I think this little truth has brought about the most significant change in how I “do” homeschool. In so many ways, how I approach homeschooling—our schedule, our curriculum, actually, our whole life—is so much more relaxed than it was when my daughters were young. Several factors—an unexpected (and difficult) pregnancy at 40, a new baby, and three moves—all within a period of 18 months—played a huge role in forcing me to realize that school happens, even when I can’t make it happen! Life itself is learning. When you’re with your children 24/7, you can’t help but teach them. It just happens. Of course I still teach very intentionally as well, but at times when that’s impossible, it’s okay.

I’m less rigid.

When we first started homeschooling, I was pretty locked into my image of the perfect homeschool. We always did school five days a week. We always did every problem on every page. We always finished every book. We had a desk for everyone. A schoolroom with stacks and stacks of books and resources. Maps and penmanship posters on the walls. An American flag in the corner and the pledge of allegiance every morning. These days you’d be hard-pressed to find evidence that a homeschooler lives in my house. Partly it’s because no longer have room for all that stuff. But mostly it’s because I’ve realized that most of it is overkill. At least for me. Homeschool doesn’t rule my life anymore. My life rules my homeschool.

I’m more adventurous.

I used my first curriculum for 9 years. I used my second curriculum for 10 years.   But in the last 2 years I’ve tried curriculum, methods, and resources that I never dreamed I would use. I’m branching out. I didn’t think I would ever do that.

Yes. I’ve changed. But despite the changes, I really don’t believe I’m a better homeschooler today than I was in 1990. I’m just different.

He Said:

I know why The Boss asked this question.   She’s witnessed firsthand the single biggest change in my teaching over the past sixteen years. Quite frankly, she’s surprised.   This year, more than any other year teaching either professionally or here at home, I’m lesson planning.   A lot. I’m scheduling our work to not only insure that we cover all of our lessons in two 18 week semesters, but I am also organizing our material so that it makes more sense in the school year.   I’d love to share with you some pedagogical insight or fascinating educational theory to support this change in my teaching style, but I’ve never had much time for the Ivory Tower approach to education, either during college or since.   My reasons for planning or not planning a lesson are practical.

I’ve never been much of a lesson planner in part because I was never taught how to write a lesson plan. I graduated with honors from the University of Illinois at Chicago with a BA in the Teaching of English, and a complete lack of training for and practical experience in writing lesson plans. That doesn’t say much for the university.   I never found this lack of experience detrimental to my teaching. I never felt the need to plan my lessons for the same reason that I do not write outlines as a part of my writing process. That’s not how my mind works. My best instructional work came when I was thinking on my feet in front of a class. I trusted my instincts, my knowledge, and the material at my disposal. They served me well. When I transitioned from classroom teacher to homeschool instructor, I stepped down from teaching high school English to teaching second grade everything.    I figured that if I couldn’t teach the second grade without elaborate planning, someone needed to shoot me.

Our first year of homeschooling was a monumental challenge. The fact that we survived to homeschool for seven more years is a miracle in itself. When we started, General Mayhem was in second grade, Major Havoc was about to turn two years old, and Captain Chaos was four months old.   During our first month of homeschooling, back when we were so broke that we couldn’t afford to buy any curriculum and we scrabbled together whatever we could find for free, Captain Chaos was diagnosed with her heart defect, was hospitalized, and had surgery. General Mayhem, confused and frightened concerning his sister, realized that we weren’t bluffing when we told him we decided to homeschool; consequently, he decided to be as uncooperative as possible in hopes that we’d abandon this homeschooling silliness and send him back to his beloved parochial school. The Boss lived at the hospital five days a week. I took weekends. The Major was silently stressed beyond belief. The boy did not talk at all, but he sure did scream.   When the girl came home two months later, every waking minute of each day was consumed with medicine, feeding schedules, therapy appointments and doctor visits. We squeezed teaching into the gaps. Three months later we moved across the state line to Kansas. It was a good thing I could think on my feet and teach the second grade with an eclectic curriculum. My experience provided the skills to navigate these rough waters.

Back when I was only teaching one child, I was correct about my need to lesson plan. When the Boss and I came up with a wild idea of having more kids, we screwed up a perfectly good non-plan. Throughout the years, reality dictated changes. The girl is a healthy if not slightly delayed seven year old who just started first grade. The Major is in 3 ½ grade. He’s a happy and chatty eight year old boy. The General is in his first year of high school. As we’ve progressed from the perfect storm that was our first year of homeschooling to now I’ve learned a lot about what my children need. Through trial-and-error, tears, frustration, disbelief, doubting, yelling, laughing, tremendous amounts of prayer, and a brief yet spectacular failed attempt at public schooling, I have learned that General Mayhem needs closely supervised, structured teaching. That takes resources, good time management, and a lot of planning. The more we plan, the better he performs. Add two additional children in two different grades and without a carefully planned schedule, dad would lose his mind.
I’ve become a lesson planner out of necessity. The first two days of this new school year still left me feeling like a plate spinner at the circus, but a well planned plate spinner. There is no way that I can keep everything straight in my head. I must have plans written down. If truth be told, I’m not planning lessons as much as I am scheduling material into time slots each day. We are blessed to be able to purchase our curriculum. That makes life easier. I use teacher’s guides when they are available, and when they add good material that isn’t found in the accompanying student’s book. Every little bit helps.

The Boss sees lesson planning as the biggest change in my teaching over the course of…yikes…fifteen years of teaching both professionally and here at home. She’s correct.   I guess you can teach a young dog new tricks.

If you have a question that you would like to see us answer, leave it in a comment or send us an email. We'd love to hear your thoughts!

The Rare Grey Striped Albino Rhinoceros

2011-08-24T14:06:00.000-05:00

Teaching Captain Chaos is a lot like trying to get Governor William J. Lepetomane to sign a bill into law. “Give us a hand here,” Governor Lepetomane commanded. As Lieutenant Governor Hedley Lamarr grabbed the governor’s hand and guided it through his signature, Lepetomane announced, “Work, work, work! Work, work, work!” while looking everywhere and anywhere except at the bill in front of him. Life imitated art yesterday when I told Captain Chaos to color a rhinoceros.

It was a simple Language Arts assignment. On a sheet of paper there were different shapes. Inside each shape was printed a letter of the alphabet. She needed to color all the shapes with consonants in them green. All the shapes with vowels in them were colored grey. If she colored all the shapes properly, there would be a picture of a rhinoceros standing in the jungle. Captain Chaos understood the concept. The problem was that she was more interested in anything and everything going on around her than on the art assignment in front of her. Her hand moved as if it had a mind of its own, while she looked around the room and spoke about one of her brother’s video games, a fly in the kitchen, the squirrel running across the phone line in the back yard, and cumquats. I only kept her interest by coloring a little bit of green for every little bit of grey she managed to smear on the paper. I discovered that my daughter has an amazing ability to repeatedly drag a crayon back and forth across the same segment of paper without ever branching off to uncolored sections. She completed her assignment with a nice rendering of the rare Grey Striped Albino Rhinoceros.

Of my three children, Captain Chaos is the most easily distracted. She has the shortest attention span. She also has physical challenges that make holding a pencil or a crayon difficult; consequently, she tires easily. This causes her to lose her concentration. I have to be aware of the need to chunk her work into smaller bits so as to not lose her attention. This is easier to do at home than it would be in a classroom full of children: 24 individual sources of distraction for my daughter. Our local elementary school wanted to greatly increase the number of hours Captain Chaos spent in school this year. I politely declined their offer. She will only attend Speech and Occupational therapies. It wouldn’t take much time for my daughter to become a major distraction for a classroom teacher and the other students. Seeing the success that we are having teaching her here at home, I am grateful that we have the freedom to homeschool in our country.

Some Days It's Easier Not to Ask "Why?"

2011-08-22T14:11:00.003-05:00

The first day of school did not start with the traditional “First Day of School” song, a song with no discernable melody that The Boss and I boisterously sang while clanging pan lids and pounding on toy drums to wake-up our children. We broke with a seven year tradition and gently roused our young learners. They began their day with a prayer and a breakfast of pancakes with bacon. Naturally, the girl asked for noodles, because a day without Ramen is a day not worth living.

This morning was interesting. The dynamics of our homeschool day changed dramatically this year. We now have three fulltime students. There’s a part of me that feels like we are back in a comfortable groove. It’s just another day of homeschooling. There’s a very real part of me that feels like we are back on day one of year one. Balancing the diverse needs of a high school freshman, a third grader, and a special needs first grader is challenging, harried, spastic, fun, and loud. We started our day with a prayer for patience and guidance and cooperation, but I’m not certain the children understood that it was meant for them, too, since the 14 year old boy who can cook for himself over an open campfire and sleep comfortably in a snow bank and throw a tomahawk twelve feet and hit a playing card nailed to a tree stump had a near meltdown over the rules for hide-n-seek with his younger brother while they took a short break from studies.

These things still baffle me. In fact, there is a lot about homeschooling that still baffles me, but instead of asking why, I think I will just accept that it is. Life is easier that way.

Curriculum? No Sweat!

2011-08-19T07:59:00.004-05:00

“What curriculum do you use?”

That is the number one question that homeschoolers ask when they first meet, after “Hi, what’s your name?” and “Which of these wild hooligans are yours?” The third rail of American homeschooling is the number one question every homeschooler wants answered. If answered carefully, everything will be fine. Fumble the answer and you might find yourself in an academic mosh pit. Homeschoolers identify themselves by three main categories: secular versus religious, method of instruction (i.e. classroom model, Charlotte Mason, classical, eclectic, unschooler, etc.), and curriculum source. I don’t get myself wrapped around the axel over those identities. In fact, I am so unconcerned that I allowed another homeschooler to pick our math curriculum this year. Now, how cool is that?!

This year was the first year that The Boss and I struggled over our curriculum choices. Well, at least The Boss did. Math is her department. She has the math degree. She’s the person who teaches upper level math in our house. I trust her judgment. We have an unspoken agreement. I don’t question her about math. She doesn’t question me about Shakespeare, either the Riverside or Pelican editions (of which I own both). I supported her efforts while she diligently researched geometry curriculum for General Mayhem by keeping the volume muted while I channel surfed. The Boss narrowed our choices to Jacobs geometry and the new Saxon math geometry book. With reasons to like and dislike each one, we withheld judgment until we could place our hands on an actual copy of Jacobs Geometry (we had already viewed the Saxon book), something we were unable to do while visiting two homeschooling conventions this year.

Enter the world’s greatest blogging partner.

With half an hour remaining at the Schaumberg Homeschooling Convention, we sat down across a table from Linda, our stalwart Alpha Omega sales rep, blogging partner, and new friend, convinced her to stop surfing Twitter, and asked her to talk to us about Alpha Omega’s geometry curriculum. Ten minutes later I heard words that I never thought would escape from The Boss. Flipping through a LIFEPAC geometry book, the woman who once gleefully announced to a crowded convention hall the reason why she hated LIFEPAC materials actually said, “This isn’t bad. Not bad at all. I kinda like this.” When she discovered that the box set of LIFEPAC geometry only cost $62.95, half the cost of Saxon’s $116.00 geometry set and a third of the cost of Jacobs $178.85 curriculum set, we knew we had a strong contender. We decided to return home, make a decision the following week, and purchase our choice. I knew we were leaning strongly towards LIFEPAC. Our only concern was whether or not we could get Alpha Omega to give Linda credit for the sale if we called the order in a few days later.

Thirty minutes after we sat down the convention ended. We started helping Linda pack up her display, something we had decided to do in advance. The only thing standing between us and fine dining at a Portillo’s Hot Dog Stand was this task. Shortly before we finished, Linda made a phone call and then informed us that Alpha Omega was shipping us a complete LIFEPAC geometry set. Gratis. Either we were really entertaining company, or she genuinely appreciated our help with the breakdown. Or she was hungry. But that’s exactly how we let another homeschooler pick our geometry curriculum for this year.

Both Linda’s and Alpha Omega’s generosity still has my wife and I at a loss for words. We are grateful for this blessing and we thank you both for sending it our way. I will be reviewing this curriculum set during this school year. At first glance we see that the material is competitively priced while offering math instruction that appeals to a mathematician who wants clear, straightforward, rigorous math instruction without tricks, gimmicks, and flashy graphics. I knew Linda’s choice was good when I showed it to the General. “That’s twice as big as the set I used last year!” he complained. When you’re 14, the weight of your curriculum means far more than the content. It must be good.

Now, how cool is that?!

Jenna

2011-08-17T22:43:00.001-05:00

Baby Jenna died today. She was nine months old. At 9:40 in the morning she passed away quietly in her mother’s arms in a hospital in Indiana.   I’ve been praying for Jenna for a few months. Praying for a sick child is not something to brag about, so I kept it to myself, unless I was encouraging others to pray for her, too. I do not know Jenna or her mother.    I have few details about her illness. She had a heart defect and was a candidate for a heart transplant.   Her doctors did everything they could for her.

I have a soft spot for cardiac kids. My daughter was born with a congenital heart defect that nearly took her life when she was four months old. When she was sick I witnessed something that was utterly amazing.   She received prayers from around the world. I cannot begin to describe the feeling of having complete strangers contacting me to tell me that they were praying for Captain Chaos, that their churches were praying for Captain Chaos, that their relatives were looking for updates on her condition. It was a good thing, too. In the heat of the battle, praying was very hard to do. I prayed. I prayed earnestly, but I was mentally and emotionally numb during a great deal of the experience, and if God was answering me, I couldn’t hear it. It took all of my power to make it through each day and digest the diet of complicated medical information that had become my daily fare.   Praying for Jenna was far easier, far more satisfying, and far more cathartic. I prayed with a clear head. I prayed with confidence. I prayed with peace of mind.

I received news of Jenna’s passing from a cousin through a Facebook message. While I wrote a response to her message, Captain Chaos decided she was hungry. Against my directions not to forage for food, she climbed onto the kitchen counter, opened a cabinet door, and knocked a jar of instant coffee off of the shelf.   It fell onto my USS Portsmouth coffee mug, an irreplaceable souvenir from my submarine days, and chipped off a huge section of mug, instantly transforming it into a pencil holder. And in that moment I was reminded of a lesson I have learned over and over again since bringing my daughter home from the hospital.

I prayed for this.

When your child is near death, you pray for their survival. There is little else about which to think. I wasn’t praying for her first steps or her first day of kindergarten or her first date. I simply prayed for her to remain with us. That meant, of course, the good with the bad.   Throughout the years, with all of its challenges, with the View Master disks in the aquarium and her love for eating dog food and the writing on the walls with permanent marker, I kept remembering how hard I prayed for her survival. My prayers were answered, answered positively, and I would not be ungrateful. It didn’t alleviate my frustration but it did prevent me from getting angry. And the goldfish got to see Mount Rushmore.

After her timeout, and after her lunch, I returned to the computer to complete my message to my cousin. Captain Chaos decided that it was time to show me her Hula Hoop skills. She stood next to me wearing her “kajamas,” gyrating violently to keep the hoop spinning. Of course, her kajama pants were a bit too big for her, so after five or six revolutions they slid down past her bare butt, causing her to burst out laughing while dropping the hoop to pull up her pants before she started spinning again. She just might be learning a bit of modesty, but obviously not enough to stop and put on underwear before continuing.

With the start of the school year a few days away I take great delight in adding my daughter to the class as my third fulltime student. I take great delight in her enthusiasm for life, expressed last Wednesday night at Cabela’s where she walked into the bargain basement with her mother, pointed to a black rifle on display, and said, “Oh, yeah! Let’s take that baby out and see what she can do!”   I marveled at her sincerity today when she walked up to me and apologized for breaking my coffee mug. She’s learning. It’s wonderful.

My heart breaks for Jenna and her parents. I shed a few silent tears before asking God to help them. I’ve walked a mile in their shoes, but their journey is far harder than anything that I’ve ever gone through. Because baby Jenna died today.

How Refreshing...Someone Who Gets It!!

2011-08-12T15:34:00.004-05:00

Every once in awhile you read something that just makes you smile! Though this article has one of those "you've-got-to-be-kidding-me moments," (courtesy of an "enlightened" school board member), the article goes WAY uphill from that point on! Here are a few highlights. Please go read the whole article...it's GREAT!

First a thought from someone who doesn't get it...

"Those kids are nothing but problems,” he said. “They’re not socialized. We had one boy who wanted to go out for football because that’s something you really can’t do at home, and when he got to the locker room, the other kids found out he didn’t even know how to snap a towel or give a wedgie. That’s the problem with homeschooling." --a quote from a "big-city school board member"

To which the author responds...

"Yes, why can’t homeschooled children act as if they’ve been raised by wolves like socialized children? What were their parents thinking?

"I can always tell if children are being schooled at home. They call me “Mr. Mullen” instead of “dude,” or “yo,” or a couple of words that we can’t print. Homeschoolers are usually smarter and more talented than I am. Regularly schooled children may be smarter than I am, too, but since they are socialized to be uncomfortable speaking to anyone outside their age group, I will never know."

And finally...

"Parents and teachers know that what works well for one child may not work for another. How old were you before you found out what you were meant to do in life — if you ever have? Was it something you found at school or on your own?

"Maybe the best education is a combination of conventional schooling, homeschooling and unschooling — or something we haven’t thought of yet. But what isn’t working is socialization."

Interesting....Take a Look and Share Your Thoughts

2011-08-12T13:37:00.001-05:00

Via: Online College Source

The Apologists Finally Meet in Person!!

2011-08-09T09:06:00.008-05:00

On October 10, 2007, a crazy, stay-at-home, homeschool dad stumbled on a brand new homeschool blog and left a comment. Little did they know that with that single comment, the seed of a blogging friendship had been planted. Over the next several years, Arby and Linda became regular visitors on each other’s blogs. Arby’s posts made her laugh. And Linda’s posts made him think. They both thought a public school classroom was the worst possible place to educate a child. And they both thought the Chicago Cubs needed a goat. It seemed a partnership made in blogging heaven.

So in August of 2010, Arby emailed Linda with an invitation to join him in a new blogging venture. She accepted, and The Homeschool Apologist was born. But 12 months, 114 posts, and 180 followers later, and despite Arby’s many trips to visit relatives in Chicago, the blogging duo from The Homeschool Apologist had still not met “in-real-life.” For all Linda knew, Arby really did look like Cary Grant.

But on the afternoon of August 6, 2011, at a homeschool convention west of Chicago, Arby and Linda met in person for the first time. That evening, over Portillo’s Italian beef sandwiches and French fries, Arby and Melissa and Jim and Linda became real friends. Of course the topic of blogging came up and a new blog feature was created.

One thing that we have discovered over years of reading each other’s writing is that we don’t always think alike. So, we wondered…what would happen if we each wrote our thoughts on a single topic and turned it into a post? No collaboration. No discussion. No reading each other’s thoughts before publishing.

Just “he said.” And “she said.” We think it’s seems worth a try.

So, for better or for worse, here’s our first installment.

He Said/She Said: On Meeting for the First Time

HE SAID

A Saturday Night Full of Unexpected Surprises

After four years of online friendship and one year of writing collaboration, I finally had the opportunity last Saturday night to meet Linda and her husband Jim at the Schaumburg Homeschool convention. I have to admit that I was nervous. We always say that Linda is the serious writer in our blog team, and I’m the comic relief. Or at least I’m supposed to be. Would I live up to the billing in person? I was thankful that The Boss was with me. We always have fun at homeschool conventions because we never take the kids. That allows us to walk hand-in-hand, talk, laugh, and plan, without the need to constantly herd three children and reveal our dark little secret to the entire homeschooling community for controlling our kids: electric cattle prods. It was a date night. That’s always relaxing. I quickly found that I had no need to be nervous. Saturday night was a night of unexpected pleasant surprises.

My big surprise of the night was learning that Linda is short! She looks taller in pictures. I think she’s an inch shorter than my wife, which instantly made me wish Melissa had trimmed my nose hair before we left the house. Something else I quickly noticed about Mrs. Difino is that she is even sharper in person than she looks in pictures. You can see it in her eyes. I always knew that my blog partner was smart, but I was unprepared for how much that comes across in person. The most interesting aspect to meeting Linda was that The Boss and I were instantly at ease. It was as if we weren’t virtual friends meeting for the first time but long established friends who were simply picking up where we left off the last time we were together. Only there wasn’t a last time. It was comfortable.

The Boss and I solved our sole remaining homeschool problem for the upcoming school year at Saturday’s convention. What curriculum would we use for teaching geometry? We stopped at quite a few booths and looked through many options, disappointed at the fact that it was our second convention this year where we could not put our hands on a copy of Jacob’s Geometry. Long time readers, you’ll be amused to learn that once The Boss looked past the packaging, we opted to step away from Saxon Math for LIFEPAC Geometry. LIFEPAC - the very product line that earned us a spot on the AOP conventioneers’ Wall of Shame. There is more to this story that I will explain in another post. We also discovered, thanks to Linda, a fantastic microscope for our upcoming biology class. We will purchase it next week. I will review both LIFEPAC and the microscope in future posts.

We stuck around to help Linda pack up at the end of the convention. It was interesting to watch how all the vendors disassembled their displays as the convention hall became one large, empty room. The rather extensive AOP set-up fit on one pallet once it was packaged. After we finished we headed out to Portillo’s for beef sandwiches and fun conversation. The Boss told me many years ago that if I bought her beef she’d follow me anywhere. This year that meant Schaumburg, Illinois. We were joined by Linda’s husband Jim. It was nice to meet the man we’ve seen so much of on Linda’s blog. I enjoyed listening to him talk about their ministry work. By the end of the conversation we found an area of mutual interest. He told me about the Marion E. Wade center and its C.S. Lewis collection while Linda and The Boss planned to meet at Cantigny on our next visit to Chicago.

There’s more to tell about this fun night, but I will save it for future posts. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Jim and Linda’s daughter, Janna. She was at the convention and joined us for dinner, an attractive young lady stuck in a booth with four middle aged adults talking about stuff that would have bored me to tears in my early twenties. The public homeschooling dialogue is dominated by adults. Rarely do we hear the voices of our children, the very people homeschooled. You cannot meet this young woman and think, “weird, un-socialized homeschooler.” She is a polite and friendly college graduate who is a natural with babies (not her own, another sales rep’s little boy) and an excellent representative of the homeschooling community. I suspect all of Jim and Linda’s children are, too. I hope that one day they will add their voices to the discussion.

Saturday night was special. We made new friends. That is always fun.

SHE SAID

Now, I KNOW I’m not the only mommy blogger that was dying to meet Arby. There are homeschool moms all over America who want to know what an honest-to-goodness, real-life homeschooling “house husband” is really like.

So for all Arby’s fans (and you know who you are,) here they are:

The Top 10 Things I Now Know About Arby (and The Boss):

I’m still not sure why he used this picture for his avatar on Arby’s Archives, ‘cause he doesn’t look a thing like Cary Grant. (Sorry, Arby…but I gotta call ‘em like I see ‘em.)
That being said, weight watchers must have worked for Arby. Just sayin’.
Though he calls his wife “The Boss,” she really isn’t. It's very clear that they’re an amazing team who manage to pull off an arrangement that most couples wouldn’t be able to. I’m impressed.
Arby and the Boss met via email. Over loaner airport baggage claim baby strollers. Seriously.
The Boss really DOESN’T hate Alpha Omega Publications curriculum. In fact, she's decided to use AOP’s LIFEPAC for Geometry. (No, Melissa, you never will live this down!)
He married up. The Boss is REALLY smart. Really. I think that’s why she’s teaching math.
Arby’s a bit of a bookworm. We were all having a really nice talk until we lost Arby and Jim to a lengthy discussion about literature. That’s okay. Melissa and I did just fine talking about important stuff.
Arby’s great at packing boxes. Okay, I’m struggling to get to ten here, but seriously, thanks for all your help after the convention, you two!!
Arby’s family is his inspiration. He loves his wife and his kids. That’s very obvious.
Nothing at all surprised me about meeting Arby. What you see is what you get. The Arby that you catch a glimpse of between the lines of his writing is the real deal…he’s every bit the man that he appears to be. I’m honored to be his blogging partner. And now, I can also say, I’m honored to be his friend.

Got a topic you’d like to hear our thoughts on? Leave it in a comment!

Teach Your Children Well (The Musical)

2011-07-12T23:06:00.001-05:00

With our apologies to Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young we present the Homeschool version of:

"Teach Your Children Well"

(Lyrics courtesy of Arby)

(Go ahead, sing along...you know you want to!)

You, who teach your kids,

alone at home,

you must be crazy!

You must, work twice as hard.

Your children need you.

You can’t be lazy!

Teach, your children well.

Most lessons aren’t, self-explanatory.

Some things, they learn alone,

but preparation, is mandatory.

Don't assume they know the “whys.”

If they told you, you would cry,

and then shake your head and sigh,

because you love them.

And you, of tender years,

don’t know as much,

as you think that you do.

And so please, listen carefully.

Your parent’s words,

Are not just voodoo.

Learn, your lessons well.

School isn’t hell,

that just slowly goes by.

So tell, your folks your dreams.

They’ll help you learn,

how to achieve them.

Kids can’t learn it all themselves.

Mom and dad must teach them well.

So buy your teacher’s guide and sigh,

because you love them.

Can Children Teach Themselves?

2011-07-08T11:28:00.002-05:00

Several days ago I shared a post, Teach Your Children Well, which elicited a rather impassioned response from one of our readers. The point which aroused the strongest protest was this: “Children can’t teach themselves.” In her response, the reader challenged that statement repeatedly. So, I asked myself, CAN children teach themselves?

At the outset, I want to stress that this post is not an indictment of unschooling. Unschooling is not the method that I have chosen for my own homeschool, but I see the value in the approach and believe that children CAN learn in a less structured environment that depends heavily on the child’s natural desire to learn. However, I do not believe that children—even in unschooling homes—teach themselves.

I know many good homeschoolers. They employ a wide variety of methods and means to accomplish their end goal. They all desire to see their children grow into adulthood as capable people, able to function with a high level of success. And regardless of the method chosen, good homeschoolers are ALL actively involved in the education of their children. That involvement does not look the same for all parents, or for all children.

I used to say about my firstborn that I could put her in a room with no windows and no doors and she would learn. Though the description was used to portray a child who had a high level of natural desire and aptitude for learning, in reality, a room with no windows or doors is a horrible environment for learning. If placed in one, my daughter would not have learned much. Yes, she was highly motivated and she loved to learn. And at many points during her 13 years as a homeschooled student, she learned very independently. But she did not teach herself. As her teacher, I placed within her grasp the resources that she needed in order to learn and then I let her go. Would she have learned what she needed to learn if I had not provided her with the resources and experiences that became her teacher? More than likely, no. Children cannot teach themselves.

Parents are teachers. Siblings are teachers. Books are teachers. Experience is a teacher. Curriculum is a teacher. Life is a teacher. If a child has none of these placed within his grasp, I would suggest that he will learn very little. A traditional homeschooler may take a much more active role in teaching her children than the unschooler does, but the unschooler invests much in ensuring that her children are provided with the experiences and resources that are required to learn successfully. In her comment, the reader who challenged my post stated that her children learned “with only guidance from herself”. By her own admission, her children did not teach themselves. She guided them toward the necessary resources and experiences that taught them. Children may be able to learn independently, but they cannot teach themselves.

She also suggested that “Maybe it is you that should go back and read history books about the education of Abe Lincoln, Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison…I doubt they used teacher’s guides.”

I took the challenge. After a quick google search, I learned something very interesting. We homeschoolers often throw around the names of famous Americans who were home educated. In many cases, these folks were in fact effectively schooled at home. However, in some cases, we may be attributing the term “homeschooled” to a mere absence of formal education. This appears to be the case for Abraham Lincoln. Here is Abraham Lincoln’s description of his own education[1]:

“My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age; and he grew up, litterally [sic] without education. He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in my eighth year. We reached our new home about the time the State came into the Union. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals, still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools, so called; but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond "readin, writin, and cipherin" to the Rule of Three. If a straggler supposed to understand latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizzard [sic]. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the Rule of Three; but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity.”

And this third person description was written by Lincoln himself for a campaign biography published by the Chicago Press and Tribune in 1860.

“Abraham now thinks that the aggregate of all his schooling did not amount to one year. He was never in a college or academy as a student, and never inside of a college or academy building till since he had a law license. What he has in the way of education he has picked up. After he was twenty-three and had separated from his father, he studied English grammar--imperfectly, of course, but so as to speak and write as well as he now does. He studied and nearly mastered the six books of Euclid since he was a member of Congress. He regrets his want of education, and does what he can to supply the want.”

So back to my point from the original post. If you homeschool, what is your goal? To simply homeschool your children? Or to teach them well? Because, in fact, your children won't teach themselves.

[1] Both quotes from The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy Basler, and published by the Abraham Lincoln Association in 1953. (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/)

Teach Your Children Well

2011-07-05T14:04:00.001-05:00

Everyone who has ever read this blog knows that we're all about homeschooling here. You know I don't spend much blogging energy defending the "educational system" as a whole. I am much more likely to defend homeschoolers and their right to teach their children as they see fit. As a general rule, I don't believe that professional teachers are better equipped to teach children than parents are.

However, I've had a rant building up over a number of months. Years even.

But first a little background. First, I am a veteran homeschooler. I have homeschooled my four children for more than 20 years. Second, I work on a part-time contract as a homeschool consultant for Alpha Omega Publications (AOP), a large homeschool curriculum publishing company. I represent AOP at homeschool conventions all over the country, as well as help to administrate AOP's social media presence. (Oh, and by the way, yes, it is Alpha Omega's curriculum that Arby's wife hates!)

As a homeschool consultant, I answer lots of questions about homeschooling in general and about AOP's curriculum in particular. I am usually a pretty strong believer in the adage "the only stupid question is an unasked one." However, there's one question in particular that I'm getting a little tired of hearing.

"Are your Teacher's Guides really necessary? I mean I think I can do 4th grade Math!"

Now, I know I'm gonna step on more than a few toes here, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.

Yes, teacher's guides can be expensive and I know that lots of families are necessarily trying to save money these days. And yes, that mom probably does know how to do 4th grade math. But does she really know how to teach 4th grade math? And is knowing how to teach really that important for homeschoolers?

I'll get back to the actual question of the necessity of teacher's guides in a few minutes, but first I want to address the more important issue of why I'm so bothered by the question to begin with...and keep in mind I've been asked this question more times than I can begin to count! Over the months I've grown more and more convinced that the question itself is a sign of a bigger (and somewhat troubling) issue. It seems there are growing numbers of homeschoolers who are trying to take the "easy road" to homeschooling--a road that costs little in terms of time and/or money. But children cannot teach themselves. While I believe that most parents can do at least as good a job (and often better) as most trained teachers can, the fact remains that teaching a child at home is a job not to be taken lightly. It requires a tremendous level of commitment. It can cost a great deal of time and money. If a homeschooler isn't willing or able to spend a lot of money, the commitment in time will likely go up significantly. And for parents who don't want to (or can't) spend large amounts of time, the financial commitment should go up considerably.

I am a trained teacher. But when I started homeschooling I didn't make the assumption that my teacher training meant I could do it all on my own. I used the resources that were available to me to assist me in teaching my own children. Over 20+ years of teaching my four children at home, I purposed to equip myself to educate my children. I spent countless hours learning how to be a good homeschooler. I spent money on resources that I knew would help me teach them. I learned Algebra and Chemistry so that I could teach it to them. I read books that I never wanted to read so that I could discuss them with my daughters . I invested a great deal in my children's education. And that investment has paid off in the lives of my children.

The changes in the homeschooling movement in the last 20 years are staggering. Those changes are mostly good ones. But in my opinion, they have created a problem as well. The exploding growth of the homeschooling movement and the plethora of available resources may have created the illusion that homeschooling is "easy." And it may be easy to homeschool, but it definitely isn't easy to do it well. By choosing to homeschool, parents are taking full responsibility for the academic development (and futures) of their children. I don't believe it is possible to overstate the importance of the task at hand. It is a huge, life-impacting decision. Parents who purpose to homeschool should also purpose to do everything in their power to do it well.

So, what about Teacher's Guides? Are they really necessary? Unfortunately, I can't answer that question for every parent. Some parents may be equipped to teach without them. But in many cases, the use of a teacher's guide is the most effect way to ensure that a child will receive the instruction they need to fully grasp the content of the lesson. Even trained teachers use teacher's guides. They are, in many cases, the main source of instruction. It puzzles me why so many parents insist that they are unnecessary.

So is the question of the necessity of teacher's guides really the right question? A far more important question to ask is this:

As a homeschooler, what is your goal? Is it simply to homeschool? Or is it to "teach your children well?"

Independence Day: Freedom is Not Free

2011-07-03T20:01:00.000-05:00

It would seem that blogging has taken a back seat to life lately for both Arby and I! I've been able to manage an occasional post over at my other blog, but The Homeschool Apologist has suffered just a bit! (Okay...so maybe no new posts since the middle of May is more than just a bit!!) I guess when our school year ended, my creative blogging juices dried up as well! Hopefully they'll start flowing again soon!

Until then, I'd love to have you hop on over to one of my favorite "meeting spots" for homeschoolers, The Homeschool Village, to read a guest post I was asked to write in celebration of Independence Day. Here's a little bit to get you started...

To many Americans, Independence Day has become little more than a holiday dedicated to family barbecues, parades, and fireworks. Though the celebrations have a value all their own, is it possible that we have lost our appreciation for the very idea the day celebrates? Has the true value of our freedom been swallowed up in our enjoyment of the benefits that liberty affords us?

The problem is a simple one. A person who has never felt the weight of the oppressor’s bonds can do little more than imagine the sheer joy of finally gaining freedom from them. Our forefathers understood oppression. They had suffered it and it made their hearts cry out for freedom. Though fighting for freedom brought with it a great and terrible price, for early Americans, it was a price worth paying. Some, like Patrick Henry, made it clear they valued liberty even over life itself.

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

(Read more....)

God101

2011-05-17T10:01:00.001-05:00

“My biggest problem with homeschooling is that it makes it very hard to teach leadership because you're isolated.”

-Seth Godin

Seth Godin is a bestselling author, entrepreneur, public speaker, and marketing guru who has a lot to say about education, starting with his belief that modern public school education was an industrial revolution conspiracy between business and government based upon the fear that businesses would run out of a pool of workers needed to man productions lines as well as run out of people who would buy the goods being produced. The goal of public education was to create a large pool of compliant factory workers while teaching “kids that the best way to fit in and feel good is to buy stuff.” ₁

Speaking mostly about college level education, Mr. Godin wrote that there are two different kinds of schooling. There are classes where “you learn technique, facts and procedures,” and classes “where you learn to see, learn to lead and learn to solve interesting problems.”₂The second type of class is preferable to the first. It “is where all real success comes from.”₂ Unfortunately, the first type is easier to find. According to Mr. Godin, “The first type of schooling can even be accomplished with self-discipline and a Dummies book.”₂

“The sad thing is,” he continued. “We often conflate the two. We think we're hiring someone to do the second type, a once in a lifetime teacher, someone who will change the outlook of stellar students. But then we give them rules and procedures and feedback that turn them into a type 1 teacher.”₂ (emphasis mine)

Mr. Godin believes that teachers are the key to a good quality education. “Why is it that the rest of the teachers were competent at giving exams and getting us to do well at those exams, but didn’t teach us enough to change us?” he asked. “The system has hamstrung teachers, handicapped those that want to stand out and make a difference… I think we can’t wait for the teacher’s colleges to change, or the schools to change. We need teachers to care so much that they can’t stop pushing until they create change in the students who really need (and deserve) it.”₃

In an interview with Barbara Bray, Ms. Bray asked, “Education tends to be a top-down driven model where administrators, standards, policies, and test scores drive what teachers teach. How do you see education changing with this model where the individual sets their agenda?”

Mr. Godin replied, “As a student in a digital world, tell me again why I need the building? The administration? The system? I don’t. And as accreditation becomes less meaningful because it’s easier to test the student than to test the system, the top heavy organizations will falter. And fast.”₃

“It’s sort of pathetic how we’ve abdicated responsibility to a leaderless system that’s actually accountable to no one in particular.”₃

So, why would a man who values thinking outside of the box and is so critical of public education also be critical of home education? Why would he boil down his criticism of an educational process that addresses all of his concerns with the observation that what is wrong with homeschooling is that it doesn’t teach leadership?

Mr. Godin told Lee Stranahan that schools “don’t churn out people who are creative and innovative and interrupt and ask questions.” Schools are “a complete failure.” When Mr. Stranahan mentioned that he homeschools his children, and homeschools them for some of the very reasons Seth Godin mentioned in his criticism of public education, Mr. Godin ignored the topic. He stated that Lee’s children were lucky to have him, but then continued speaking about public schools rather than discussing the very real potential for homeschooling to address his educational concerns.

In an interview with Avi Solomn at Boing Boing, Seth Godin expanded his thoughts on homeschooling, saying

“Well, I think we need to ask a different question. School's been irrelevant for a while. The question is what do we want school to do? What do we need to create in our next generation? And I've argued we need to create two things: we need to create leaders, and we need to create people who can solve interesting problems.

“Anything we do in school that doesn't help with those two things we should stop doing. So homeschooling isn't necessarily the answer, unless homeschooling is going to come up with a way to work on those two problems. My biggest problem with homeschooling is that it makes it very hard to teach leadership because you're isolated. But with the right parents, it is much better at teaching people to solve interesting problems. My argument is that every parent should homeschool at night, and then send their kids to school during the day. The homeschooling at night should consist of intelligent conversation, asking difficult questions, as opposed to watching television.” ₄

Education should not be so narrowly defined as to be mainly concerned with producing leaders and solving interesting problems. Those are elements of a greater whole. Why does a man who believes that school is irrelevant (and has been for awhile), who believes that students no longer need the building, the administrator, or the system, also believe that students should still go to these places each day? It’s a repeat of the argument that no matter how poorly public schools perform, they are still better than education being taught by a loving mom or dad in the safety of the home. I’m willing to bet that Mr. Godin has not spent much time interacting with the homeschooling community. If he had, he would have seen many of his concerns being addressed. But from a marketing standpoint, we’re being noticed. People are talking about homeschooling. The better we do, the more successful we are, the easier it will be for future generations to experience the joy of education at home.

1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea5IgyVd3_U

2 http://www.thedailyriff.com/articles/two-kinds-of-schooling-348.php

3 http://living.the-environmentalist.org/2010/01/interview-with-seth-godin-about.html#page2

4 http://www.boingboing.net/2011/05/16/interview-seth-godin.html

Indiana Homeschoolers Beware: The Police May Enter Your Homes Whether Or Not You Allow Them To

2011-05-14T13:35:00.001-05:00

Imagine, that you are at home teaching your children when the front door of your house is forcefully opened and in walks a police officer and a social services worker. Without a court warrant, without establishing probable cause, they gain access to your home, demand to interview your children away from you (which may or may not involve visually inspecting your children in a state of undress), and demand access to your curriculum, record plans, and grade book. And you have no legal right to resist.

Does that sound farfetched?

If you live in the state of Indiana, it shouldn’t. The Indiana Supreme Court ruled this week “that there is no right to reasonably resist unlawful entry by police officers.” Writing for the majority in the decision, Justice Steven Davis wrote, “We believe however that a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.” In short, the police may enter an Indiana citizen’s home unlawfully, and that citizen has no right to resist. The court justified their decision by writing, “We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.” They continued, “…we find it unwise to allow a homeowner to adjudge the legality of police conduct in the heat of the moment. As we decline to recognize a right to resist unlawful police entry into a home, we decline to recognize a right to batter a police officer as a part of that resistance.” In essence, they gave the police a master key into Indiana homes.

The decision stems from a case where Fort Wayne, Indiana, police officers entered a home without knocking in order to serve a search warrant to two men with prior felony convictions. The police believed that the men were armed, and that a no-knock entry was justified out of concerns for officer safety. The Indiana Supreme Court decision went far beyond supporting a no-knock entry for police safety. They gave police carte blanche to enter homes, telling homeowners that their only course of action is civil litigation.

It will not take long before Indiana social services will team up with local police to gain entry into a home in order to investigate homeschoolers. The HSLDA Court Report is filled with stories about social service workers across the country lying, threatening, bullying, and intimidating homeschooling families in order to gain entry into their homes, more often than not based on non-credible concerns that children are being physically or emotionally abused and/or educationally neglected. The HSLDA regularly defends homeschooling families against such intrusions. Social workers are known to threaten families with the removal of their children, while demanding the opportunity to interview children alone, away from their parents. Sometimes these interviews include strip searches, ostensibly to look for signs of physical abuse. Anything children say during these interviews can be and have been used against parents in court.

Indiana homeschoolers have reason to be concerned.

The court ignores the damage done when police unlawfully enter homes. There is a loss of trust and respect from citizens towards law enforcement and government, which ultimately results in a loss of cooperation between citizens and law enforcement. No amount of money can repair the damage done when citizens no longer feel safe and secure in their homes. No monetary settlement can repair the damage done to our children when they are raised in world where their government can enter their homes and remove them from their families without probable cause, even if they are ultimately returned to their parents.

I would like to believe that the Indiana Supreme Court decision will be overruled by the US Supreme Court, but I would never have believed that any US court would rule as the Indiana justices ruled, since the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution clearly states that “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” We will have to wait and watch carefully.

This decision is a dangerous precedent.

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/05/14/indiana-supreme-court-rules-hoosiers-have-no-right-to-resist-unlawful-entry-of-their-homes-by-police/

http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/05/13/indiana-suprerme-court-issues-death-warrant-for-fourth-amendment/

http://www.southbendtribune.com/news/sbt-high-court-upholds-noknock-warrants-20110514,0,5565980.story

http://www.hslda.org/courtreport/V27N2/V27N201.asp

Why Do Some Homeschooling Parents Accept The Unacceptable?

2011-05-06T00:00:00.003-05:00

Dr. June Talvite-Siple lost her $92,000-a-year job as the supervisor of a high school math and science program. The former teacher resigned amid the furor she created after she posted on her Facebook page that the residents of her Cohasset, Massachusetts, community were "arrogant and snobby.” She went on to state that she was "not looking forward to another year at Cohasset schools." Apparently, some of her teenaged students understand something that quite a few homeschooling parents do not. Student Terry MacCormack said, "It's not smart, but if you are in professional position, maybe you shouldn't be putting what you really feel about your job or whatever on Facebook." You can read the entire story here.

School teacher Christine Rubino faces a similar problem. As reported here, the day after a 12-year-old girl drowned at a beach while on a class field trip, Ms. Rubino, a fifth grade teacher, posted on her Facebook page, "After today, I’m thinking the beach is a good trip for my class. I hate their guts." When a Facebook friend asked whether or not Ms. Rubino would “throw a life jacket to little Kwami," one of her students, she replied, "No, I wouldn’t for a million dollars.” Ms. Rubino was taken out of her classroom pending a Department of Education hearing.

It is very easy to become frustrated, angry, resentful, and disillusioned while teaching professionally. It’s a difficult job. Teacher attrition rates are staggering. Half of teachers leave the profession after only five years. As difficult as the job is, it does not excuse the comments that teachers are making online, neither the comments quoted above nor the ones mentioned in yesterday’s blog. Whether simply venting frustration or sharing true feelings, posting comments on the internet is inappropriate, unprofessional, and unwise. Thankfully, there are public school administrators like Ken Blackstone, a Prince William County Schools spokesman, who told the Washington Post, "as public employees, we all understand the importance of living a public life above reproach."

These teachers are making comments about students. They are making comments about our children. And our children are not stupid. It only takes two clicks of a mouse on the The Apple forums mentioned in yesterday’s post to find each teacher’s name and the city and state in which they teach. If I can find those comments and the names of the teachers writing them, students more computer savvy than I am can find them. Once a student locates them and shares them with their friends, the teacher loses all credibility in the classroom. That directly affects classroom control, as well as the ability to deliver content in a meaningful manner. What student is going to listen to a teacher who has commented on line that his or her students are stupid?

I was stunned to read the response to yesterday’s post as discussed by homeschooling parents here. Disappointed, really. I was disappointed that anyone would make excuses for the comments I reported. I am equally afraid to ask the question, “Why?” I’m not certain that I want to know the answers. Did someone not think through this situation thoroughly? Do they not understand how comments such as these affect children? Has our society become so crass that postings such as the ones I’ve documented are now acceptable? Are homeschooling parents looking past some teacher’s online comments because they agree? Would they say these things about their own children? Would they accept having these things written about their child by their child’s teacher if their child was in a public school? I have a dozen more questions, but for once I am glad that there are very few comments left on this blog. I really do not want to read the answers.

I was also disappointed that yesterday's post was viewed simply as an attack on teachers. That’s silly, but apparently I did not write the post as well as I should have. I know from firsthand experience that the vast majority of teachers do not write derogatory comments about students online. That wasn’t the point. The NEA and their supporters believe that public schools are superior to private and home education. No matter how poorly public schools perform, no matter how many problems are documented in the media, no matter how many crass or vulgar or inappropriate comments are posted online, supporters continue to believe that those public schools are head and shoulders above any other choice. They will take away your choice to educate your children at home if they have the opportunity to do so.

I reject their claim. I reject their claim that public education is superior to home education in all instances. I hold as one example the comments that teachers post online. I do not speak about my children in the angry manner I have documented teachers writing about their students. I do not know of any homeschooling parents who would. I did not speak about my students that way when I taught professionally. I am surprised anyone would find it acceptable for teachers to write about students in the manner some teachers choose to write. I reject any excuses for them doing so. I am grateful that there are public school teachers, administrators, and school boards who recognize the unacceptable and take action to stop it.

Real Thoughts from Real Teachers about Our Children

2011-05-05T12:00:00.021-05:00

Bob Tate, a senior policy analyst with the National Education Association (NEA) believes that the interaction between a “trained professional educator” and our children is critical to our children’s “social, emotional and intellectual development.” Do “trained professional educators” agree? What do they have to say about their interaction with the children they teach? If the comments made by teachers at The Apple: Where Teachers Meet and Learn, is any indication, public education is in big trouble.

According to its website, The Apple was started by 2003 Jackson Elementary School (Atlanta, GA) Teacher of the Year, Jill Hare. The Apple "...brings members of the education community together to support and advance the profession. The Apple provides resources to promote careers in education, while fostering a community with exclusive benefits where information about the education community is provided to the education community by the community itself." The Apple partnered with careers website Monster.com, whose “vision is to bring people together to advance their lives.”

One of the features of The Apple is a forum for teachers, and one of the forum topics is "10 Things You'd Like to Say...as a Teacher." With contributions written by trained professional teachers from all across the United States, the following list contains the actual thoughts of educators about the children they teach, as they have written them. Be warned, this unedited and uncensored list is raw. As you read it, ask yourself if you would want these people teaching your children.

"I am only one person students! If I don't get to you today...there's always tomorrow."
"Well, then why don't you go home and don't come back!"
"Shut the f*** up, please..."
"JUST F*** OFF!”
"WTF are you doing?"
"Are you really that stupid?"
"Yes, I talked to your mom, I see the apple didn't fall very far at all."
"Why? Because I hope you can graduate and get a job rather than live off of 33% of my wages."
"No, I don't think your girlfriend/boyfriend is hot, I think that you are 2 dogs in heat."
"I think your parent is disgusting and you really would be better off in a program, at least they feed you there."
"How about you not come to school high, there are more fun things to do outside when you are stoned."
"You cannot be THAT dumb!"
"I wish I could like your Momma should (beat you)"
"Meet me in the parking lot at 3:30"
"I don't know how you made it to the 7th grade."
"I guess there really is a such thing as a STUPID QUESTION"
"Shut the ____ up"
"Please use birth control, I really don't to see your kids here in 12 years."
"Stop having kids!"
“Wow, your child is really fat and lazy.”

Presumably, the last two comments are directed at parents. Mr. Tate, Ms. Hare, and the folks at Monster.com will have to explain to me how this forum brings people together and advances lives. Are we really expected to believe that teachers who think about their students as these teachers do can adequately mask their feelings and promote healthy “social, emotional and intellectual development?”

So, are you ready to enroll your children in a public school?

Sorry, NEA. Saying it Doesn't Make it So

2011-05-03T13:24:00.004-05:00

Faced with growing problems in the public school system (falling test scores, over-crowded classrooms, etc.,) NEA officials continue to gloss over the issues and encourage parents and teachers to "suck it up and deal." Rather than admitting and working to solve the problems that no one argues actually exist, the NEA just keeps chanting a mantra that goes something like this:

"As bad as the schools are, they're still better than homeschooling."

A recent mydesert.com post, As Class Sizes Rise, So Does Homeschooling, provides a mixed bag of opinions concerning public schools and homeschooling. The article addresses the problems facing public schools, namely growing class sizes, and suggests that a growing number of parents are choosing to homeschool in order to escape the problems that school officials seem unable to solve. While generally speaking, the post manages to provide a mostly positive view of homeschooling and homeschoolers, the NEA senior policy analyst that was interviewed for the article makes a typical "head-in-the-sand" statement that reveals the disconnect that exists between public school officials and public school parents' growing dissatisfaction with the status quo.

“The NEA believes home- schooling lacks regular interaction with caring, trained professional educators, which we believe greatly aids a child's social, emotional and intellectual development,” said Bob Tate, a senior policy analyst with the NEA. “(Home-schooling) provides no assurance of regular face-to-face interaction with peers in the structured setting of a school, which we believe is an important part of a child's development that cannot be fully realized through online or informal neighborhood interactions,” he added.

The assertions of public school officials that interaction with "trained professionals" is more important for a child's social, emotional, and intellectual development than interaction with his own parents is downright insulting. And their continual insistence on the necessity of school-based socialization is laughable. Their constant harping on these two factors in light of growing evidence to the contrary (see studies in linked article,) proves both their unwillingness to address the real issues that face their schools and a complete lack of concern for the needs of the students and families they are paid to serve.

There is an adage that expresses the belief that "blowing out someone else's candle won't make your candle burn brighter." The NEA and many local unions and school administrators have long relied on the practice of attempting to blow out the shining candle of homeschooling in an attempt to brighten the glow of their own fading light. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. Parents aren't being fooled and increasingly, they are giving up on the schools. They can see beyond the illusion. As a growing chasm develops between the success of schools and the success of their homeschool counterparts, parents are waking up to the reality that the mantra doesn't ring true...simply chanting it doesn't make it so.

Parents are beginning to demand solutions from our nation's school administrators and from the unions that control the money. And until the self-proclaimed experts of "the system" stop ranting about the supposed short-comings of the competition and begin to own up to their own significant problems AND offer real solutions, the defection will continue.

The Great Homeschooling Balloon Release

2011-04-30T11:31:00.000-05:00

Have you ever lost a helium balloon? You accidentally let go of the string while outside, only to watch helplessly as it floated away? Did you wonder where it went? We decided to answer that question. On Saturday morning, April 30th, a group of homeschooling families met at Kenneth Bernard Park in Lansing, Kansas. 17 kids and 10 adults released fifty helium balloons into the air with a card attached asking the finder to email us and tell us when and where they found the card. We wanted to track the distance an average helium balloon will travel when released. If you hop over to Where Is My Balloon? you can read about the release, look at pictures, and watch a short video of the release. If you watch closely, you might even catch a glimpse of Captain Chaos. At the bottom of the web page there is a map for tracking where the balloons and/or cards land. We’ll add a push pin to the map with the location for each response that we receive. Everyone had a good time!

Track the progress of our balloons at http://www.whereismyballoon.blogspot.com/

Teachers Say the Problem with Education is Parenting (and for once I agree with them)

2011-04-28T10:38:00.000-05:00

Deputy Political Editor Alison Little wrote an interesting article in the Monday April 25,2011, edition of the UK Daily and Sunday Express Newspaper online.

HOW LAX PARENTS PACK OFF PUPILS WITH PHONE AND IPOD...BUT NO PEN : Nearly half of the teachers questioned said children did not come to school ready to learn

PARENTS were blamed for classroom failures yesterday after teachers said too many children turn up loaded with the latest technology but lacking basic essentials like pens.

Some 68 per cent of 8,000 teachers questioned by the NASUWT union said lack of parental support was a major cause of pupil bad behaviour.

Nearly half said children did not come to school ready to learn, with a quarter blaming the influence of television, the media and video games. They said pupils were distracted by their phones and other gadgets.

NASUWT general secretary Chris Keates told its conference in Glasgow: “Parents can’t simply abandon their responsibilities at the school gate. Sending their child to school with basic equipment, on time, with homework completed and with clear expectations of how they expect them to behave in school, is a critical part of their role.

“Too many pupils arrive at school with mobile phones, iPods and MP3 players when teachers just wish they would bring a pen. Hours of valuable teaching and learning time are clearly being lost in lessons every day through pupils not being ready to learn.”

I have long maintained the single biggest problem facing public school education cannot be solved by creating new programs or spending more money in the classroom. The single biggest problem facing public school education is a lack of parental support, and the reality is that proper parenting cannot be legislated. It doesn’t matter how much money is spent on computers for a school. If little Johnny’s parents don’t require him to complete his homework, if they don’t monitor his progress, if they don’t sit and read with him in the evening, if they don’t instill discipline at home, the odds are Johnny won’t succeed in the classroom.

There are no better examples of active parenting than in the homeschooling community. That is why the results of study after study reveal that homeschooled children outperform their peers on academic tests at all levels.

An Afternoon with the Speech Therapist

2011-04-25T15:31:00.001-05:00

We received a note from our daughter’s speech therapist this afternoon telling us about a “comparing/classifying” activity on which they worked.

The therapist showed Captain Chaos three pictures. One was a picture of a cat, one was of a horse, and the last picture was of a kitten. “Which ones go together?” she asked.

“The cats,” my daughter replied.

“Why?” her therapist asked.

“Because I don’t like cats,” Captain Chaos responded.

The therapist showed three more pictures: a boy, a bird, and a bike. “Which ones go together?” she asked.

“The boy and the bike,” my daughter replied.

“Why?” the therapist asked.

“Because the boy let the bird out,” the Captain explained.

Near the bottom of the note the therapist explained that on this exercise the girl could earn 1 point for correctly telling which two pictures went together, and 1 point for correctly explaining why. She further stated that the Captain only got one “why” question correct because she correctly identified a pear and an apple as fruit, and ultimately earned a 50% on the exercise.

I’m not so sure.

Placing a cat and a kitten together in the category of “things I hate” seems like a logical answer to me.

And, who knows? Maybe the boy did let the bird out!

He Is Risen!!

2011-04-24T00:08:00.000-05:00

Matthew 28

Jesus Has Risen

¹ After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.

² There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. ³ His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. ⁴ The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.

⁵ The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. ⁶ He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. ⁷ Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”

⁸ So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. (Matthew 28:1-8, New International Version, ©2011)