So you live in the heart of the Southern Bible Belt. Your neighbors have elected an anti-evolution teaching skool bored. You don’t have the money to afford adequate private education for your children. What do you do?Or you live in an urban area with the now usual violence in the public schools and once again you can’t afford private schooling. What do you do?A California ruling says you can’t homeschool unless you are a certified educator. Great news for the teacher unions and real bad news for the Dobson Focus on the Family. Read the link to the title to this posting. Also, Ask Rockridge is discussing this situation. Can a progressive support homeschooling?Got Children? Discuss…..Peter Nuhn
jeff_r:
good point, we should keep in mind that parents who aren’t capable of educating their wretched spawn typically don’t try.
typically.
one more thing phreedm.
you should be damn glad that you have flesh and blood people protecting your rights for you, because if all you had was god you can be damn sure we’d have japanese imperialists on our backs like white on rice.
I don’t really know why I even bother but…
The 10 commandments and the Constitution and our Bill or Rights are 180 degrees out of sync with each other.
Show me 1 commandment in our Constitution or Bill of Rights.
DeepDiver,
Not to mention the fact that the only group in the Bible that had anything resembling our system of government was the Romans, who aren’t really considered the “good guys” of the book.
A true “Christian” government would be organized around an infallible king whose authority comes not from the people but from the godhead. Pretty much the exact opposite of what we have in America, although very much like what the founders of our country revolted against. This irony is lost on the ignorant, like 4-F phreedy.
pastahead,
You mistook my tone and argument. In a sea of text, it’s best to give the benefit of the doubt.
The thing that bothers me is exactly as I stated. It bothers me that home schooled children aren’t necessarily introduced to other walks of life.
I never even came close to arguing against home schooling, per se. I have no problem with it. But it does bother me that some home schoolers will purposefully shelter their children from the real world. I used the word “necessarily” because children in public schools cannot be sheltered as completely as those in home school.
Granted, it could be argued that those in certain parts of the country will necessarily be more sheltered than others, but this is not something that affects public schools universally, only locally.
I’m surprised that you don’t know what I meant by “walks of life,” but I’ll clarify just the same. It’s a (possibly colloquial) term referring to several aspects of a person’s life. People who come from different economic, social, or political backgrounds are said to come from different walks of life. I was again decrying the possibility of home schooled children being sheltered from diverse experiences.
I never meant to imply that home schooling is wrong, just that some home schoolers are not helping their children by way of eliminating diversity. Whether or not they make up a large or small percentage, I cannot say. I’m honestly surprised that you came to that conclusion when reading my post.
Also, “grammatics” isn’t a word. You’re the pot calling the kettle black here. Only my grammar is just fine, so I’m no kettle. Granted, I did use the wrong form of “simple.” Such is the danger of changing your phrasing halfway through typing a sentence.
Finally, can you think of a better word than “bullshit”? It perfectly encapsulates how I feel about the argument presented by that link*. I prefer brevity to being pointlessly politically correct any day.
I’m willing to bet that we agree quite a bit about home schooling, that you have chosen to immediately use ad hominem (and irrelevant) attacks on me is very disappointing. You should be ashamed of yourself.
* – if Seeker is reading this, I do not agree with the amount of flack he’s been receiving lately. I think many of his arguments are valid, just not that particular one.
pastahead,
One last thing. The reason I put intelligence in quotes is because it’s a very poorly defined term and I noticed a few people trying to use it in their arguments. I was indirectly criticizing this.
You should note that I mentioned that I wouldn’t be surprised if the numbers were on the side of the home schooled.
I heard on the radio that some cities have a 50% dropout rate. I live in a small town and can testify that its not just the major ones.
I attend a private school and the education is much better, and so is the homeschooling. Here, it’s taboo to be a pregnant teen. At Rabun County Public, there are kids younger than me working on their second set of twins. Even if we could agree that public school is better than the alternatives, how would anyone fix it? I think that it’s a lost cause, and that we’re going to have to accept it sooner or later.
It takes a hell of a lot of effort to homeschool. If you can handle it, it will work for your kids. FlyingWeasel gives us a good working example. For those few who can do it, you’ll produce successful students.
However, most of us couldn’t. In today’s HotPocket world, it’s hard enough to get a 30-minute home-cooked meal on the table every night. You expect everyone to be able prepare six or so hours of educational content every day???
If any of you are teachers, you’d know how hard it is just get your students’ parents just to spend 15 minutes reading with their kids every day. I’d like to see those performance stats if suddenly 90% of the student population were homeschooled.
Augustine,
In other words, you can’t think of an answer so we should scrap the whole thing.
Can you disprove my idea that the kids are a bigger factor than the schools at present? If not, then the above argument is a jump to conclusions since we haven’t yet determined that the schools are at fault.
Show me strong evidence that moving to an all-private or home schooled system will improve things and then we can start talking about dismantling the public school system.
You sillies! Of course God is in the Constitution! You just aren’t looking properly.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
See the bold letters? Right there, we’ve got Wodin, Ra, Isis, Allah, and Thor, and that’s just the Preamble!
OOPS. I italicized the “in” in Wodin, instead of making it bold, and apparently italicicized the rest of the Preamble too, by mistake. Sorry.
Alatham
Exacalactally! The evidence that does exist suggests there is little difference at all between math and reading abilities of private vs public schools.
The whole evidence thing seems to throw some folks.
THE most important factor in a childs success at school is a stable and nurturing home life. Public vs private is just noise in the system.
Good one, Karen!
Karen,
Until you find the FSM in there, complete with pasta and a-side of a-spicy meatballs, I’m not buying it.
is these any research on age relation.is it best to homeschool early then switch to schoolhouse or the reverse.
would sex segregated schools provide the desired result of a safe quality education that parents seek for their children.
you should have to pass a test in order to have children.we should have standards to be a parent right now the public schools are dumping grounds for offspring of human cattle who think their duty ends when sperm meets egg.you have to have a permit to drive but don’t to make a human whats wrong with that picture folks.
What,
I don’t know that this is actually true. But I do agree with your conclusion.
So far, I see no reason to believe that the problems with public schools will disappear if public schools disappear. And we won’t be able to know if that is the case until we know what the root cause of the problem is. My guess is that it’s the students fault, ultimately. But I don’t know how to prove that at the moment.
err….
This should read:
So far, I see no reason to believe that the problems with education will disappear if public schools disappear.
I have an impulse to support homeschooling for the Northeast and the West Coast, and deny it in most of the rest of the country. It’s just a temptation.
Seriously, I have been active in the past in blocking legislation in CT that would have imposed certification on home school parents. This is not an easy area: in most respects parents should be free to make decisions for their children, as long as their security and health are not endangered. But when is, for example, their mental health endangered? And if it is, is “society” obligated or even entitled to attempt to prevent that?
At some point, society would be obligated to prevent parents from dragging their children to church. The HS issue is part of a much broader picture, and the lines are not sharp as far as I can see.
Since everyone is such a Constitutional expert on the board…
Where and why does the Constitution allow the president to take Sunday off?
Rusty:
Good point.
I wasn’t aware of any passage in the constitution allowing for sundays off for the president, and a quick look didn’t turn up anything. however, this may be relevant:
http://tinyurl.com/2bputu
anyhow, phreedy. the fact that the constitution has an obscure passage allowing for the religious predilictions of its (human and fallible) writers does not mean that it isn’t a secular document. I should think that the whole FREEDOM OF RELIGION thing would more or less wreck the argument that our founders meant us to be a theocracy.
furthermore phreedy, we have ample historical evidence in the form of letters and correspondance which indicates (at least on the part of more famous framers of the constitution) that our founders intended the state to be neutral on the matter of religion.
I’ll dig up some links because I know you won’t do it…
here’s a good start for you at least. the views of Thomas Jefferson on separation of church and state.
http://tinyurl.com/ynuyua
Of interest
http://www.online.wsj.com
http://www.boston.com
http://www.boston.com
http://www.schoolchoiceinfo.org/news/index.cfm?action=detail&news_id=825
Most parents who claim their public schools are superior to private schools have never compared scores. Never compared graduation rates. (Especially among boys). And have never attended a single school board meeting.
With the recent news of how poorly inner city kids are doing, again I want to ask Dave and AA…
What is more important- A child’s education or you pushing your agenda on the public…?
I do not believe I mistook your ‘tone’ in a ‘sea of text’. I see what I see.
This is what I see and it boils my blood:
You:
“I never even came close to arguing against home schooling, per se. I have no problem with it. But it does bother me that some home schoolers will purposefully shelter their children from the real world. I used the word “necessarily” because children in public schools cannot be sheltered as completely as those in home school.”
Me:
I could say the very same thing, only substituting ‘home schoolers’ for public school children. (and this really bothers me)
And ‘public school’ is the ‘real world’? You’re so funny
Thanks for taking the time to point out my ‘mistakes’. It seems you took a lot of time researching on that. good job. Nope, I am never ashamed of myself. The word ‘Grammatics’ is not a word, yet, but it seemed so ‘…fitting’…I have a great list of these ‘fitting’ words. Bullshit is one of them.
Have a nice day!
Alatham,
One thing I have to ask. Were you a ‘bully’ in school? Seems you would have picked on those that were not the same “walks of life ” as you. You learned a lot in your ‘realistic’ ,social atmosphere.
The “Sundays excepted” clause… an argument so weak only the most feeble-minded of theocrats dare advance it…
And one that nobody takes seriously…
4-F pfreedy strikes out again…
Shackled…
How do you know? No one has found the clause…
I guess it’s part of the atheist tradition to make claims without being able to back them up…
Did you learn that from Dave and Peter…?