Marcy's Musings

More on Social Benefits of Homeschooling

2009-12-20T16:19:00.002-07:00

OK, it's been a really long time since I've posted, and maybe few people are even checking in any more. But as I was posting a comment on someone's blog today, it occurred to me that perhaps others would benefit from reading more about the social benefits of homeschooling.

In spite of mounting evidence that homeschooling is positive for most kids socially, there are still a lot of people who believe homeschooling produces social misfits. This is my response to a few of them.

I see here there are several who have said homeschooling is a negative for kids socially. Current research and the experiences of real homeschoolers say otherwise: homeschooling exposes kids to the real world far more effectively than sending them to school. After all, when in the adult world do you EVER spend hours every day sitting in a room with 30 other people exactly the same age you are? Homeschooling is work, no doubt about it, but it produces tremendously positive results in the lives of most homeschooled kids, academically, socially, emotionally and in many other ways. For more on the subject, take a look at this book: The Well-Adjusted Child: The Social Benefits of Homeschooling, by Rachel Gathercole.

I'm not saying you should necessarily homeschool. Homeschooling, in my opinion, isn't for everyone. But don't let the naysayers convince you it will hurt your child socially. I know MANY homeschoolers - the vast majority of them are much better socially than most schooled kids I know. In fact, it's a standing joke among many homeschoolers: "Oh, yes, but that (schooled) child is so well socialized" (or the reverse: "Yes, poor, undersocialized homeschoolers"!).

Homeschooling allows kids to interact with others naturally, in real, everyday situations. It provides opportunities for parents to see how their child is interacting with others and provide immediate feedback. It allows the child to watch as their parents model proper social skills, and to experiment with new ones. If parents make reasonable efforts to keep their children engaged (Scouts, sports, clubs, church activities, etc.), kids have the opportunity to make friends the same way adults do - based on common interests and not limited in terms of age. Older kids learn to help younger ones; younger kids make close friends of older ones and find good role models. You don't get the artificial "we don't play with you because we're in 5th grade and you're only in 4th" baloney.

I've been involved in the homeschooling world for 37 years, off and on. I was homeschooled for 1st grade, 6th grade, and all of high school. I went on to have a very positive experience in college, graduating successfully from a solid private university. I have since worked with homeschooling families in several different contexts and have homeschooled my own daughters for 9 years, since my older daughter was 3 1/2. In my experience, the vast majority of homeschoolers are outgoing, friendly, polite, and articulate. They are generally far more pleasant to be around, and interact better with younger kids, same-age peers, older kids, and adults, than most schooled kids do. And if you really stop to think about it, that makes sense; just as you'd find if you crammed 30 rats in a cage all together, 30 kids crammed in a classroom together (or worse, hundreds or even thousands of kids crammed in a building together) end up biting and devouring each other.

Homeschooling has tremendous social benefits; be sure to take a look at Rachel Gathercole's book for more. In the meantime, don't be afraid to consider homeschooling. :)

A "Biblioblog" - what a great concept!

2009-08-20T17:20:00.003-06:00

I recently discovered a wonderful new idea - "biblioblogging"! Over at "Reading to Know," http://www.readingtoknow.com/, Carrie blogs about her favorite books, and her kids' favorites as well. She's a great resource for reading moms as well as those of us looking for resources for our kids - funny, thought-provoking, with some wonderful video clips and some great guest bloggers as well.

Check it out! :)

Something Fishy About Health Care Reform

2009-08-07T16:08:00.002-06:00

OK, so I rarely post on this blog about anything unrelated to homeschooling. But this issue concerns me deeply, because it affects all Americans' most dearly-held rights. On the WhiteHouse.gov site, you can currently find the following notice:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Does this concern others as much as it does me? This sounds as if the White House is asking ordinary people like you and me to report on our neighbors and on those companies and charities who are telling us what they believe about the President's health care reform plan. What are they going to do with this information? There is no way this is a Constitutional position for a President or his administration to take - it is a blatant effort to curtail our freedom of speech. Even if you agree 100% that everything the President says will turn out exactly as he hopes it will, can you really support this kind of censorship?

I sent the following email to the link they posted for reporting something "fishy." I hope you will too - and I hope everyone else in America will flood this mailbox with protests, making it clear that we will not stand for this kind of thought control.

I want to report something fishy I found on the web regarding health care reform. Here is the site:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Facts-Are-Stubborn-Things/

Our Constitution guarantees the people freedom of speech. Asking people to report to the White House when others disagree with the President's position (even if that means posting facts the President happens to disagree with) is a blatant violation of that freedom of speech. The truth is, the right to free speech means people even have the right to post flat-out lies about policy issues; and while I certainly would prefer they didn't, stopping them or even threatening to stop them is a violation of the Constitution the President swore to uphold only a few months ago. Guaranteeing free speech only to those who agree with the government's position is the definition of totalitarianism, and it has no place in America.

I urge you to remove this IMMEDIATELY from your website and ensure that proper Constitutional protections are preserved for the people. The American people love our liberty; we will not stand idly by and allow it to be usurped in the name of "truth." The President, of all people, ought to be defending the right of ALL the people to believe, to say, and to publish what they choose.

PRESERVE OUR FREEDOM OF SPEECH!!!!!

And On a Totally Unrelated Topic . . .

2009-07-19T21:14:00.002-06:00

This blog has almost exclusively become a blog about homeschooling; however, the vast majority of homeschooling families include two married parents. Therefore, an occasional link to an article or post that will strengthen marriages doesn't seem totally out of line - and today I have a good one for you.

In tough economic times, many of us are looking for inexpensive ways to stay close to our spouses. Over on the blog Mom's Notes, there's a wonderful post entitled "30 Ideas for Dating Your Mate." What the title doesn't tell you is that these are cheap-but-fun ideas. So click on the link, read the article, print it, and enjoy! :)

Homeschooling Helps Schools Financially?

2009-06-22T08:45:00.002-06:00

For years, one of the favorite criticisms of homeschooling has been that it "drains resources from the public schools." After all, the reasoning goes, schools get paid per-pupil, so homeschooling, by removing students from the schools, reduces the amount of money the schools make. (Of course, this argument ignores the fact that the reason schools get paid per student is that each student also COSTS the school money, but why point out the obvious, right?) :)

But an article in yesterday's Washington Times online highlights a new study that finds that homeschooling actually benefits the schools' bottom line.

What Mr. Wenders and Miss Clements found, however, was that home-schoolers save the state of Nevada between $24 million and $34 million per year, decreasing schools' expenses far more than the decrease in revenues, thus creating a net gain for the school districts.

The article also shares findings from a similar study by the North Carolina Department of Non-Public Education, and points out that homeschoolers also save taxpayers money by not becoming prisoners (!). It's a good article, and not very long, so click over and read the whole thing. :)

Field Guide to Homeschoolers?

2009-06-10T15:16:00.001-06:00

Dana over at Principled Discovery (incidentally, one of my favorite bloggers) is hosting the latest Carnival of Homeschooling: A Field Guide to Homeschoolers. It's fun and there are TONS of great entries by dozens of different bloggers. Be sure to stop by and take a look!

How To Teach Kids Diversity

2009-06-04T21:00:00.002-06:00

There's a really excellent article over at Simply Catholic, entitled "Racism and Homeschooling," that every homeschooler and public or private school educator needs to read. The author answers the criticism common to many anti-homeschoolers that only in a public school can kids really learn to appreciate diversity, and really be properly socialized, by pointing out how many better opportunities are available to homeschooling families. I've read a lot of posts and articles on socialization, but this one takes a unique angle in showing how homeschoolers can - and DO - teach our kids to appreciate and respect other cultures and races, far more effectively than what can happen in a classroom full of kids. The author concludes with a list of 10 ways you can teach your kids to appreciate other cultures, even if they don't live among them.

Here's just a very small sample of the great material in that post:

There is something about learning in school that just sucks the life out of anything exotic. Where are the smells of basil and curry? Where are the lilting tones of another language or music? Maybe you glimpse a foreign culture in a film-strip or an assembly? What unique cultural experience awaits the student within the walls of the classroom that can not be duplicated or improved in the home? Do not allow yourself to be fooled into thinking that just existing in a classroom with a child from Russia or Guatemala serves to immerse you in that culture. . . . When they are in class with you everyone is sitting in the same desks, looking at the same book, eating the same school lunch, taking the same standardized test and swinging on the same swing set at recess. Talking and interaction, learning about each other are NOT what school is about. The classroom couldn’t withstand that kind of interaction on a regular basis — I know I sat in one for 13 years.

Now let me make a radical suggestion: I am purposing that the homeschool setting is actually more likely to expose the average child in the average community to different cultures, peoples and experiences than the school setting. I would suggest this even if it was not the parent’s intent to expose their children to different cultures, but if the parents value their children learning about different cultures in the least they can quickly and easily surpass even a good public school in this area.

Schools have one huge disadvantage when it comes to immersing a child in the diversity of real life: they remove the child from real life. Children are segregated in schools by age, by ability and often by language. On top of this children then commonly segregate themselves by neighborhood affiliation, race, creed, or special interest. . . . Even in my rather homogeneous high-school the band geeks and chess club sat at one table, the jocks at another, the cheerleaders never mixed with the glee-club and the poor students and rich students sat on opposite sides of uncrossable divides. If you want to learn about segregation between races, creeds and class go to a public high-school.

Darcee has some great insights, many of which I've not seen before. It's a rather long post, but it's well worth reading - you'll be glad you did!

A "Profound Shift"?

2009-06-04T14:50:00.006-06:00

There's been a lot of comment on homeschooling websites about the article in USA Today a few days ago entitled "Profound Shift in Kind of Families Who Are Homeschooling Their Children." My biggest criticism of the article has to do with their use of U.S. Department of Education study recently released by the National Center for Education Statistics, "The Condition of Education 2009." After having reviewed that study, it simply does not appear to support the claims in the first sentence of the USA Today article that "Parents who home-school children increasingly are white, wealthy and well-educated — and their numbers have nearly doubled in a decade."

Here are some of the problems in that statement and in the reporter's support for it:

1) The fact that "3.9% of white families homeschool, up from 2% in 1999," does not in fact mean that homeschoolers are increasingly white, but rather reflects the fact that the total number of homeschoolers has doubled since 1999. A review of additional material associated with the study makes it clear that while the percentage of blacks who homeschool has declined over the years of the study, from 1% of black families to .8%, the percentage of Hispanics has increased from 1.1% to 1.5%, and the percentage of families of other races has increased from 1.9% to 3.4%. All this is not to deny that far more whites homeschool than those of other racial/ethnic groups; it is simply to point out that when the number of homeschoolers overall is increasing, an increase in the number of white homeschoolers does not mean a corresponding decrease in those of other races. Looking at the table further makes it clear: In 1999, 75.3% of homeschooling families were white; in 2003, 77% of homeschooling families were white; in 2007 (the year the most recent survey was done), 76.8% of homeschooling families were white. But because this distribution for each of these has a standard error of over 3%, this difference is not statistically significant; in other words, the 1999 number COULD have been as high as 78.6%, and the 2007 COULD have been as low as 73.5%. But of course, this would not have supported the reporter's contention that "homeschoolers are increasingly white" - because the study simply does not support that conclusion.

2) The reporter's contention that "homeschoolers are increasingly . . . wealthy" is questionable because neither the article nor the study mention the effect of inflation on family income levels over the years between 1999 and 2007. The table is quite clear that in 1999, 30.1% of homeschoolers had incomes below $25,000; 32.7% had incomes between $25,001 and $50,000; 19.1% had incomes between $50,001 and $75,000; and 17.4% had incomes over $75,001. In 2007, the distribution of homeschooling families had changed: only 15.9% had incomes below $25,000; 24.1% had incomes between $25,001 and $50,000; 26.8% had incomes between $50,001 and $75,000; and 33.2% had incomes over $75,000. That clearly represents a huge increase in income - but it's important to remember that during that time, the median household income increased from $38,885 to $50,233.

In 1999, the federal poverty threshold for a family of 4 was $17,030; in 2007, it was $21,203. Thus, in 1999, many families who made under $25,000 who were not under the poverty level; by 2007, most families who made under $25,000 were. In 1999, many families who made less than $50,000 made more than the median income; by 2007, none did.

The median income for families increased from $47,469 in 1999 (under $50,000) to $62,359 (halfway into the third group). These changes in income levels are obviously going to have a very significant effect on homeschoolers as well as the non-homeschooling population. I do see one trend that seems significant: there has been an increase in the homeschooling among those who make over $75,000 per year. This increase is greater than can be accounted for simply by inflation; it seems likely that as it has become clear that homeschoolers can do very well, those who make more money are willing to give it a try.

The reporter, however, does not mention that increase as support for his contention. Instead, he uses this statistic: "In 1999, 63.6% of home-schooling families earned less than $50,000. Now 60.0% earn more than $50,000." In light of the above-mentioned increase in median family income, that change is exactly what would be expected if homeschooling families simply kept pace with the rest of the nation, and shows no increase at all in the "wealth" of families who are homeschooling.

3) As for the contention that "homeschoolers are increasingly . . . well educated," the data in the study does not seem to support that well. Among those with a graduate or professional degree, homeschooling has actually declined since 1999. In 1999, 47.4% of homeschoolers had at least a bachelor's degree; in 2007, 49.9% did. This difference is not statistically significant. In 1999, 81.1% of homeschooling families had at least some college; in 2007, 86.3% of homeschooling families did - so if you consider "some college" to be "well educated," I suppose you might agree with the reporter's statement.

Articles like these are frustrating, because the authors appear to be searching for data to support their own pre-drawn conclusions. On the other hand, Albert Mohler has a new article, drawn from the same study, that provides a much more solidly supported perspective. It's entitled, "A Major Force in Education," and I encourage you to check it out. :) He points out some interesting, and some concerning, trends indicated by the report. Here's his conclusion:

Education cannot be reduced to statistics, but the trends revealed in this new report from the Department of Education deserve close attention. In our day, education represents a clash of worldviews. Increasingly toxic approaches to education (or what is called education) drive many schools and many school systems. In that light, the fact that so many . . . parents are taking education into their own hands is a sign of hope. As this new report makes clear, we should expect homeschooling to be a growth industry in years ahead.

What Is Socialization All About?

2009-06-01T08:23:00.005-06:00

It's been forever since I've updated this blog, but lately some great stuff has been coming out and I have to post about it!

One of the best articles I've ever seen on homeschooling and socialization (and after being in the homeschooling world for many years, I've seen quite a few!) was posted yesterday on Just Enough and Nothing More. It's entitled, "General Response to Homeschoolers: Do They Care Too Much?" I haven't read the link to the original article; it sounds a little too frustrating for me to read today. But the author of the response post did her homework when she decided to homeschool, and her observations about homeschooled teens and families are fascinating.

I've worked with groups of homeschooled kids for several years now. I'm currently working with two different groups of about 120 kids each, ranging in age from 5 to 18, helping administrate two different one-day-a-week enrichment programs. About 40 of our kids in each program are teens. Being a homeschooling mom myself, I'm always observing carefully the interactions of the teens, especially as my own daughters approach those years, and I find them to be exactly as the author of "Just Enough" describes them. Homeschooled teens are typical kids in many ways, but they are honest and accepting, and they care about each other. Generally speaking, they have decent relationships with their parents, they have good friendships, and they are kind to younger kids. They interact positively and comfortably with people of all different ages, including their own peers - something which is fairly uncommon among those teens who attend school. Not only that, but when they encounter people of different races or socioeconomic classes, they are far more accepting than most schooled kids I've seen.

Obviously, some kids are better at this than others; there are those who struggle socially in any context. What's amazing is to see how a group of homeschooled teens can take in those who do struggle, accept them, and provide a positive opportunity for growth. In the case of one young man I know, he came to our group as an seventh-grader out of public school. He had had great difficulty socially in school; he was failing all his classes; and when he first came to our group he would sit all day hunched over, with his hoodie over his head. His mother was desperate. Within a few months, he was more positive, but throughout that first year he would often leave class and come sit sullenly at the office table. At the first parent-teacher conference of the second year, his parents came to our table with a question: "We don't understand - what do these grades mean?" They were just typical letter grades - but the young man had all A's and B's, and his parents couldn't believe it! They went to his teachers to thank them, but the teachers knew and stated clearly - it wasn't them, it was the other kids, who had come around the young man, had supported and encouraged him, and had gently shaped his behavior to be more socially appropriate. During the second year, he never came to our office table any more, and the hoodie had been left behind while he interacted with his friends. And at the end of this past year, this young man got multiple awards, including one for "Most Improved in Drama," and the High Honor Roll - he had discovered that not only did he have friends, but he was quite gifted in acting, and he had earned straight A's all year! All this, primarily because his peers had accepted and believed in him, and had helped him become more than he could otherwise have been. How likely is it, honestly, that this young man would have achieved this kind of positive result if he'd been in a regular school setting?

Now that my older daughter is almost 13, I have to agree with the author's assessment of homeschooled teens. I am so pleased with how my daughter gets along with others. She contributes very positively to our family; she loves her younger sister and (while of course getting very annoyed by her at times) spends time reading to and interacting with her; she impresses the adults around her by her friendliness and maturity; she goes into nursing homes to perform for them or polish their nails, and is friendly and kind to them; and she has many good friends she loves to email or talk with by cell phone or go to movies with or learn to do archery from. She's consistent in her schoolwork and loves to practice her piano, flute, and cello; she studies hard, plays hard, generally sleeps well, and is pretty satisfied with her life for a junior higher. She is an all-around healthy young lady, and I'm not at all sure she would be at such a positive place in her life if she'd been in school all these years.

The post linked above describes how many of the homeschooled teens the author observed are much like those I've known, and it is excellent. It's not terribly long, and well worth reading the whole thing.

The Truth About What School Can Be Like

2008-08-21T10:58:00.003-06:00

Many of us have pink-tinted memories of our experiences in school. We have a tendency to think back affectionately on the people we knew and cared about, and to forget the painful situations that often arose.

Dana over at Principled Discovery has had the courage to tell the truth about what school was like for her. She generally says she had a positive school experience - but when she thought back to what she had learned in school, there was a lot of pain stored there. Her post is called, "Homeschool stereotypes vs. public school realities," and it's worth reading all the way through. The lessons she learned in school reflect, to a large extent, what public school "socialization" really involves; and they ought to stimulate each of us to think seriously about what kind of socialization we really want our kids to have. I know one thing - the things she learned are not the things I want my kids to learn. That's why I homeschool.

One of these days maybe I'll get up the nerve to write about my own experience in school as a child. I hope my kids will have much better childhood experiences to write about someday.

Great Homeschooling Links

2008-08-21T10:29:00.003-06:00

This morning I discovered a website with an amazing number of top-notch links for homeschoolers. From organization and forms to free online books; from SAT prep to online math games; from foreign language to a clickable mummy - this site has it ALL! And almost every link is free. I must have bookmarked 20 sites from links I followed from this site, and I haven't even gotten to the bottom yet.

The post goes by the unassuming title, "Lots of Links to Help Homeschoolers," and here's the link:

http://harmonyhealth.wordpress.com/2008/08/20/lots-of-links-to-help-home-schoolers/

Enjoy!

Homeschoolers Transitioning to Public Schools

2008-08-15T08:26:00.002-06:00

Not every homeschooler chooses to continue homeschooling throughout their child's school years. As a result, a significant question arises: what does it take for a family to have a successful transition from homeschool to public school? A doctoral student at the University of Missouri did his dissertation on the topic, and recently Milton Gaither reviewed it on his blog, Homeschooling Research Notes, in a post entitled, "Koonce on Transitioning from Home School to Public School."

Koonce's research was admittedly based on a very small sample of 13 Missouri families who agreed to be interviewed. That's too bad, because his conclusions are fascinating, and it would be helpful to have more statistics to confirm what he found. I hope someone will undertake further research on this topic. From Dr. Gaither's post:

What made the transition positive or negative? Positive experiences resulted when the school system was helpful and understanding of the student’s background (4 students in his sample). Negative experiences resulted either when the school was skeptical of the child’s homeschooling background (5 students) or when the homeschooling background had not adequately prepared the child academically (2), socially (1), or procedurally (1).

In short, the single most significant factor in the students' successful transition, found in at least 9 of the 13 cases, was the school's perception of homeschooling. If the school was "understanding of the student's background," the transition was generally positive. If the school was "skeptical of the child's homeschooling background," the transition was generally negative. Given the overwhelming prevalence of negative attitudes toward homeschooling on the part of so many people involved in the public education system, this is unfortunate.

It is also clear from these results that's it's important for parents to make sure children are prepared for the transition. Two of the 13 families had negative experiences because the children were not prepared academically; this is sad given the innate advantages of homeschooling. The single negative experience due to social factors is probably less significant, since it could be argued that at least one of every 13 kids is going to struggle socially regardless of their educational background.

In the end, according to Gaither, Koonce offers some practical suggestions:

Koonce ends his study with some practical suggestions both for homeschooling parents and for public schools to help ease the transition. Homeschoolers should make sure their curriculum is sound, that they keep good records, that their kids take “an anual nationally normed test” and that they have “a positive mindset toward public education.” Public schools should recognize homeschooling as a normal and legitimate educational option, provide a user-friendly enrollment process and mechanism for giving homeschoolers credit for academic work done at home, tap into the energy of the involved homeschooling parent-type, provide a liason to help students with the transition, and encourage part-time enrollment as a first step for those who need it.

While I think homeschooling is a great option, and I believe many kids would benefit from homeschooling all the way through high school, there are many who will eventually end up in the public school system. Parents send kids back to school for many reasons, including the difficulty of the subject matter as they get older. Art, band, sports, and drama all draw families back to the school system. And because kids are going to go back to the schools, it's important that more research be done on the topic of this transition, both for the sake of the schools and for the children's sake. I hope someone undertakes a much more comprehensive study of these issues.

What Americans Think About Homeschooling

2008-08-12T08:24:00.003-06:00

There's a fascinating article on yesterday's MarketWatch website. It's entitled, "Homeschooling a Constitutional Right, Americans Tell LifeWay Research," and it shows that in fact the majority of Americans do believe that parents have a constitutional right to homeschool.

The California appeals court shocked the nation with its ruling in February," said Ed Stetzer, director of LifeWay Research. "We decided, as part of a broad survey of more than 1,200 adult Americans, to get their reaction and found that 61 percent strongly agreed that the Constitution guarantees the right of parents to homeschool, and another 25 percent agreed somewhat." Eight percent somewhat disagreed, five percent disagreed strongly, and two percent did not know, according to Stetzer. "Americans appear to believe that parents, not the government, should decide whether or not they should homeschool."

This is surprising, and demonstrates a profound change in perspective about homeschooling among society as a whole over the last 25 years or so. Back in the 80's, homeschooling was little-known, and many people thought it was a strange thing to do. Oh, a few people did it - the University of Nebraska, for example, even allowed kids to earn a high school diploma through independent study (I know, I got mine that way!). But mostly it was reserved to the fringes and to the exceptional situation: farm kids, missionary kids, kids with sicknesses that kept them out of school for long periods, and so on.

It speaks very well of the homeschooling community that since the 1980's homeschooling has become, not only accepted among the general population, but a constitutional right. This can only be the result of many dedicated homeschooling parents working exceptionally hard to show that homeschooling can in fact be as good a way of educating kids as any other schooling.

However, we still have our work cut out for us in demonstrating that homeschooling not only provides a good education, but also excellent social skills.

Many have expressed concern that homeschooling fails to provide adequate socialization and connection to broader society, often leading to weaker social interaction and skills. In the LifeWay Research survey, 54 percent of respondents agreed, somewhat or strongly, that "children who are homeschooled often lack social skills."

Remember, this is a perception, not reality. The general public thinks homeschoolers often lack social skills. It's up to us, as homeschooling parents, to help change this belief on the part of ordinary people, and the best way I can think of is to train our kids, very carefully and deliberately, in social skills. Manners, etiquette, kindness, consideration - these things must be taught on purpose and consistently. We spend large portions of our time with our kids; we have the chance to observe them regularly. It's critical that we observe our kids' behavior and their interactions with others, and that we correct them for inappropriate social interaction. The more we do this, the more likely it is that our kids will grow up to respond correctly in social situations.

It's encouraging to see that our culture is beginning to recognize the value of homeschooling, and the right of parents to educate children as they believe is best for them. And as we consistently raise children who contradict the general opinion about socialization, that misperception will also fall by the wayside, and people will see the truth about how good homeschooling can be for kids.

The Ultimate Homeschool Environment

2008-08-07T10:04:00.003-06:00

My Google alert today brought up a post from IEducation called, "6 Effective Ways to Create the Ultimate Homeschooling Environment." It's a pretty short post, and it has some decent ideas, but the more I read, the more frustrated I felt with it. So I decided to add a comment, and write my own post on the topic.

The post begins with this:

Many people are now into homeschooling these days for whatever reason. It is important to design a classroom environment so the kids can feel as though they are at a school.

I should have known right away it wasn't going to be very helpful to me. You see, I don't believe homeschooling ought to be duplicating school at home. Homeschooling has many advantages and uniquenesses, and it seems to me we ought to take advantage of those. I've been homeschooling for 8 years now, and I'm pretty happy with our "homeschooling environment."

The author goes on to list the following "tips to create a perfect study environment."

1. Dedicated space.

Keep distractions away from the study area. No TV, no XBox, PS3, or any other gaming device. This is a time to learn and study. Keep it clean so the children will be ready to begin as they enter their home classroom.

Dedicated space? Not at our house! We use the whole house, the back yard, the neighborhood. As far as I'm concerned, homeschooling is LIFE! And learning is a part of life. Our favorite place to "do school" is the living room couch, but my kids use their beds, the floor in the family room, the outside swing - anywhere they want as long as they get their work done right. That said, we don't put on the TV during the school day, unless it's at lunchtime (and then it has to be educational videos, readily available from the library if you don't have them at home). My kids have learned to ask at lunchtime (even during the summer!), "Do we have any 'school' videos?"

2. Equipment Purchases.

Large white board. The teaching parent will use this frequently to show examples of
discussed topics.
One small student desk per child, or use a table for multiple students
Computer, an absolute must. A PC or Mac is needed to keep your child(ren) abreast of the latest technologies. Many educational programs are available online. Have your child(ren) involved in the selection of furniture and or equipment. They will take pride in their decisions and respect the condition of the particular items.

The only part of this I use is the computer and educational programs. I do have a couple of small white boards, which the kids mostly use; but if I need to diagram or illustrate something that's not already shown in a book we're using, a piece of paper is usually easier to use than a white board, and it's more readily available (we don't have to go to our "schoolroom" to use it). My kids do each have a desk, but they use their desks only occasionally.

3. Organization.

The parent and child(ren) need to stay organized. Keep record of books distributed, homework assignments, completed work, progress, and grades.

Here I agree absolutely! We don't do homework assignments, and we don't have a lot of grades, so I don't keep track of those. But without organization, your homeschool will fall apart - and your kids won't be able to find those wonderful educational supplies you've spent so much time and money on. Invest in some tools to help you stay organized, because you're going to have a lot more "supplies" than a household that sends their kids to school. A cabinet or drawer unit for holding art supplies is the most significant thing I can think of, along with plenty of bookshelves. You will also have educational games and toys you'll accumulate over time, and you'll need a way to store those. But don't buy them all at once - get what you need for this year, and keep an eye out for sales. As your supply of resources builds, you'll want to invest in more.

Get yourself a good planner, too. Keep track of the records your state requires, either in files or in your binder or planner. And definitely write down books you loan out, and when and to whom they were loaned - you may think you'll remember, but you won't! :) Have a special basket, box, or shelf for library books, too, so they don't get mixed in with the rest of your books - and let your kids know if they don't return books to the basket, they are responsible for any fines!

4. Motivation.

Encourage your child(ren) with their studies and reward them for great
accomplishments.

I think the best way to motivate your kids is to show them you are learning right along with them. Use real books, preferably written by one author, rather than textbooks and workbooks, whenever you can. Textbooks are written by committee, and are therefore usually dull. But when you read a real book - whether historical fiction, biography, science, or literature - there is always something new to learn. Field trips, experiments, books on tape - all of these can teach us as homeschooling parents as well. And as the kids watch us being excited about learning, they get excited and motivated as well. At the same time, you can never go wrong with encouragement, or with reward big accomplishments (a tough math page ought to deserve at least a hug or a sticker or something!). :)

5. Syllabus.

Go beyond what is required by your local government or Board of Education. Take trips to your local library and let the
child(ren) select or suggest a few categories from which they have to choose.

The syllabus sounds like a lot of extra work to me, unless your state requires it. I do plan my kids' work, but I think a formal syllabus is a waste of time and prevents spontaneity. Instead, I spend that time and energy trying to find interesting, motivating materials and resources to help my kids learn. As for library books, suggesting categories is not a bad idea; I don't seem to need it, since my kids love to read. I'm also the primary person in my family looking for library books; I borrow dozens to read aloud or recommend to the kids when we are at home. (Usually I try to request them online before we go, so I can just pick mine up at the desk when we get there.)

6. Field trips.

These are always fun adventures for the child(ren). Depending on your location, select venues where you can apply their studies with the community or regional activities.

Absolutely! I try to plan a number of relevant field trips every year. And even a trip to the grocery store can be a field trip, especially with little people (try a new fruit or vegetable each time, or point out different shapes, or have them help you figure out which size container is least expensive; there are a thousand things they can learn there - and it keeps them busy while you're shopping!).

I think if you want to have the "ultimate homeschooling environment," though, you will want to make your whole home a learning center. Obviously it's not financially possible for most of us to invest a large sum in "extras" all at once, but over the years, you will want to accumulate all kinds of things that will make your home a great place to learn. Here are some ideas:

Art supplies - as many different things as you can think of. Don't invest a lot if your kids are little - buy discounted things at the beginning of the school year when you can. Crayons, colored pencils, markers, watercolors, modeling clay (purchased or homemade), construction paper, cardstock, poster board, finger paints, stencils, foam shapes, glue sticks, white glue - these are all good for little guys. As they get older, you may want to invest in oil pastels, better quality colored pencils, charcoal, drawing pencils, watercolor pencils, acrylic paints, Plaster of Paris, and different kinds of paper for the different media.

Tapes or CD's - There are so many of these! Books on tape are fun; so are radio programs such as Adventures in Odyssey and Focus On the Family Radio Theater. And then there are the educational ones - geography songs, multiplication songs, Spanish songs, dramatized versions of American history, and more. These days many of these are on CD. Also be sure to invest in a good tape or CD player; if your kids are like mine, it will get hard use and you'll likely have to replace it fairly often.

Educational games and toys - I prefer the non-computerized educational games. We enjoy the Cranium series of games, but many of the Milton Bradley and Hasbro games also have educational value in the early years. Discovery Toys has some really excellent games, too, even for older kids. Puzzles of all sizes and types are fun and educational; so are building toys such as Legos, Magnetix, and K'Nex. Speed Stacks cups are also fun and increase eye-hand coordination.

Sports equipment - To encourage physical fitness skills, you'll want a basketball (or several), a soccer ball, some cones to mark out a playing field or at least a goal, a football, a playground ball (or several), a bat and baseball, and a bike. You may also want a badminton set, a volleyball set, a croquet set, golf clubs, tennis rackets and balls, and more.

Educational "tools" - My kids think these are toys, because we don't use them often for our formal "school" time. We like pattern blocks, Cuisenaire rods, geoboards (these use rubber bands on pegs to make shapes), counting bears, 3-D shapes, and attribute blocks.

Books - Books, books, books! Biographies, historical fiction, Usborne books, science experiment books, classic literature, Caldecott and Newbery Award books, picture books - you name it! Surround your kids with books, and read aloud every day so they begin to grasp what's in those books, and you are likely to end up with committed readers and learners for life.

One caution - DON'T try to do all of this at once! I've been homeschooling for 8 years, and an at-home mom for 12, and we have built up our supply gradually. I remember as a new homeschooler reading about this kind of environment and feeling totally inadequate because I just didn't have the budget for it. But the key is to do it slowly, but consistently. Choose a few things that fit your child at his or her age, and get those "for school." Then keep your eyes and ears open. Attend used book sales; watch for books, toys, and games at garage sales; pay attention to sale flyers. Get these kinds of things for birthdays and Christmas (and ask friends and relatives to do the same) rather than battery-operated dolls and the latest fads. Choose quality over quantity whenever you can.

Keep in mind that what your family needs is to some extent going to depend on who your family is. Your learning environment will be different from mine, or most likely from everyone else you know. The key, to my way of thinking, is to begin with the philosophy that you want your kids to grow up believing that learning is a way of life, and that it's fun - and to keep that philosophy in mind whenever you are shopping. If you choose carefully and stay consistent, eventually your home will be "the ultimate learning environment" for your kids.

Feminism and Homeschooling

2008-08-06T11:00:00.003-06:00

There's an interesting blog entry this morning over at Kittywampus entitled, "Feminist Homeschooling - Why I Don't." I've heard a lot of arguments against homeschooling, but this one is new to me, and I find her thought process interesting.

As you know if you read my blog, I'm not exactly an avid feminist; still, I believe true feminism means advocating for a woman's right to make choices that are important to her, without being pressured by the culture around her. In that sense, I AM a feminist - though perhaps many feminists would disown me because I believe that in many cases conservative values are better for women than "progressive" values. I think women ought to be able to make their own choices, based on what is really important - if that means they choose to work, fine; if it means they choose to stay at home, that's fine too.

I'm especially interested in Kittywampus' reasoning for why women should work. She says about stay-at-home, homeschooling mothers,

If she works from home for pay, she rarely earns enough to survive financially if her marriage or partnership were to end.

And,

I see lots of female students hoping to be stay-at-home parents without much awareness of the attendant risk of poverty, and I suspect many mothers decide to stay home with the assumption that divorce or widowhood won't strike them personally.

The question that comes to mind is this: are we feminists simply out of fear? My feminism is rooted in the belief that women should have the freedom to make choices in which we find fulfillment and satisfaction, rather than being locked into something we don't want to do just because men want us to do it. But it sounds to me like she's saying the opposite: women shouldn't have the freedom to do what we find fulfillment in, if it means we might be dependent on the men in our lives, because if those men should fail, we will be in serious trouble. We should follow the current cultural pattern and go to work so we will have a "safety net" in case our husbands should walk out on us.

Do we really want to make our choices based fear that the men in our lives might not follow through on their commitments? That's not the kind of life I choose. Instead, I married someone I was pretty sure I could trust, and we each made a willing commitment to the other. If he chooses not to follow through on his commitment to me, then certainly, there will be consequences in my life - just as there would be in his life if I chose not to follow through on my commitment to him.

All relationships are like that. Even in working relationships, there are costs if people don't follow through (suppose my boss should suddenly decide to stop paying me!). But if we choose to live our lives in fear, rather than in trust, we'll never find real contentment or satisfaction - whether we are working or staying at home.

My own feminism pushes me to make choices I believe are right for me as a woman - choices that bring me fulfillment and satisfaction. In my case, those choices include staying home with my children and homeschooling. I'm well aware there would be serious consequences if my husband chose to flake out (with life insurance, there would be fewer economic consequences if he died - in fact, we would probably be better off financially than we are now). But I'm not going to let my fear force me into getting a job I don't want, so I can live a pressured, harried lifestyle while someone else who cares less about them than I do raises and educates my kids.

That said, I do work part-time, one day a week, in the homeschooling enrichment program my kids are also enrolled in. Over the 12 years I've been home with my kids, I've worked a variety of work-from-home or part-time jobs, just to keep up my skills, and figuring that someday when the kids are gone I will work again to pay college bills and provide for our retirement.

And I'm pretty happy with my life. I have adult interaction in my work, at church, at homeschooling events, online, and in other social situations. I love interacting with my kids and being there to see the sparkle in their eyes when they "get it"! I love the way we've gone from the conflict of the preschool and early elementary years to true enjoyment in being together (and how many parents of a middle-schooler can say that?!). I love the way my kids have had to learn to get along, because they are each other's only playmates. I love sitting on the couch together reading a good story, going to the museum as a family rather than with 30 other kids, and taking a day off to go swimming or do something special "just because." I love sharing my excitement over a given time in history or a science concept or a great book. I love seeing my junior higher begin to adopt the values that are important to me, and to ask questions that show she's thinking about significant issues in her life.

I refuse to allow fear to rob me of that kind of fulfillment. I choose to trust, with full awareness of the possible consequences. And if my husband should choose not to follow through, I will then make the choices I believe are right for me as a woman under those circumstances. My belief in a woman's freedom - my feminism, if you will - demands nothing less.

More on Public Education

2008-07-29T08:58:00.002-06:00

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal has an excellent article on the topic of public education, entitled "The Greatest Scandal." In an effort to point out the differences between our candidates for President, the article highlights how school vouchers and privately-run public schools are improving education drastically for those students who are able to take advantage of them.

In Washington, D.C., for example, the Opportunity Scholarship Program provides parents of disadvantaged children with up to $7,500 to attend private schools. This is in fact a huge savings to the government, since the District of Columbia spends $13,446 per student per year. According the WSJ article,

To qualify, a child must live in a family with a household income below 185% of the poverty level. Some 1,900 children participate; 99% are black or Hispanic. Average annual income is just over $22,000 for a family of four.

These people are obviously needy - exactly the kind of kids who fall through the cracks in many public schools today. But as the WSJ article points out,

A recent Department of Education report found nearly 90% of participants in the D.C. program have higher reading scores than peers who didn't receive a scholarship. There are five applicants for every opening.

This is a program that is working! So are our leaders jumping at the chance to duplicate this kind of success rate? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Instead, they are instead refusing the reauthorize the program.

The article also mentions the phenomenal success rate of EdisonLearning in Philadelphia, which in 2002 took over 20 of the city's 45 worst-performing schools.

The number of students performing at grade level or higher in reading at the schools managed by private providers increased by 6.1% overall compared to 3.3% in district-managed schools. In math, the results for Edison and other outside managers was 4.6% and 6.0%, respectively, compared to 3.1% in the district-run schools.

Wow - another program that is working! But again, the powers that be, instead of rushing to duplicate this kind of success, are trying to shut it down. "Last month, Philadelphia's school reform commission voted to seize six schools from outside managers, including four from Edison."

The WSJ article concludes with this:

Mr. Obama told an interviewer recently that he opposes school choice because, "although it might benefit some kids at the top, what you're going to do is leave a lot of kids at the bottom." The Illinois Senator has it exactly backward. Those at the top don't need voucher programs and they already exercise school choice. They can afford exclusive private schools, or they can afford to live in a neighborhood with decent public schools. The point of providing educational options is to extend this freedom to the "kids at the bottom."

A visitor to Mr. Obama's Web site finds plenty of information about his plans to fix public education in this country. Everyone knows this is a long, hard slog, but Mr. Obama and his wife aren't waiting. Their daughters attend the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where annual tuition ranges from $15,528 for kindergarten to $20,445 for high school.

So just exactly why does Mr. Obama think it's fine for him to have school choice - choice that costs him almost as much as our family makes in a year - but not for the rest of us?

School choice promotes competition, which almost always results in a better end product than a monopoly. In Colorado, open enrollment has allowed students some measure of school choice since 1994, and has been pretty effective; however, options are limited to public and charter schools, parents are responsible for transporting students to open-enrollment choices, and the best schools fill up quickly, often from within their own attendance areas.

But when we study the reality of what happens when families get real choices in education, we discover that, just as was true in Washington, D.C., choice means improvement. The Alliance for Choice in Education offers scholarships for children from needy families in Denver to attend private schools - and those students have a 95% graduation rate (in spite of the fact that 78% of their scholarship recipients have a household income of under $30,000/year, and the families are required to contribute half of the private school tuition!). Not only that, but students in these programs in Cleveland and Milwaukee, where school vouchers are widely used, show significant improvements in reading and math (between 7 and 15 points higher in their percentile ranking from their own previous scores).

So what's the conclusion? As might be expected, increased competition means improved schools. I am aware of no studies that show what happens to public school test scores when competition is introduced (via charter schools, open enrollment, school vouchers, or privately-run public schools). Admittedly, this might be difficult to determine, since the competition would undoubtedly "skim" some of the better students from the public schools; still, it would be interesting to see what heppens. It would also be interesting to see the results of school choice on individual students. (We may someday be able to see these results, as the Milwaukee Longitudinal Educational Growth Study has just released its "Baseline Report" - perhaps 10-15 years in the future we'll be able to tell whether students in school voucher programs in fact show greater improvement in their test scores and in their success rates in life.) But given what we know now, state and local governments across the nation ought to be looking to increase competition in order to improve performance for all schools.

Do We Need a New Federal Policy in Education?

2008-07-25T10:01:00.003-06:00

Many people have written criticizing NCLB - the No Child Left Behind Act. I have my own criticisms of that act, which I will not go into here.

But the Forum for Education Reform has produced a 72-page report entitled "Democracy At Risk: The Need for a New Federal Policy in Education." In that report, they propose to increase federal spending on education by $29 billion per year. Considering that 2008 federal spending on education amounts to something over $67 billion, that's a pretty hefty increase - 43%.

Among their evidence in support of the "need" for this, you'll find this statement:

By the mid-1970s, achievement had improved, college-going rates for African American and Hispanic students were equivalent to those for white students, and teacher shortages had been nearly eliminated. The United States led the world in education.

However, many of these initiatives were ended in the 1980s and the gains lost when the federal share of education spending was sharply cut in half. Although modest progress was made in the 1990s, other countries have surged ahead with strategic investments in systems that promote top-flight teaching for higher-order skills in every school.

You'll forgive me if I'm a bit skeptical of this position on American education in the mid-70's. In this sample chapter from Salem Press' book, The Seventies in America, the education scene during the 1970's does not look nearly as positive as the Forum for Education Reform would suggest. This was the decade of forced busing, "white flight," court-ordered equalization (meaning the court required that there be no more than $100 difference in spending between public school districts) and open classrooms. By 1975, according to this link, "reports showed that scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), used as a college entrance examination, had dropped dramatically since the previous decade." And this in spite of the fact that federal spending on education between 1965 and 1975 had increased by 207%! The final sentence in the chapter from the Salem Press book is: "Concern over apparently dropping test scores and over the quality of American education began to grow." Does this sound to you like the Forum for Education Reform's description of the mid-1970's in American education? (Oh, and by the way - until 1979 there WAS no U.S. Department of Education - so if the United States in fact "led the world in education" during the mid-70's, perhaps we ought to ask ourselves whether the federalization of American education might have had something to do with the decline in our schools.)

The Democracy At Risk report goes on to say that "the federal share of education spending was cut in half" during the 1980's. However, a more rational look at the situation is provided by the National Center for Education Statistics' report, entitled "Federal Support for Education: Fiscal Years 1980 to 2002." On page 3 of this report, the most significant drop in education spending between 1980 and 1985 is reported in this sentence: "During this same time period, elementary and secondary education funds dropped 21 percent, after adjusting for inflation." And between 1985 and 1990, spending on elementary and secondary inflation actually increased 12 percent.

As for the Democracy At Risk report's "modest progress" during the 1990's, on-budget education spending for elementary and secondary education increased 87% between 1990 and 2002; "off-budget support and nonfederal funds generated by federal legislation" increased 281%. If this is modest, I wonder what it would take for them to consider a funding increase "substantial"! Federal spending on education has continued to increase throughout the 6 years since 2002.

But for the Forum for Education Reform, we are still not spending enough federal money on education. In fact, on page 27 of "Democracy At Risk," they spend an entire page praising the Finnish system, which provides teacher candidates with a 3-year graduate degree in education, paid for entirely (including room and board) by the Finnish government. And while I would agree that it appears the Finnish system has produced excellent results, raising Finland to the very top of the heap in international comparisons, the cost has been extremely high. While in the United States our 2008 Tax Freedom Day was April 23 (meaning the average American has to work until that date just to pay our taxes), in Finland they did not hit theirs until June 5. That means the average Finnish worker pays almost half his/her income in taxes!

There must be a better way to improve America's education system than just throwing more money at it. The U.S. Census Bureau provides the following information on per-pupil spending in different states:

School district spending per pupil was highest in New York ($14,884), followed by New Jersey ($14,630) and the District of Columbia ($13,446). States where school districts spent the lowest amount per pupil were Utah ($5,437), Idaho ($6,440) and Arizona ($6,472). (More info here.)

But the amount spent per-pupil does not appear closely related to the likelihood that a state's young people will graduate from high school. Utah, which spent the least on education, had the second highest rate for high school graduation (88%), while the District of Columbia had only a 78% graduation rate. And the average graduation rate for the top five states in per-pupil spending was 81.8%, only .2% higher than the average graduation rate for the bottom five. The amount of money spent is clearly not the issue.

It seems to me that if this nation wants to improve our education system, we've got to do something besides continue to raise taxes and hand money to public school systems. As the Heritage Foundation article entitled, "Examining 'A Nation At Risk'" points out,

This year, American taxpayers will spend more than $9,200 on the average public-school student. That's a real increase of 69 percent over the per pupil expenditure in 1980. The total bill for a student who remains through high school will be almost $100,000.

And we see our schools continuing to decline. On page 6 of the Heritage Foundation's Backgrounder, April 28, 2008, the graph makes it clear - as funding has increased over the years since 1970, student performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress has remained stable. The Heritage report continues,

We also know what doesn't work: Federal mandates such as No Child Left Behind. That law required states to test students, but it ends up giving states an incentive to "dumb down" their tests to maintain federal funding.

A 2006 study by University of California researchers found the gap between state and federal proficiency scores had increased in 10 of 12 states examined since NCLB was enacted. It's better to simply let states provide the funding and hold themselves accountable.

And their solution? It's much better than the "Democracy At Risk" report's suggestions, which are full of "educationalese" - perhaps because it's written by private citizens rather than professionals in the education establishment. "Examining 'A Nation At Risk'" recommends:

We have big problems in our education system. But we'll solve them from the bottom up, not the top down.

It's time to slash the regulation and start creating the educational system our students deserve.

And the Backgrounder article has this recommendation:

At the federal level, Congress should reform federal education policies to protect academic transparency, eliminate inefficient bureaucracy, and encourage innovation at the state and local levels. Policymakers should embrace policies that give more families the freedom to choose their children’s school; allow school leaders to innovate and develop successful school models and improve teacher quality; and allow parents, lawmakers, and the general public to hold public schools and students accountable for results.

This is near and dear to my heart as a professional educator and homeschooler. I hope the leaders in our federal government listen.

More on the Stridency of Some Homeschool Advocates

2008-07-23T08:38:00.006-06:00

If you've been following the comments in my previous post on the stridency of some homeschool advocates, you know there's been a fair amount of interest generated in this topic. And apparently the interest extends beyond just the readers of this blog - my Google alerts on the topic have picked up several similar posts in the last few days.

Here is one that expresses my own concerns: "Homeschooling without being a Separatist? etc.! "

Karry begins her post with this:

I have been reading some things that previously homeschooled folks have said about their experiences, and why they hated homeschooling. The #1 reason I have found is exactly what I think a problem among Christian Homeschoolers is: an attitude of being separate and "better" than everyone else. As if, because we homeschool, our family is better than the family across the street who sends their kids to public school, or the family down the street who sends their kids to private school?

This is precisely my concern, and Karry goes on to discuss why she believes this attitude is wrong. She also brings up a related concern, about the fact that some homeschooling parents keep their kids away from the public-schooled kids in their neighborhood. Now, I don't allow my kids to hang out indiscriminately with the kids in my neighborhood; but I do believe God has put us in this neighborhood for a reason, and He expects us as a family to minister to the other families around us. So I do allow my kids to play with our neighbor kids, closely supervised, of course. In fact, the only families in our neighborhood we've been able to build relationships with are the ones who have children near our own kids' age - those are the ones the Lord has given us to reach out to.

Here's another post on the topic, this time from The Accidental Homeschooler: "Called to Homeschool." Kelly has some great insight here, including a conversation she had with a friend as she was considering the question of whether "every Christian is called to homeschool."

Kelly links also to this post from Spunky Homeschool on the same issue: "Conventional Wisdom." Spunky's post is fascinating. I especially thought this quote was interesting:

Asking the homeschool movement to decide whether it will advance a specifically Biblcial vision or not is like asking a hammer if it will build a house or a table. It can't decide anything nor can it lose a vision for what it is supposed to build. Homeschooling, like a hammer, is completely dependent upon the one who uses it. No one philosophy or worldview controls homeschooling. As long as the freedom to homeschool is open to all parents, it is an exercise in futility to demand that the movement have only one specific vision --secular or biblical.

And the post that started it all: "Homeschooling is NOT the Gospel." This one is full of piercing questions and comments, including this:

Furthermore, the problem is not bad education, it is bad character (sin). The solution is not homeschooling, it is the gospel of Jesus Christ and participating in the growing kingdom of God. The utopian society is not homeschool grads in power, but the consummation of the kingdom of God which will only occur at the second coming of the Lord in glory. I fear that many in the Christian homeschooling movement have a false understanding of the problem, the solution, and the ultimate goal. And smooth-talking, eloquent, yet misguided speakers that give vision and encouragement to homeschooling parents are not helping build the kingdom of God.

One more post on this topic and I'll leave it alone for a bit. This one is from IndianaJane's Journal, and is entitled, "Ruminating on Homeschooling." A sample of her post:

And they wouldn't mind keeping the non-Christians out of homeschooling, too. "In like manner, the homeschool movement must decide whether it will work to advance a specifcally Biblical vision, or take a “big tent” approach that is now comfortable and uncontroversial - and lose the covenantal vision. "

What they don't seem to realize is that they were never the totality of the homeschool movement and with each year they are a smaller part. I have worked
hard for over ten years to help build the big homeschool tent, and in spite of
false witness from some in their camp, we are seeing the big tent get more and
more full.

What I get, from all these posts, is that many homeschoolers believe deeply in what we are doing, but disagree with those who hold that it is the only acceptable position for Christians. It's my feeling that if we're going to successfully minister to the majority of people with whom we come in contact, we are not going to do it by preaching how much better we are than everybody else. When we flaunt our own self-righteousness, we alienate those to whom we could minister. We aren't able to encourage those who are struggling to hang in there, at least for one more year, to see what God might do for them. We aren't able to expose those who hold inaccurate positions on Scripture or young-earth creationism or any other topic to accurate, rational, factual information. And most significantly, we destroy our witness to the unbelievers among us - whether they are unbelieving homeschoolers, workers at the convention site, or curious bystanders who wonder what we're up to. The way to reach these people is with graciousness, gentleness, a loving spirit, and an openness to interact. If we don't demonstrate these qualities, all our self-righteousness is useless.

It's also important to keep in mind that, while the Lord will certainly hold us accountable for how we raised and educated our children, He will also hold us accountable for how we ministered to other believers and how we witnessed to an unbelieving world. He's not going to be impressed if all we can say is, "Well, I homeschooled my 8 children and discipled them so everyone else could see how faithfully we followed You" - He wants us interacting with lost people, and showing our children how to do that.

Time Magazine on Teen Girl Purity

2008-07-21T13:54:00.002-06:00

Time.com, Time Magazine's website, has a very interesting article this week entitled, "The Pursuit of Teen Girl Purity." All too often, secular sources tend to look at conservative, Christian events with a skeptical eye; for a change, Nancy Gibbs, the journalist who wrote this article seems interested and curious as she attended a Father/Daughter Purity Ball at the Broadmoor hotel in Colorado Springs. What could motivate fathers and daughters, in 2008, to come together in the interest of preserving the young ladies' purity? As Ms. Gibbs comments, even the term purity has a "shadow of stains and stigma."

Apparently much to Ms. Gibbs' surprise, she discovers that the ceremony is beautiful, and that "The goal seems less about making judgments than about making memories." Well, what do you know? :) These Christians who are so insistent that it's good for young people to practice abstinence really DO love their kids - rather than passing judgement on kids for being kids, we really believe it is in their best interest to have strong bonds with their parents (especially their fathers), and to save intimacy for marriage. And so we do what we can to give them a solid foundation, positive memories of what really matters in life, and to build the kind of relationships that will help them to stand in opposition to all the pressures they face (rather than wimping out and saying, "Well, since you're going to anyway, be sure to use birth control.").

She sums up her article this way:

Maybe mixed messages aren't just inevitable; they're valuable. On the one hand, for all the conservative outcry, there is no evidence that giving kids complete and accurate information about sex and contraception encourages promiscuity. On the other, a purity pledge basically says sex is serious. That it's not to be entered into recklessly. To deny kids information, whether about contraception or chastity, is irresponsible; to mock or dismiss as unrealistic the goal of personal responsibility in all its forms may suit the culture, but it gives kids too little power, too little control over their decisions, as though they're incapable of making good ones. The research suggests they may be more capable of high standards than parents are. "It's always tempting as a parent to say, Do as I say, not as I do," says a father who's here for the first time. "But it's more valuable to make the commitment yourself. Children can spot hypocrisy very quickly."

I was relatively pleased at the ending of her article. It shows a remarkable willingness to look honestly and fairly at what she was seeing, in a way that few in our culture are willing to do. And though I don't agree with her about whether telling kids everything encourages promiscuity (after all, what kid isn't insatiably curious on these topics? And what kid doesn't experiment with something if it seems mysterious and important - and inevitable, as so many s-x ed programs teach?), I'm thrilled to see her encouraging parents to help their kids have high standards.

Just before that last paragraph, Ms. Gibbs wrote this one. It speaks clearly to the value of events such as the purity ball she visited, not only for the fathers and daughters involved, but also for the watching media and for the culture who sees these events through their eyes.

If you listen long enough, you wonder whether there is really such a profound disagreement about what parents want for their children. Culture war by its nature pours salt in wounds, finds division where there could be common purpose. Purity is certainly a loaded word--but is there anyone who thinks it's a good idea for 12-year-olds to have sex? Or a bad idea for fathers to be engaged in the lives of their daughters and promise to practice what they preach? Parents won't necessarily say this out loud, but isn't it better to set the bar high and miss than not even try?

I hope more people gain this sort of insight from authors such as Nancy Gibbs. And I hope more parents are encouraged to set the bar high - missing is possible when you do that, but so is winning. :)

Should Children Have Rights?

2008-07-17T09:00:00.002-06:00

Back in June I wrote a post entitled, "Another Court Takes Law Into Its Own Hands." The post was a discussion of a Canadian judge who had overruled a father's logical consequence to his 12yo daughter, deeming it "excessive." A regular blog reader and commenter, after reading the original article on which my post was based, responded, in part, with this paragraph:

I notice . . . the reference to Senator Clinton and legislation that sees children as "child citizens" and permitting them some rights against their parents. I do not find this so awful as there are instances when parents are not acting in the best interest of their children... we see it all to often in the media. However, I would think that such legislation (passed or pending) needs to be very clear and not open to simply granting child rights simple for not getting a child's way.

I personally don't like the whole approach of spelling out certain rights of children, primarily because the results depend on our capricious court system. I recently discovered that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, for example, states that one of the child's rights is to have their parents make decisions in their best interest. The problem with that is that parents sometimes have to make decisions that are NOT in the child's best interests, but ARE in the best interests of the family as a whole.

Here's one example: My younger daughter is having difficulty learning to read. I have tried everything I can think of, and have been doing that for about 5 years, and she's still struggling (and is now approximately 2 years behind grade level in reading - fortunately since we homeschool I can read aloud to her and she can continue to progress in other subjects!). So yesterday, after having her evaluated by a friend who is a reading specialist, I came to the conclusion that she needed to attend our local homeschool enrichment program on Mondays, when my friend will be teaching a reading class, rather than on Fridays as we always have. My older daughter was devastated - "All my friends are going to be in the Friday school!" It is not in my older daughter's best interests to move to Mondays; however, my younger daughter's need to learn to read supercedes my older daughter's need to be with her friends. And our family's budget does not allow us to drive the half hour each way on two different days.

But what would a court say if my older daughter chose to hire a lawyer and sue, and our country had agreed to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child? How could I then make the best decision for our family? I definitely DO consider my daughters' best interests; but sometimes decisions need to be made that on the surface seem contradictory to a given child's best interests in order to account for the whole picture of the family.

And who is responsible for determining the best interests of my child anyway? I may believe it is also in my older daughter's best interests to make this change, too, because in the long run she will learn that certain needs are more significant than others, and that sometimes we must sacrifice what we want for the sake of someone else. But can I convince the court of that? I don't know. The judge may put more value on my daughter's socialization than on her character development - does that mean the judge has the right to decide?

As a parent yourself, I'm sure you could also give examples when you've had to make this kind of decision. And this is only one example of how spelling out legal rights for kids can have unintended - and maybe disastrous - consequences for families (and even for the kids themselves).

By very definition, children are immature, and thus are not able to make wise decisions, considering all the factors. While I realize some parents are negligent in their responsibilities toward their children, I don't think giving children legal rights is really going to solve that problem. I DO think it may cause serious problems to families who are doing their best to raise their children wisely and well. Ultimately, we have to give parents, not judges, the right to decide what is best for children - within certain limits, which obviously include NOT allowing child abuse. Granting children the right to sue their parents in court does not benefit children or their families.

The Stridency of Many Homeschooling Advocates

2008-07-17T08:26:00.002-06:00

Once again life has caught up with me and I've dropped the ball on my blog for several weeks. My apologies to anyone who reads me regularly.

Dana has a great post over at Principled Discovery called, "Homeschooling Is Not the Gospel," which picks up on one of my pet peeves about our state homeschooling organization. Those of you who know me well are aware that I live in Colorado; if you know much about Colorado homeschooling, you know that our state organization is headed by Kevin Swanson. Now don't get me wrong, I like Kevin as a person, and agree with him about many things - but I strongly disagree with the tone he (and our organization as a whole) seems to take toward anyone who doesn't agree with him.

Dana's article is excellent and well worth reading in its entirety. She sums up her point with this statement:

Actually, I fear that some of these overzealous arguments against public schools do more to close people off from the idea of homeschooling than anything.

She's right.

I too get very frustrated at the tendency of many homeschooling advocates to make this a huge battleground. Our state organization is becoming more and more strident in tone - and the funny thing is, that’s in spite of the fact that homeschooling is becoming easier and more popular all the time. The criticism becomes more heated every year, and the range of those criticized becomes greater. This year, the state organization allowed only those curriculum providers who would sign a young-earth creation statement. Now I’m a young-earth creationist myself, but I think that’s just wrong!

Homeschooling does not benefit when homeschooling organizations become exclusionary: you must be a Christian, you can’t be enrolled in any kind of government schooling program, you must be a young-earth creationist - and it wouldn’t surprise me if soon you’ll have to believe birth control is wrong, too.

Unlike a previous commenter, I still like the seminars on Christian worldview, building up the family, and maintaining a vision for homeschooling - many of them are pretty good and help keep me going when things get stressful. But I, too, am beginning to avoid the general sessions - and there are certain speakers I simply won’t go hear, because they are far too contentious.

Why do we ask for war when it’s not necessary? And whatever happened to Romans 12:18, “If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone”? Or Colossians 4:5,6: “Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders . . . Let your conversation be always with grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone”?

It seems to me it’s time for a little grace, you know?

Another Court Takes Law Into Its Own Hands

2008-06-20T21:18:00.002-06:00

In Canada, a judge's ruling recently undermined a father who was trying to correct his 12-year-old daughter's disobedience. In a frightening violation of parental authority, the court ruled the father had punished his daughter "excessively" by refusing her permission to go on a school camping trip after she had disobeyed him. Details are here on Albert Mohler's blog.

This ruling is downright dangerous - not only for parents but also for children. If parents do not have the authority to choose logical consequences in order to prevent their children from engaging in dangerous, illegal, or inappropriate behavior - if children can sue and the court will simply step in and overrule the consequences just because the court happens to deem them "excessive" - then the government is going to raise a generation of unruly, undisciplined young people who have no concept of what adult life is really like. You see, if employees choose not to show up for work, or if they choose to have an intense argument with their boss, the consequences may be what the employees would deem excessive - they may be fired, and lose their income, a good reference, and perhaps even their home and possessions. Those are pretty excessive consequences for one little argument, or for "just being a bit late sometimes" - but they are reality.

Missing a school camping trip seems to be a very appropriate consequence for a disobedient 12-year-old. It is sufficient to act as a deterrent to the behavior, without producing excessive long term pain. I know of no parent who would think that is an excessive punishment, especially in light of the fact that by the time a child reaches 12, she is coming to the end of the parent's ability to inflict meaningful consequences. It's critically important that before she leaves home, she comes to understand that the world does not operate according to her whims. Unfortunately, this young lady has just learned that it does - at least if she's willing to go to court to fight for those whims. I fear this is not the last we will hear about this young lady - and I fear the future will show she has not turned out better for this arbitrary court decision.

Why Do People Dislike Homeschoolers?

2008-06-08T18:55:00.002-06:00

In today's Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Sonny Scott has a surprisingly frank, and fascinating, article entitled "Homeschoolers Threaten Our Cultural Comfort." I don't know much about Mr. Scott, but I found his article enjoyable, if a bit unrealistic about how well-behaved homeschoolers are. Normally I prefer to encourage you to click over and read the article on the original site; however, this is a short article and it's hard to give you just a taste of it. So here it is in its entirety.

You see them at the grocery, or in a discount store.

It's a big family by today’s standards - "just like stair steps," as the old folks say. Freshly scrubbed boys with neatly trimmed hair and girls with braids, in clean but unfashionable clothes follow mom through the store as she fills her no-frills shopping list.

There's no begging for gimcracks, no fretting, and no threats from mom. The older watch the younger, freeing mom to go peacefully about her task.

You are looking at some of the estimated 2 million children being home schooled in the U.S., and the number is growing. Their reputation for academic achievement has caused colleges to begin aggressively recruiting them. Savings to the taxpayers in instructional costs are conservatively estimated at $4 billion, and some place the figure as high as $9 billion. When you consider that these families pay taxes to support public schools, but demand nothing from them, it seems quite a deal for the public.

Home schooling parents are usually better educated than the norm, and are more likely to attend worship services. Their motives are many and varied. Some fear contagion from the anti-clericalism, coarse speech, suggestive behavior and hedonistic values that characterize secular schools. Others are concerned for their children’s safety. Some want their children to be challenged beyond the minimal competencies of the public schools. Concern for a theistic world view largely permeates the movement.

Indications are that home schooling is working well for the kids, and the parents are pleased with their choice, but the practice is coming under increasing suspicion, and even official attack, as in California.

Why do we hate (or at least distrust) these people so much?

Methinks American middle-class people are uncomfortable around the home schooled for the same reason the alcoholic is uneasy around the teetotaler.

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.

Just as the jealous Chaldeans schemed to bring the wrath of the king upon the Hebrew eunuchs, we are happy to sic the state’s bureaucrats on these “trouble makers.” Their implicit rejection of America’s most venerated idol, Materialism, (a.k.a. “Individualism”) spurs us to heat the furnace and feed the lions.

Young families must make the decision: Will junior go to day care and day school, or will mom stay home and raise him? The rationalizations begin. "A family just can't make it on one income." (Our parents did.) "It just costs so much to raise a child nowadays." (Yeah, if you buy brand-name clothing, pre-prepared food, join every club and activity, and spend half the cost of a house on the daughter’s wedding, it does.) And so, the decision is made. We give up the bulk of our waking hours with our children, as well as the formation of their minds, philosophies, and attitudes, to strangers. We compensate by getting a boat to take them to the river, a van to carry them to Little League, a 2,800-square-foot house, an ATV, a zero-turn Cub Cadet, and a fund to finance a brand-name college education. And most significantly, we claim “our right” to pursue a career for our own "self-fulfillment."

Deep down, however, we know that our generation has eaten its seed corn. We lack the discipline and the vision to deny ourselves in the hope of something enduring and worthy for our posterity. We are tired from working extra jobs, and the looming depression threatens our 401k’s. Credit cards are nearly maxed, and it costs a $100 to fuel the Suburban. Now the kid is raising hell again, demanding the latest Play Station as his price for doing his school work … and there goes that modest young woman in the home-made dress with her four bright-eyed, well-behaved home-schooled children in tow. Wouldn’t you just love to wipe that serene look right off her smug face?

Is it any wonder we hate her so?

Sonny Scott a community columnist, lives on Sparta Road in Chickasaw County and his e-mail address is sonnyscott@yahoo.com.

Finally - A Non-Homeschooling Mom Gets It!

2008-06-04T20:05:00.003-06:00

I usually get frustrated reading articles about homeschooling written by people who don't homeschool. All too often those articles are full of stereotypes and false assumptions, and the authors really don't have a realistic view about homeschooling.

But today I came across a refreshing change in this post entitled "Reconsidering Homeschooling," on the blog called Losses and Gains. The author is a mom who has never homeschooled, in spite of being a former elementary school teacher with a Masters in Teaching, because she never felt she and her older son would be able to get along. But she has a little girl, a 3-year-old, and she's thinking about homeschooling her. And rather than listening to all the garbage, she's thought realistically about why many of us do choose to homeschool. Here's what she thinks:

I have realized that a lot of what drives families to homeschool is the desire to choose. To choose what you believe to be best for your child, to choose what works best for you, and to choose what works well for your family. I see the flexibility homeschooling families have in planning vacations and I envy that. I see the ease with which activities are planned because studies can be worked in and around each child's individual schedule. I see the way a child's unique interests and learning style can be explored and enhanced by a thoughtful, individualized curriculum. And I can't help but wonder too if homeschooling mother's like me who abhor messy, three dimensional projects just don't do them? Wouldn't that be great? No more book report mobiles hanging from a wire hanger. No more diaromas or trioramas. No more clay landscapes perforated with sticks and twigs. No more paper mache, glue guns and midnight runs to Office Max. Heaven.

Here is a lady who gets it. One of the strongest motivations for homeschooling, for many of us, is the freedom to choose what is best - for our children and for our families. That's why different homeschoolers function so very differently, and why homeschool conventions are filled with hundreds of different curriculum options - because we value choice! Some families like to work through basic textbooks and be done, leaving them lots of free time or even the possibility of accelerating education and getting through college young. Others really enjoy the messy craft projects (UGH! - And she's right; we don't do them - at least not very often!). :) My family happens to love reading aloud together; we do LOTS of that in our homeschool. We also value breadth and depth in education, so we don't accelerate - instead, we do lots of "extras," and study topics to whatever depth we choose together. If we want to spend weeks on ancient Egypt, fine; we don't have to rush through so we can get through a textbook with someone else's ideas about what's important for kids to do. We also value social interaction, so my kids go to a homeschool enrichment program all day one day a week, and to a co-op another afternoon every other week, not to mention swim team (3X/week) and weekly church, club, and youth group meetings.

One reason so many homeschooling parents fight government intervention is that we have mostly chosen to homeschool because it gives us choices. Requiring us to have school district approval would mean our choices would be limited to what someone else thinks is best for our kids, someone else who barely even KNOWS our kids!

Lori goes on to say that she is sending her kids to a new school next year.

The New School is a K-12 school so if the boys are there, there is no reason we wouldn't enroll her there as well. No reason other than it is kind of far away from our house and it would mean putting a little 5 year old on a school bus for almost 2 hours each day. Which is why I have begun toying with the idea that maybe I would keep her home for a few years. Maybe just one or two.

I don't blame her a bit. Two hours on a school bus every day would be difficult for me as an adult - I can only imagine how tough it would be for a five-year-old! The trip home, after a long day at school, would be exhausting. I had a similar reaction when I realized our school bus took an hour each way, every day, to get the kids to school and home again - and our school is only 15 minutes from our house! Our first graders were leaving the house at 7:45 and getting home at 4:30! When I saw that, I was very glad I homeschooled. (This next year, my older daughter would have to leave at 6:45 and get home at 3:30, while my younger would leave at 7:45 and get home at 4:30. Then they'd have swim team or club meetings after that, plus homework - how would they even have time for dinner, let alone any time to be a kid? No thanks - I'll stick with homeschooling!)

Anyway, I was very impressed with Lori's post. I hope she does decide to homeschool Pumpkin - she may be surprised to find it's more fun (and more work, too) than she ever thought it could be. :)

Homeschoolers' Adjustment to College

2008-05-31T21:49:00.002-06:00

Dana over at Principled Discovery has a fascinating post on the article by Dr. Laura about homeschoolers and socialization. In most respects, Dana agrees with Dr. Laura's article, but she takes issue with the claim that homeschoolers can have a hard time adjusting to college.

Here's the original quote from the article:

Obviously, home-schooled students have additional adjustments to make when leaving their homes and entering a university or college environment: social relationship, peer pressure, classroom structure, etc. They are being forced to adapt to a social environment decidedly different from their homes or home school support groups.

And here's just a small taste of Dana's response:

It may seem obvious, but is it true? Is there a qualitative difference between the homeschool and the traditional school which should favor the traditionally schooled student, thus making the homeschooler’s success that much more noteworthy? Are there social relationships, potential peer pressure and classroom structure factors which the homeschooler must overcome given their upbringing? Or are we focusing too narrowly on the external similarities between high school and college, and not enough on the qualitative differences?

I think Dana's point here is excellent, and I believe my own experience backs it up. I was homeschooled for high school (and several earlier years as well), and then went on to college. I did have a rough first week - it was a bit intimidating to be completely on my own in a strange place (it was California, after all!), with my parents over 500 miles away, no car, and very little money. But once I made it through that first week, I LOVED college. In fact, I think it was one of the highlights of my life, and I still have wonderful memories and lifelong friends as a result. I went to class regularly, learned because I wanted to learn, turned in papers on time, gained independence, got excellent grades, worked part time, and graduated with high honors.

I had many friends in college who had attended public school. Most of them had a much harder time adjusting to college life than I did. My dh, who had attended public school all his life, was thrilled when he got a C on his first exam ("I didn't fail!"). (Incidentally, his grades improved significantly after he married me halfway through, and I showed him what I knew about how to learn.) My best friend rebelled, dated young men her parents hated, and eventually dropped out. My first roommate struggled with friendships for several years, though she eventually got things figured out and I believe graduated reasonably happy. But their adjustments were far more difficult than my own.

I must respectfully disagree with Dr. Laura on this point, and agree with Dana. The adjustments homeschoolers have to make are, in many cases (though certainly not all), far more superficial than the deeper adjustments required of students who have learned to "skate through" what public school requires. And in the areas that matter most, homeschoolers often have the advantage.

Insults and Yardsticks (On Those Who Attack)

2008-05-25T20:40:00.004-06:00

At Starry Sky Ranch, Kim has a great post about being mean-spirited. She references a "vicious attack on homeschoolers," to which she does not link (she says, "It was that bad"), and then proceeds to discuss the ridiculousness of many of the attacks leveled against homeschoolers. In the attack she highlights, she tells how many of the commenters stooped to attacking "the guest blogger's hair, wardrobe, punctuation, children, and general personhood."

I've seen something similar in many attacks on homeschooling parents and on homeschooled kids. When people have little or nothing to add to a conversation, they choose to insult the person talking. And of course homeschoolers make such fabulous targets, because 25 years ago when homeschooling was illegal, and homeschoolers had to hide under the bed whenever anyone knocked at the door, some of them did come out a bit unusual. Not only that, but at the time, in order to be willing to put up with the challenges of doing something illegal, homeschooling parents almost had to be fanatics. Even so, most homeschooled kids turned out well, and many went on to be successful in almost every area of their lives. So what if their hair or their clothes were a bit unusual?

But to assume that homeschoolers today are just like homeschoolers were then would be a HUGE mistake. Today homeschooling is legal in every state, there are many ways in which homeschooled kids can be involved in interactions with other kids, and we run the gamut from atheist to Wiccan to Muslim to Jewish to Christian (and probably more). Some families resent the structure of school that forces all kids into the same mold; some want to provide more enrichment for their gifted kids; some think one-on-one is the best way to educate. Some parents feel the schools move kids too quickly; others feel they move too slowly. Some want their kids to have more hands-on projects, some want them to read all the "classics," some think they should spend more time outside; some want them to go to college early and be teaching college classes by age 23. Some expose their kids to little or no modern culture, spurning the TV and reading and talking instead; others participate willingly in all the latest fads that come along, buying their kids "Seventeen" magazine and letting them "sag" or go Gothic or whatever.

It only shows how foolish these critics are when instead of raising valid concerns about homeschooling, they resort to ad hominem attacks - totally irrelevant to the issue at hand. And as Kim points out,

One thing we have always tried to drive home to the kids is that if a person is
reduced to discussing bodily form and function they must have nothing more
substantial to contribute to the conversation. Likewise when a person raises his
voice or makes personal attacks he generally has nothing legitimate to add
either.

You'll definitely want to read the whole thing.

Where Do We Find Real Hope?

2008-05-22T21:41:00.003-06:00

As most of us know, there is one particular presidential candidate whose campaign slogans and literature all claim that if we endorse him, this country will have hope again. Today, Dave Burchett had a well-written blog entry on Crosswalk.com entitled, "With Apologies to Barrack (sic) Obama . . . Hope and Change Are Available Right Now." The main point of his blog entry can be summed up in this paragraph:

We are deluded into thinking that hope lies in a leader or a political party. We believe that change will come because of kindred politicians or better laws or lawsuits that establish justice as we see it. We think that the right leader will help educate every child no matter their circumstance. We hope that this political savior will provide healthcare for every person at no cost to them and that somehow we can be immune to the cost. This leader will help the poor find jobs and realize their every dream. And I picture God looking at His millions of followers with a heart sad with the knowledge that this earthly dream of hope and change will not satisfy. God has blessed this country with so much in money and resources. So much of what we now demand our government to do could be accomplished if God’s people simply read, trusted and followed His Word.

Read the whole thing. It's a great reminder, at this time when the media is so busy emphasizing political issues, that a political leader can never give us lasting hope, hope that satisfies even in the face of difficulties (like the tornadoes that whipped through an area less than half an hour from us this morning) or suffering (like the Chapman family's loss of their little girl). Hope can come only from Jesus Christ, and that is available all the time, not just in an election year.

A Terrible Tragedy

2008-05-22T09:52:00.003-06:00

My heart is breaking today. I just heard this morning that yesterday afternoon one of Steven Curtis Chapman's teenage sons backed over his 5-year-old daughter in the driveway of their home and killed her. If you know Steven at all, you know he and his wife adopted their three younger children from China, and have poured their lives into these little girls. They even founded a ministry called Shaohannah's Hope, which provides financial and other kinds of assistance to families who want to adopt children from foreign countries.

I am sure the family is suffering deeply. Please keep them in your prayers. If you follow the link, there is a place you can post a message letting them know you are praying for them.

The FLDS Tragedy

2008-05-19T08:21:00.002-06:00

I've been hesitant to get into this issue, as I'm married to a social worker and have a tendency to believe CPS workers usually get the worst of media publicity. However, after extensive reading, including this article from San Antonio's website, I'm becoming convinced that what is happening in Texas is a travesty, doing far more harm to most of the children than would have been done by leaving them in their homes. The article tells how the mental health workers who were sent in to help the children in their emergency shelters have reported serious abuses by CPS workers, and how when they complained, the entire mental health staff was fired by CPS.

The Headmistress at The Common Room is blogging regularly on this issue, keeping track of much of what is happening - which is quite questionable, even according to CPS records. It's difficult to determine exactly how many children are involved (300? 400? more?). It's hard to know how many mothers are still with their children and how many have been removed. It's almost impossible to determine where the children are, and in many cases the parents have not even been told how to visit their children and have not seen them in the more than a month since they were removed. The families have been told not to return to the compound if they want their children back, and then the legal notifications have been posted in the paper there near the compound. And the majority of these children were not in immediate danger (many of them were still little children, who were apparently at no risk of sexual abuse or underage marriage). In fact, only two of the women were pregnant at the time of the raid, and both of them, CPS has since admitted, were adults.

There is much, much more. Obviously some of it is overwrought, but there's enough evidence here that it's pretty clear CPS has overstepped its bounds. Please join me in prayer for these families, whose rights have been violated, apparently primarily because CPS disagreed with their religious beliefs. If this is allowed to remain unchallenged, all of us are at risk; homeschooling families, after all, are somewhat "eccentric" according to our culture's standards.

On Education and Structure

2008-05-15T21:39:00.002-06:00

I'm a bit late in coming to this due to having family in town and other end-of-the-school-year pressures, but Dana over at Principled Discovery has a really great article on education as a way of introducing our children to structure.

She quotes from another blogger who points out that homeschooling doesn't provide our children with the same kind of formality, structure, routine, and respect that kids learn in school - and then goes on to tear apart that argument. She even manages to work in a discussion of Robert Fulghum's All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, pointing out that if we wait until kindergarten to teach our kids most of what he talks about in his book, we are going to have major problems teaching it then.

Among the best quotes I found in Dana's post:

Home education, in its ideal, also provides a structure for children although it is different in form and function. The point is more about inspiring the child and teaching the child to take responsibility for his or her own learning. It is about seeking real-world connections and developing a habit of scholarship, wonder and, most of all, ownership.

Many of us do finish the school day in less time than the public school because we have the advantage of more individualized instruction and fewer interruptions. I can see where this question comes from: "What job can you work for an hour and then go out and hug trees?" (Grove Street’s Weblog)
But it really does not follow. I can as easily ask what business expects you to sit quietly and wait until everyone else in the room finishes their work before you can move on. What happens after that two to three hours it takes to finish what is in the book does not mean that education has ended. It is in this extra time that home education has the opportunity to assist a child in discovering unique talents and real world experiences.

I won't spoil it for you by quoting any more. You've really got to read it for yourself.

If You're Thinking of Sending Your Kids to School . . .

2008-05-06T08:17:00.002-06:00

Around this time of year it seems like a lot of homeschoolers seriously consider the possibility of sending their kids to school (or back to school). Something about the spring and the weeks of being cooped up with our kids in the house tempts us to just hang it all up, call it quits, give the responsibility away to someone else.

It's important to point out that it's not necessarily wrong to send our kids to school; there are times, for some families, when that's the best choice. If you believe in prayer, you may need to pray about the decision, asking for God's will, and follow what you feel is His leading. Whether you believe in prayer or not, you may need to seriously consider the options. But it's also important to consider the situation with eyes wide open.

Susan is a friend of mine on an email list I'm on who some months ago had to make the difficult decision to send her kids to school. Certain health issues made the decision necessary, and she is confident for her it was the right decision. She recently posted this to our email list, and I thought it was really helpful in understanding what is really involved in choosing to send our kids to school.

. . . (M)y four children have been in school since January. It is a very small, private Catholic school. It is probably one of the best schools available when you consider everything (academics, class size, student behavior, etc.). But it is still school.

Here is what you can expect if you send your children to school:

The school will love your children simply because they are well-behaved. Expect your children to be one yr ahead if it is private school, two yrs ahead if it is public school.

You will be judged for your children's academic success. If your child breezes through with straight A's, they will compliment you. If your child is behind the class in learning sight words, you will be looked upon with disdain. If your child has learning disabilities you will cause resentment for making their job harder at the same time they conjecture that you made the LD's worse by keeping them at home. You will be expected to own up to either your great teaching skills or your lack of teaching skills instead of saying, "That is how God made them; we are just following His lead and doing the best we can."

Your children will get sick every week. You will be amazed at the number and variety of new illnesses that enter your home. Your children will not get as sick as the others, but if you have three or more, you can expect to have a child home sick every week in the winter.

You will learn to dread the morning Sick Evaluation. This is where you have to determine who is sick enough to stay home. You will have to discern which children are faking it. You will eventually make a mistake and send a sick child to school. That will cause you pain because your child will feel like she cannot trust you to care for her.

And you will get every single sickness that they bring home. Every single one. A job outside the home might not have enough sick days to support this lifestyle.

If your child is outgoing and friendly, then it is because "school is really helping him to open up." If your child is shy and quiet, then it is because homeschooling made her that way.

You will learn to feel the vibe from the teachers and school officials to easily discern how they feel about homeschoolers. On one hand you'll have teachers asking you for curric advice; on the other hand you'll have teachers dismissing any knowledge that you have about schooling. Some teachers will try to teach you lessons, like "Giving up Control".

Your children will notice their appearances and make changes. These changes might involve scissors and razors and beauty products. There will be much thought given to clothing, even if they wear uniforms.

Your children will learn new things that you wish they didn't know. You will become adept at defining interesting words at a second's notice, usually in the car. ("It means a female dog, and..."; "It means that someone likes the way you look and really wants to marry you.") You will be kept busy with letting them know that words like "dumb-butt" are not to be spoken in your house.

You will be playing catch-up. Your children will do things and you'll learn about them afterwards. You'll scramble to find out information and deal with it.

You will be going to the store about three times per week to get something that they need. You will have to do doc/dentist/etc appts after school hours when everyone is tired and cranky.

Your grade school aged children will only learn American History.

If you have to help with homework, you might want to keep your homeschooling curric handy, esp the math and grammar books.

One of your children might fall in with the bad crowd, where the conversations revolve around that intimate thing that married people do. If you are lucky, the bad crowd (which is frequently the mean crowd) will kick your child out and she can find some nice friends.

Your children will be tired and hungry after school. If they are quiet by nature, they'll need time alone. If they are very social, plan to spend the rest of the day listening to them and doing things with them. The social child doesn't get enough talking/doing in school, and the quiet child doesn't get enough peace and quiet.

Expect your children to need an earlier bedtime and more sleep.

There will be many hidden costs, such as school supplies and clothing.

You will notice a change in your house. It will stay clean. If you have boys you might even walk into the bathroom and wonder if they are still living at home.

You will notice your children becoming less active. They will be content to laze about even when good weather and God's gorgeous creation call them outside.

Some of these things I had never thought of. Others I knew, but it helps to be able to see them all in one place, doesn't it? Thanks, Susan, for pointing them out, and for the help it gives other homeschoolers in evaluating the real choices involved in homeschooling vs. regular school.

Making Disciples of Our Kids

2008-05-03T07:45:00.003-06:00

Among the reasons many parents choose homeschooling is the desire to transmit their values to their children. Today, in an editorial on OneNewsNow entitled "Fix My Kid," veteran youth worker Al Menconi has an excellent article on why many Christian parents are having difficulty raising their children to follow their own beliefs.

Mr. Menconi highlights the teaching of Deuteronomy 6:7, pointing out how badly we often fail at precisely what this verse tells us to do. Talking about the teachings of the Bible, the verse says, "Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up." He goes on to discuss how, at each of these times, many of us are doing exactly the opposite.

He has a point. But I think what he misses in the article is the whole issue of schooling. It seems quite clear from this verse that children are expected to accompany their parents in their daily lives. But most modern kids spend many of their waking hours in school. After subtracting 9 hours a day for sleeping (scientists say kids need 10-12), kids are left with 104 hours each week. For the kids in our neighborhood, almost half of those are used just getting to school, being in school, and getting home again. And that doesn't count an another 7-10 hours (sometimes more) in homework. That means kids who go to school (public or private), are investing about half their waking hours in school-related activities, away from their parents. Then many church kids spend another six hours or more in church activities - church, Sunday School, youth group, Bible study, etc. - where they are mostly separated from their parents.

When we "sit at home" - when would that be, for many children today? If my kids were in school, they'd have to catch the bus at 7:45 am (6:45 for my 11yo). They'd get home at 4 pm (3 for my 11yo - but she'd have a lot more homework). Three days a week there'd be just time for a bit of homework and a snack before they have to be at swimming at 5:30 (Wednesdays we go to dinner at the church and then to Bible study - that day we'd also have to leave at 5:15 but we wouldn't get home until 9:00). They'd get home from swimming at 7:30, eat a quick dinner, take a quick shower, and be off to bed so they could get up and repeat the process the next day. And based on my experience, my kids are not that unusual - it's pretty typical for kids to have some sort of sports activity that takes up a couple of hours several days a week. Most kids today don't have a lot of time to "sit at home."

When we "walk along the road" - well, OK, we spend a lot of time driving around, don't we? But how much of that time is spent with our kids in the car with us, if they are in school? And driving with the radio on doesn't provide our kids with the kind of conversation Deut. 6:7 requires. How much time would Biblical people have spent "walking along the road" with their kids?

"When you lie down" and "when you get up" - for families with kids in school, these are often hectic, rushed times, as we try to get everything ready and collected, from homework to lunches to everything in between. It's even worse if both parents work, because they're also trying to get themselves out the door.

It seems to me that parents who really want to make disciples of their kids have GOT to find ways to spend real, concrete blocks of time with them. I'll be the first to say I don't think homeschooling is for everybody. But seriously, if we want to follow the teaching of Deut. 6:7, homeschooling makes it much simpler. It gives us another 40-50 hours a week with our kids - time we can spend actually "sitting at home" and "walking along the way." It gives us time "when we lie down" and "when we get up" to sit quietly and talk - about life, about Scripture, about friendships, about whatever we find important.

When I was in high school (lo these many years ago!), I was homeschooled. Every day after breakfast, my mom and I would sit around the table after breakfast and just talk for an hour. I cannot tell you how significant this time was to the person I have become. As a teenager, I felt I understood why my parents believed and acted as they did. I internalized their values much more deeply than many of my peers. I also learned to think logically and rationally, to relate to others as adults, to apply what I believe to my everyday life, to balance arguments rather than take a one-sided position - so many critically important things.

If Christian parents really are serious about raising their kids to follow Jesus, about making disciples of them, we need to find ways of spending significant time with them. Obviously there's still no guarantee. But if we don't ever do the things described in Deut. 6:7 with our kids, we're almost guaranteed to fail.

Are Homeschoolers Well Prepared for College?

2008-04-30T10:03:00.003-06:00

One of the favorite complaints of the anti-homeschooling crowd is that homeschoolers are getting to college unprepared. I find that criticism a bit ridiculous, considering how poorly public schools are preparing kids for college; still, it's only fair to attempt to address it from time to time. The most recent post I've seen on the topic is from Greg Laden's blog, and is entitled "The Homeschooler Mind Set." (I found this through a well-written response from another homeschooling blogger, "She's Right." I HIGHLY recommend you go see her response - it isn't very long and it's excellent. Still, I think I have a few things to add to what she said, so here goes.)

In case you don't feel like clicking over to read Greg's blog, let me see if I can summarize. He basically says that while some homeschoolers do a reasonably good job, many teachers are not "generally happy with what shows up at their classroom door from Home Schooling Land." I think there's reason to address what he's saying. (The remainder of his post is made up of a poor analogy and uninformed opinion, along with some carefully selected quotes intended to make the majority of homeschoolers look like religious zealots or uninformed fools - I will not address any of that here.)

Here's how I responded (some minor editing changes made on the fly for the sake of this blog entry).

If you're going to post on how homeschooling is often not done well (and in fact I believe that shows you're making progress - I remember some months ago your being against almost all homeschooling), you might consider whether quoting college professors really helps your case all that much. Certainly, some college professors have had some homeschoolers who have done poorly. But how many college professors have complained about how their public-schooled students are doing? I believe you'd find FAR more complaints about public-schooled kids than about home-schooled ones. And the complaints about public-schooled kids are far more serious, because their deficiences tend to affect every area of their education. If they can't read, can't write, can't take notes, or won't follow directions, their entire future lives and careers are at stake (not just their success in the 6 units of science they have to take to get a B.A.).
Take a look at these quotes.

From James Gatti, in a comment on Vermont Tiger:

I have spent 35 years teaching economics and finance at the University of Vermont and have seen the dramatic decline all too closely. The ability of my students to read with comprehension, to calculate, to reason abstractly has eroded, but the most severe problem is a refusal to work as hard as is necessary to learn difficult material. I had a student take one of my required courses who had failed it with three other faculty members. She got the highest grade in the course when she took it with me. Why? Because she finally did what the other three faculty members and I told her to do. Do the readings when they are assigned. Do the problems as assigned. If you don't understand the readings or have trouble with the problems come and see us for help. It is not rocket science; it is hard work. They treat 4 years of college as an extended vacation.

From an article in the Des Moines Register, March 10, 2008:

"I just think it's unfortunate that such a large percentage of students who arrive at our door are in need of additional remediation to come up to the college level," said M.J. Dolan, executive director of the Iowa Association of Community College Trustees. . . .

Iowa community college students have been observed taking courses to catch up on junior high level skills, such as multiplying fractions, the basics of algebra, and identifying transition words that help connect ideas in written text. . . .

Laura Browne, associate dean of learning services at the Iowa Valley Community College District, said many incoming students need remedial reading and writing classes because they have spent so much time using grammatical shorthand to blog, send text messages and e-mail.

"They don't know how to write complete sentences," she said. "Spelling is a problem."

Jeri Lee, who teaches an elementary algebra course at Des Moines Area Community College, said students struggle in her class because they have become too dependent on the calculator.

"They never learn the basic facts," Lee said. "Their mind-set is, 'Let the machine do it for me.' "

Or this, from ACT's National Curriculum Survey Policy Implications Report:

High school teachers believe state standards are preparing students well for college-level work; however, roughly 65 percent of postsecondary instructors responded that their state’s standards prepared students poorly or very poorly for college-level work in English/writing, reading, and science.

And:

32 percent of high school teachers think students today are better prepared for college-level work—a percentage nearly two and a half times greater than that of postsecondary instructors who believe this.

Or this, from the Executive Summary of ACT's "Rigor At Risk" report on College Readiness:

Even when students take substantial numbers of additional courses, no more than three-fourths of them are ready for first-year college coursework. Despite the higher percentages of students who met the College Readiness Benchmarks and took more than the recommended core, still no more than 38 percent of these students are ready for first-year college science, no more than 60 percent are ready for first-year college social science, no more than 75 percent are ready for first-year college mathematics, and no more than 77 percent are ready for first-year college English. So, even taking additional higher-level coursework in high school does not lead to increased college readiness for many students.

And:

Students who earn good grades in their high school courses are led to believe they are ready for college; unfortunately, many are not. Many students are receiving high grades in their high school courses, leading them to believe they are ready for college. But nearly half of ACT-tested 2005 high school graduates who earned a grade of A or B in high school Algebra II did not meet the ACT College Readiness Benchmark for Mathematics, and more than half of the graduates who earned a grade of A or B in high school Physics did not meet the ACT College Readiness Benchmark for Science.

In contrast, look at this from Chris Bachelder, the Associate Vice President of Hillsdale College:

I asked our admissions office to compare last year’s ACT science scores of homeschooled students with their conventionally-educated counterparts. The homeschoolers averaged in the 85th percentile on the science portion of the test, scoring one point below the average of all admitted students. Their scores in non-science areas were generally superior to the conventionally schooled students, and by a much greater margin than the alleged "deficiency" that (the author) suggests would warrant an enormous intrusion into the lives of homeschooling families.

All in all, our experience is that homeschooling is not only more cost effective but can produce results comparable to or better than private, parochial or public schools. For those interested in academic studies, there is a vast amount of literature available to the public supporting this conclusion.

Since public schools are already doing a notoriously poor job of preparing our kids for college, while many homeschoolers are doing an excellent job, why pick on the homeschoolers? So what if some of our homeschooled kids are not well prepared in science - clearly MANY public schooled kids (acccording to the ACT quote above, more than half of students earning an A or B in physics) are not well prepared in science, and many of them are also not well prepared in reading, writing, math, and even spelling.

Given the options, I'll stick with homeschooling. I can do what's necessary to remedy the possibility of a science deficiency; but if my public-schooled child is bringing home A's or B's in physics, and still not being well prepared for college science, how will I even know that, let alone remedy it?

Homeschooling for Less

2008-04-29T09:47:00.002-06:00

Since I only have two children, I don't spend a lot of time over at the Large Family Mothering blog. But last night, Sherry posted an article entitled, "Homeschooling--less is more links and lists," that's a good reminder for those of us who sometimes take our homeschooling too seriously - and make it too expensive. Homeschooling does not have to be expensive; there are a lot of benefits in keeping it simple, especially in the early years.

What kinds of things does she recommend? I won't go into all of them, because I want you to click over and read her article for yourself. But here are a few of the highlights:

- Read aloud -

first the Bible (children can understand the simple stories-from Genesis on-as they are presented verbatum, no need to purchase a "Bible story book") all sorts of picture books, etc. I would have them draw about what we read, or not--whatever they wished. I would encourage whatever they drew--not worrying whether they were staying in the lines, or even that they were "artistically correct", but just appreciating what they created as coming from their hearts and enjoying it. I would place these creations on the fridge or any other nifty place where we could all enjoy them.

- Buy books for Mom, not for the kids.

- Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons - this has worked really well for her, but it didn't work for me, with either of my girls. In my opinion, the more specific the lesson book you use, the less likely it is to work universally. Still, you need some kind of phonics materials - but keep it inexpensive as you may need to try something different if it doesn't work for you. Explode the Code phonics, Phonics Pathways, Modern Curriculum Press phonics, Pathway Readers "Learning with Sounds" - these are some inexpensive ideas to get you started.

- Dr. Seuss

- Mother Goose

- The Science of Cooking website

. . . and much more. Please take the time to follow the link and see all she has to say. I've been homeschooling for 8 years, and I still needed the reminder - the curriculum is not the most important part. Homeschooling is about the relationship between us and our children, and about how that relationship can help our children become lifelong learners.

The Proof Is In the Pudding

2008-04-29T09:24:00.003-06:00

There's a great little op-ed piece today in The Justice, the student newspaper of Brandeis University, that confirms this - the best evidence in favor of homeschooling lies in those young adults who are graduating from their homeschools and moving out into the world successfully. The author is Tatiana Tripp, who was homeschooled herself for several years and is now a sophomore at Brandeis. Her editorial is significantly better written than many I've read, and in fact is better than many syndicated columnists.

In her article, Tatiana highlights many of the benefits of homeschooling that I've discussed here. The variety of homeschooling methods, the low student-teacher ratio, the extra time homeschooled students have, the additional social skills they learn, and more, are all addressed clearly and concisely. In addition, she deals with some of the myths about homeschooling, including the question of socialization and that of religious indoctrination.

I believe it's young people like Tatiana who make the best case for homeschooling. As time goes on and more kids graduate from homeschooling, we will likely see many more like her - thoughtful, analytical, eloquent, and unafraid to point out the fallacies of current thought - and the myths about homeschooling will be exposed as obviously ridiculous.

More On Evolution's Logical Conclusion

2008-04-26T20:52:00.002-06:00

A couple of months ago I posted this article entitled "Evolution's Logical Conclusion," pointing out the difficulty evolutionists face in explaining, in evolutionary terms, how human beings can be of equal intelligence and worth.

Earlier this week, Joe Carter over at Evangelical Outpost had three posts on ways evolutionists help the cause of intelligent design (triggered by the response to Ben Stein's new film "Expelled"). These are a bit lengthy, but they're not difficult to read, and if you're interested in this topic (regardless of whether you are a creationist, a believer in intelligent design, or an evolutionist), you really ought to read what he has to say.

Here are the links:

10 Ways Darwinists Help Intelligent Design (Part I)
10 Ways Darwinists Help Intelligent Design (Part II)
10 Ways Darwinists Help Intelligent Design (Part III)

I believe Joe's tenth "way," "By not being able to believe their own theory," is a slightly different way of saying what I said in my original post, "Evolution's Logical Conclusion." He illustrates this with a quote from philosopher of science David Stove, who "notes that ultra-Darwinists assert that while man was once trapped in the struggle to survive and pass on our genes, we no longer are trapped in the spiral of natural selection. " In this way Darwinists attempt to justify what I referred to in a comment on my earlier post:

I recently ran across a quote from a prominent evolutionist (I believe it was Stephen Jay Gould, but I could be wrong), to the effect that he would fight strongly for survival of the fittest as our origin, but he would fight strongly against it as a moral basis. I think that illustrates the problem an evolutionist faces; he thinks it has been positive to this point in our evolution, but he is in a quandary when he considers what would happen if we tried to behave as if evolution would result in further progress now, especially in terms of human development.

Evolutionists are caught in a trap when they face the values of our modern society. If you believe in evolution, you simply have no grounds for believing that humans have not developed in such a way that some are inherently better than others. Even the invention of technology, which is sometimes cited by evolutionists as more significant to human development than evolution, would make the inventors "smarter" (and therefore, by evolutionary standards, better - more likely to survive) than those who didn't invent such technology.

The struggle for all evolutionists, as far as I can see, is to believe their own theory. They want to believe that all people are valuable and worthy (thus discrimination on the basis of race is wrong, for example), but they have no real basis for coming to that conclusion. They have no foundation from which to argue, because they've rejected the one foundation that establishes definitively that we are all equal.

A More Substantive Answer to Homeschooling "Essay"

2008-04-26T07:57:00.003-06:00

On Thursday I posted on Summer's humorous response to Jack Lessenberry's "Essay: Homeschooling." Yesterday, Dana over at Principled Discovery posted an excellent and substantive discussion of the same essay.

Dana's major criticism relates to the quote Jack used about the Hillsdale College honors program director who reportedly said that homeschoolers are "badly deficient in science." Unlike Jack, Dana actually did a bit of research - she actually looked up the quote, for one thing!

Here's Jack's version of the quote:

Hillsdale College is about as conservative a liberal arts school as exists on the planet. But Hillsdale’s honors program director recently told the Detroit Free Press that the home schooled children he sees are typically badly deficient in science education.

Not surprisingly, Jack significantly distorted the quote. In the first place, the original quote came from the Michigan Education report in 2002 - not exactly "recent." In the second place, the original quote did not say they were "badly deficient," only that they were "typically deficient." Inserting the word "badly" makes the situation sound worse than the original statement sounded.

Dana then contacted David Stewart, the former honors program director. She got an answer in less than 12 hours. Not surprisingly, Dr. Stewart made it clear that even the original quote was taken out of context:

I am generally favorably-disposed towards home-schooling (indeed, two of my own children are currently home-schooled), and my 2002 comments to the reporter were positive. He was looking for balance, so I said something to the effect that if homeschoolers have a consistent weakness, it’s laboratory sciences: students are typically better prepared in math, history, English, etc. than in laboratory sciences. I also said that many parents recognize that deficiency and enroll their children in a local community college during the senior year of high school.

Let's see . . . "IF homeschoolers have a consistent weakness" doesn't sound like students are "typically deficient," much less "typically badly deficient." Taking a community college class or two during your senior year of high school also doesn't sound like "badly deficient" to me. And isn't interesting how the reporter managed to completely leave out pretty much the entire context of the quote - Dr. Stewart's favorable disposition toward homeschooling, the fact that he homeschools his own kids, and his statement that homeschooled students are typically better prepared in math, history, and English. The "balance" the reporter was looking for was all that showed up in the original article. Hmmm - why do I sense an agenda here?

Dana also requested a response from Hillsdale College, and got an answer from their Associate Vice President, which included this:

I asked our admissions office to compare last year’s ACT science scores of omeschooled students with their conventionally-educated counterparts. The homeschoolers averaged in the 85th percentile on the science portion of the test, scoring one point below the average of all admitted students. Their scores in non-science areas were generally superior to the conventionally schooled students, and by a much greater margin than the alleged “deficiency” that Mr. Lessenberry suggests would warrant an enormous intrusion into the lives of homeschooling families.

All in all, our experience is that homeschooling is not only more cost effective but can produce results comparable to or better than private, parochial or public schools. For those interested in academic studies, there is a vast amount of literature available to the public supporting this conclusion.

It seems clear that Jack is badly distorting both the wording and the meaning the original quote. I posted this comment on his blog less than 48 hours after he posted his "Essay" - not surprisingly, he did not respond.

I have a question for you: Why is it that with all the comments left here, the responses you've given relate to typos and to your own credentials to speak to the issue (which quite frankly aren't all that impressive)? Why have you not dealt with the substance of the comments posted here?

You see, throwing more money at a broken school system isn't going to fix it. The schools in our state get well over $6000 per student per year, and still can't educate their kids; I spend about $1000 per year for two students, and my kids are far ahead of most public schooled students both academically and socially. And that's the norm for homeschooled kids - they are far better off than most public-schooled kids in all areas, including academic, social, and emotional.

So some homeschooled kids might need some make-up work in science. They can take some classes or do some reading and take care of that kind of deficiency. At least my kids can read well, write well, and do math; they can find Alaska on a map (even though they've never been there); they can identify the Vice-President of the United States; they have a solid understanding of history, including not only what happened but why; they know how to learn and actually WANT to continue doing it; they can relate well to other people who don't live in the same neighborhood with them, as well as to older people and to children. I don't mean to say that science deficiencies are OK - science is a critically important part of our homeschool curriculum, and my own kids will not get to college deficient in science education; but there's more to life than any one academic subject, and my kids' ability and desire to learn mean that if they should have any academic deficiencies, they will be able to make those up fairly
easily.

So where's your answer to the substance of these comments? How do you justify advocating that the current education system, which even you admit doesn't do a very good job of educating the children it does have, should regulate and control and prescribe the education of homeschooled kids?

Not only did he not respond to this comment, but he also ignored two comments from faculty at Hillsdale College, including one from the man who has been the honors program director there for five years and has never spoken with the Detroit Free Press or with Jack.

In short, not only is Jack's essay badly researched and poorly written, but he has taken quotes out of context, added words to them, and failed to respond to substantive disagreement. So much for objective criticism of the homeschooling movement.

The Benefits of Homeschooling for Gifted Kids

2008-04-24T22:10:00.002-06:00

There's a great article on "A Bundle of Contradictions" entitled "It May Not Be Perfect . . ." It addresses the challenges that face gifted kids in many (if not most) public schools, and discusses the benefits of homeschooling for these kids.

I found this especially interesting in light of the fact that I originally chose to homeschool because of my highly gifted older daughter. When she was 3 1/2, I started looking into preschools - only to discover she already had all but one or two of the skills taught in Kindergarten in those schools. Not only was she extremely bright and already ahead academically, but the other preschoolers around her clearly saw her as a strong leader. I could foresee all sorts of problems for her if I put her in a school environment. I didn't think it would be fair to the teacher to saddle her with this leadership- and academically-gifted child who would likely only create discipline issues in the classroom; nor did I think it would be fair to my daughter to put her in a situation where she would be sitting around waiting for almost two years for the other children to "catch up." So I decided to homeschool her.

Of course it didn't occur to me at the time that if she was already two years ahead, she was likely to continue to move even further ahead as she was homeschooled! And today at age 11, she is easily completing pre-algebra and doing a two-year junior-high-level science course in one year. This means in the next year or so she'll be moving into high-school-level courses.

The blog post "It May Not Be Perfect . . . " points out the struggles encountered, both academically and socially, but kids like my daughter. It highlights the problems with the prevailing opinions that "the gifted child will get along fine" in school, and that "it is the gifted child who is "screwed up" and needs to learn to get along with other kids," and answers those opinions with truthful perspectives on what really happens to these kids in school.

I really appreciate this post, and its willingness to confront the critics of homeschooling on these issues. It's one thing to say that average children benefit from public schooling; it's something else again to claim that all children ought to be forced to face these situations. Parents choose homeschooling for many reasons, including properly addressing the needs of their gifted children. Critics of homeschooling ought to wake up and realize that all children don't learn the same way or at the same pace, and that homeschooling can be beneficial precisely because it gears the education directly to the needs of each individual child.

How to Properly Criticize Homeschooling

2008-04-24T09:27:00.002-06:00

Yesterday on Mom Is Teaching, Summer had an excellent profile on "How To Hate On Homeschoolers Properly." (HT: Just Enough) Summer pulled from this "Essay" by Jack, as she explained

the 5 rules you have to follow to write a rant as powerful and defined as Jack’s is. I have seen so many people try to discredit home education but fall short every time of really publishing the kind of rant that has most of us falling out of our chairs in fits of laughter.

Be sure you read the comments, too - on both blogs if you can find the time; those on Jack's are mostly thoughtful commentaries on the problems with his piece, while those on Summer's are just plain fun.

If you're looking for a good critique of Jack's essay (as opposed to light, fun reading), be sure to also click over to Doc's blog. He has some excellent points and actually provides research to back them up.

"The Real Cons of Homeschooling"

2008-04-17T09:15:00.002-06:00

Don't know how I missed this one until now, but it's definitely worth another look. Back in October 2006, Tammy posted this article on "The Real Cons of Homeschooling." With all the talk that goes on about the negative side of homeschooling, this is a great post on some of the real challenges homeschoolers face. What are they? Here's Tammy's list.

1) Parents and kids have to learn to accept each other as they are, and to get along with each other so well that they can live together peacefully.

2) Parents have to accept responsibility for their actions and live their lives, pretty much all the time, in a way that they want to see their children live their lives.

3) Families have to listen to a lot of smack, and field a lot of questions about their decision. It takes a long time to convince the world around them that it’s OK that they don’t send their kids to school.

4) Parents have to be resourceful. Parents have to learn how to find things in their community, how to get information on their own, how to access people who can answer their questions, and how to communicate well.

5) Parents have to let go enough that they can balance their devotion to their children with their own interests and self-care. Parents in school have to do this too, but it’s more poignant in homeschooling, because it’s very easy to spend every waking moment dealing with homeschooling “stuff” and kid “stuff” that we forget about who we are as individuals with our own interests.

6) Homeschooling requires dedication - but not to workbooks and curriculum. Homeschooling can involved these things, but the dedication has to be towards being a good person, being open minded, and to being involved with the family. It also requires parents to be dedicated to understanding their children.

7) Homeschoolers have increased chance of making themselves sick with worry, with fear and with guilt. One of the biggest cons of homeschooling is the time it takes to learn to live as a homeschooler without these hovering over us. Homeschoolers have to pave their own way. Even if there is support and resources available, ultimately, homeschoolers have to shovel most of their own snow. In other words - homeschoolers have to be independent and willing to put in the footwork.

9) Often, homeschoolers have to stand up, alone, and do what they have to do even though others around them are doing something different. Homeschoolers have to be OK with not conforming, and know themselves well enough to be able to walk into a situation and know they are the only ones there who homeschool, and will probably be questioned, talked about or even confronted.

10) And finally, homeschoolers have to accept that no matter what they do, life will never be perfect; kids will always have holes in their learning, the house will never stay clean, and there will never be enough time to get everything done that we want to do. The hardest thing about homeschooling is choosing between the million and one options, million and one workbooks, projects and learning opportunities. The biggest benefit of homeschooling is also the biggest con of all - freedom.

I thought of another one as I was looking at these:

Parents have to have a heart for their children more than for their routines and methods. Parents who choose to be rigid may achieve what they want in the short run, but in the long run, they will drive their children away, and undo everything they have worked so hard for. This is true even if you're not homeschooling, but it's very much more true when you spend almost every waking moment with your children - if your heart is not really given to them, you will likely lose them.

What do you think? Are there others you can think of?

On Homeschooling and Being "Missional"

2008-04-15T21:35:00.002-06:00

Tony Jones has recently reposted an article he originally posted a couple of years ago, entitled "Death to Homeschooling!" In it, he claims,

But it seems to me that if we are truly committed to living a missional life, then we must enroll our kids in the public school. That is, we are committed to living lives fully invested in what I might call the "Jesus Ethic" or the "Kingdom of God Ethic," and also fully invested in the society — in fact, you might say that we live according to the Kingdom of God for the sake of society.

He goes on to cite a number of secular sources - not Christian sources and not Scripture - and then to state:

So I can’t think, “I’ll just pull my kids out of the public schools — what difference will one less follower of Jesus make in a school full of hundreds of kids?” I don’t, as a Christian, have the option to “opt out” of the societal contract. Instead, I live under a mandate to be the most involved, missional societal participant that I can be.

I can't argue that as an evangelical Christian, I am "committed to living lives fully invested in what I might call the "Jesus Ethic" . . . and also fully invested in the society." I also can't argue that "I live under a mandate to be the most involved, missional societal participant that I can be."

But I can argue that that commitment and that mandate don't require me to throw my little child, essentially unarmed, into our culture's primary recruitment tool, and one of the hotbeds of spiritual warfare in our world. The people I have the strongest influence on, and the highest responsibility to disciple, are my own children. If I "win the world," and lose my children, the price was too high. That's a sacrifice far too many godly people have made, and I believe it is quite frankly unbiblical. How many well-known biblical characters followed the Lord themselves, but lost some or all of their children in the process? I can think of a good number: Isaac, Aaron, Eli, Samuel, David, Solomon, Hezekiah.

In response to Tony's post, I made this comment:

Just one question here: WHO is called to be missional?

Honestly, I don’t find that Jesus called five-and six-year-olds to world missions. Missions is for spiritually mature adults, who have learned to follow Jesus and are ready to teach others. Jesus didn’t even expect His own disciples to be missional until they’d been trained by spending many, many hours in His presence.

I MIGHT consider letting my 16- or 17-year-old go to high school if they feel called to missions there. But is it really right to send our little children into an environment that is hostile to their faith for 30 hours a week (not including homework or bus rides or time with the friends they made there)? Or does the job of missions belong to ME as an ADULT? (By the way, I congratulate those Christian adults who have gone into the public school system to be missional as teachers, counselors, and so on - we need many more like you!)

I find it all too common for Christian parents to use the excuse of being missional with their kids to avoid their own responsibility to seek out the mission field themselves. It seems to me that as an adult, I must find where God wants ME to be missional; and at the same time, I must carefully raise my children, protecting them from harmful spiritual influences, and training them toward spiritual maturity, when it will be their turn to be missional to their own world.

Is Homeschooling a Libertarian Idea? - Part III

2008-04-09T09:04:00.003-06:00

I concluded my "conversation" with the commenter with this final thought, which illustrates the liberty children (and teachers) have when homeschooling - liberty that's difficult to find if not nonexistent in the school setting.

Here's an example of the kind of liberty homeschooled kids have. I don't know this family; I've never heard of them until I came across this blog entry. But this is very common, in my experience, when it comes to how homeschooling families function today.

http://fivejs.wordpress.com/2008/04/03/homeschooling-flexibility-in-action/

How many schoolkids have this kind of liberty? Frankly, how many school teachers have the liberty to discard their lesson plans because a better learning opportunity came up?

I just don't understand how a person can contend that forcing a child to sit in a school classroom 30 hours a week, 36 weeks a year, for most of their growing-up years, is in any way libertarian. Homeschooling, on the other hand, while not ALWAYS libertarian in the way it is executed, can certainly be done in such a way as to fit beautifully with libertarian ideas, and it generally IS done in a way that provides the child with far more liberty - both today and in the future - than a public school education can.

Is Homeschooling a Libertarian Idea? - Part II

2008-04-09T08:49:00.002-06:00

As I mentioned in my previous post on this topic, I was engaged on someone else's blog with another commenter who argued that homeschooling was not libertarian, because it restricted a child's liberty. In response to my comment (which made up most of my previous post), the other person posted this comment.

Of course there are many excellent parents who place their children's rights above their own when they homeschool....... but you can take the failures and blame the system!

Our laws allow parents to limit the freedoms and liberties of a child - and I don't mean the liberty to be antisocial, to harm themselves and others etc.

The system has loopholes and this harms kids!

And to include anonymous... (Note to my readers: this is me - MM)

Yes of course it works for you and your children. You care about their education but the majority of home-schooled children don't have the benefit of you as a parent.

The liberties you talk about, however, don't seem to be "liberties."

"Kids in public school are limited in who they interact with.." Nonsense! They mix with the whole population of children, black, white, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Agnostic, gay, straight, Latino, European. Not just the family and Mum and Dad's friends. Homeschooling is designed to limit the liberty of a child to mix with others. That’s the whole point of it..

"Traveling with their families" is about the family's liberty.

"What they do with their time." All part of social education and self discipline. ...and so on and so on.

I expect I sound angry, and I am. I’m fed with children being restricted by their parents in order to make them conform.

Home-schooled kids are notorious for an inability to concentrate, low thresholds of attention and poor standards of comprehension. They never hear other opinions - just those of the parents. Ask me, I was a schools advisor for many years and a psychotherapist.

Ask college professors who have to give extra attention to home-schooled children whose education has left them totally unable to cope with college life.

Homeschooling usually used by authoritarian, often religiously inspired, adults to control children's experiences and limit them to their own view of the world. It seems, often, to indoctrination rather than education.

Libertarianism condemns such manipulation of people.

Whew! It was hard to even know where to start with this one. His post is full of so many false assumptions and generalizations that I'd be willing to bet this guy did not study logic in school - if he did, it's a testimony to how poor our education system really is. And his post made me see red - which didn't facilitate thinking clearly in order to give him solid responses.

But here's how I answered him.

Did it ever occur to you that as a psychotherapist, you might have seen only the worst examples possible of homeschooling? You've made the statement:

"Yes of course it works for you and your children. You care about their education but the majority of home-schooled children don't have the benefit of you as a parent."

This implies that I am an exception among homeschooling parents. To the contrary, I've been involved in the homeschooling movement for many years - I was homeschooled myself for 6 years as a missionary kid, I helped a church start a homeschooling umbrella school, I have homeschooled my own kids for 8 years, I have taught and worked in a homeschooling enrichment program, I participate in several online forums, and I write a homeschooling blog. I know literally hundreds of homeschooling families, and by FAR the majority are much like I am. They love their children, and they homeschool because they believe homeschooling provides their children with a far better education than the public school system. Not only that, most of the homeschooling parents I know believe, as I do, that homeschooling provides our children with much greater liberty, both today and later as adults, than the public school system will ever be able to do.

I strongly disagree that kids in school are not limited in who they interact with. You said yourself that children in school "mix with the whole population of children" - yes, ONLY children (oh, yes, and a few carefully selected teachers). And the "whole population" they mix with is basically limited to the children in their neighborhood who attend public school. Homeschooled kids, on the other hand, have the opportunity to interact not only with people of all races, religions, and social classes, but also with people of all AGES - something sadly missing in schoolkids these days. Most of the homeschoolers I know have good friends of all ages. They are often excellent with toddlers and preschoolers; they can hold an intelligent conversation with an adult; they are even kind, thoughtful, and polite to seniors. Where on earth did you get the idea that the whole point of homeschooling is to "limit the liberty of a child to mix with others"? I don't know ANY homeschooler who would agree with that statement (maybe there are a few - but I've never come across one). In fact, most homeschoolers are very concerned that their children have the opportunity to mix with others of all ages, races, religions, and social classes.

You said, "'Traveling with their families' is about the family's liberty." You may say that if you like - but the truth is that the school prevents CHILDREN from having the opportunity to travel. The parents can still travel - they just have to get someone to take care of the children and get them to school every day. And I work in the schools in the afternoon - I've seen parents do this. Homeschooled kids have the liberty to travel with their families rather than being confined in a school classroom while their parents travel.

"Home-schooled kids are notorious for an inability to concentrate, low thresholds of attention and poor standards of comprehension. They never hear other opinions - just those of the parents." Where on earth do you GET this stuff? I taught hundreds of homeschoooled kids in several homeschool enrichment programs (as well as teaching keyboards in the public schools in the afternoon), and I can tell you the homeschooled kids are generally far more able to concentrate, to pay attention, and to comprehend than the public school kids. And as for college professors, the vast majority are more than supportive of homeschooling. In fact, colleges have made special accommodations to allow homeschoolers, even though they don't have transcripts from accredited high schools, because they usually end up bringing credit to the school.

I'm sorry, but you haven't made your point. You've made a lot of statements about homeschooling that are completely unsupported by the facts about who homeschools and why. And where is your EVIDENCE that your statements are true?
What I perceive is that you are giving your own opinion and trying to pass it off by, "Ask me; I'm a psychotherapist."

As for the system having loopholes that harm kids, I agree - but homeschooling isn't the loophole that causes the greatest harm. What kind of loopholes harm kids? The ones that allow kids to be alone in a classroom with a teacher who victimizes them (as has recently happened for the THIRD TIME in the local high schools in our district); the ones that allow teachers to simply "show up" and end up with a teaching credential, even if they are a terrible teacher; the ones that allow teachers to assign as much homework as they like, so that kids not only have to spend all day in school but all evening and part of the weekend doing school assignments; the ones that give families only one choice of public school to send their kids, regardless of how bad that choice may be; the ones that allow schools to do private physical exams of children without their parents' consent; the ones that allow schools to teach whatever values they like regardless of the convictions of the parents; the ones that force children into classrooms where they are bullied and refuse to move them; the ones that label kids "special ed" and stick them in classes where they have no opportunity to progress; and many more such examples. Yes, "the system has loopholes and this harms kids!"
But in the long run, homeschooling is far more conducive to libertarian ideals than forcing children to spend almost their entire childhood sitting in a classroom rather than interacting with the real world. And most homeschooling parents do so because it's better for their KIDS than public school.

Private Schools vs. Home Schools

2008-04-07T08:46:00.002-06:00

This morning there was a post on the Uncompahgre Gorge blog by danielquenton. He asked the question, "Are private schools better than homeschooling is? What do you think?"

Of course, I can hardly ever resist a question like that. And having a fairly strong opinion on this issue, I had to get my 2 cents' worth in!

I believe (pretty strongly, too), that generally speaking, for most kids, homeschooling is better. Here are some reasons why:

1) Homeschooling provides by far the best teacher-student ratio. This means kids get a more individualized education, and waste less time “learning” what they already know, and doing worksheets in order to keep them busy while the teacher tries to help someone else.

2) Homeschooling takes advantage of a completely different format than classroom education. Kids learn science more effectively, for example, by experiencing the world around them - real gardening rather than bringing home little bean seeds in a jar that ultimately gets thrown away; catching a grasshopper in a jar and watching it eat before releasing it; bird-watching in the backyard or a nearby park; playing with soap bubbles and water to experience the properties of each; and so on. They learn history better by field trips to places where things happened, by reading biographies, original sources, and historical fiction in a comfortable, friendly environment, and then by discussing what they’ve learned with family and friends (rather than reading a textbook full of information processed and made dull by a committee, and then answering a bunch of questions about it). They get a much better foundation in math by cooking, sewing, helping remodel the basement, etc. - and they understand the relevance of it. They get more out of literature when they read whole books rather than just excerpts. And they learn art and music more thoroughly when they see it built into their parents’ lives rather than just as another class they have to get through. Private schools, no matter how good, simply can’t offer the advantages of the homeschooling format - real, whole books, life experience, field trips, observation of real life, interaction with and mentoring by many different people, time to explore, apprenticeship, discussion, and much more.

3) Homeschooling teachers are far more invested in their children’s success than private school teachers can possibly be. After all, ultimately the responsibility for how the child turns out belongs to parents (even when they send their children to school). No one says, “Well, it’s no wonder that child turned out so bad - they had such a terrible third-grade teacher.” The buck stops with the parent, and in homeschooling, that’s even more true.

4) Studies have shown that one of the top measures of a child’s academic success is their relationship with their teacher. Homeschooling parents go to great effort to maintain a good relationship with their children. There’s no guarantee that a child will have that kind of relationship with their teachers, even in a private school.

5) Homeschooling allows the teacher to use any curriculum or format that fits a particular student, and to use different curricula or formats for each student. And when students outgrow the teacher’s ability (which they will in many areas - and which, incidentally, some students will do in a classroom approach as well), homeschooling allows the teacher to seek out a different way for the student to learn - whether an online or correspondence course, a college-level class, a book, a mentor or tutor, or some other approach.

6) Homeschooling allows a family the flexibility to determine their priorities based on what’s best for them as a whole group. They have the freedom to put up their textbooks and take a six-day trip back east, as our family did last spring. (Dad bought a car in New Hampshire and we drove it back to Colorado, stopping to enjoy historic Massachusetts, a town in New York named after our family, and Niagara Falls, among other things. Our kids learned more history and geography from that trip than they would have learned in weeks of textbooks, and the learning is alive and real to them still a year later.) Or they can decide to do a bit extra during the summer so they can take time off when other kids are in school. Or they can skip math on a day when the kids are restless and bake cookies instead (a great lesson in fractions or multiplication, especially if you halve or double the recipe).

In short, generally speaking homeschooling is a much better option for most kids. Of course, there are some parents who do not have the self-discipline necessary to keep their kids on task; there are single parents who really can’t make the time to educate their kids; and there are selfish parents who aren’t willing to give up their own agenda to make their kids a priority during the years they are being educated. There are also kids who hate being homeschooled or who desperately want to go to school. Those families might be better off putting their kids in private school. But for parents who care about their children’s education and are willing to dedicate the time and energy necessary, home schooling really provides a much better education.

There’s a reason why the Columbia Missourian online had this quote at the end of their article on homeschooling yesterday:

“The dean of academic affairs at Columbia College, Terry Smith, home schooled his children and remains an influence on the recruitment of future home-schooled students. . . .‘There are no home-schooled students at Columbia College that haven’t excelled,” Monnig said. “They are all really involved, and most are on the dean’s list.’”

Is Homeschooling a Libertarian Idea?

2008-04-06T18:13:00.002-06:00

Some days ago I somehow ended up on a website run by an apparently atheist libertarian who supports homeschooling as a libertarian concept. One of his readers, also a libertarian, took issue with this idea, claiming,

Home schooling is resorted to by parents intent on limiting the childs freedom - it is the liberty of the parent that is at the front here, not the child's.

Libertarianism, at it's deepest, surely means that a child should be given an education that maximises it's liberty - not one that allows the parents to limit the childs experience and freedom.

Not being one to sit idly by and watch as someone made uninformed and inaccurate statements about something I believe in as deeply as homeschooling, I entered into a discussion with the gentleman, and after posting several comments, it occurred to me that perhaps the readers of this blog would be interested in what I had to say. (I should preface my remarks here with the clear statement that I am not a libertarian, but rather a solid conservative; nevertheless I find homeschooling to be strongly libertarian in nature.)

Here is my answer to the commenter's first post.

You said, "Home schooling is resorted to by parents intent on limiting the childs freedom - it is the liberty of the parent that is at the front here, not the child's."

I find this completely untrue. I, and most homeschooling parents I know, homeschool in large part because school is so terribly limiting to children. Kids in public school are limited in who they interact with (pretty much only other children, and mostly only those in the same grade); in what they do with their time (exactly what the teacher says); in what outside activities they do (only what they have time for after school and homework); in how they feel about themselves; in when they can travel with their families; and so much more (even in when they can go to the restroom or get a drink of water!). What's libertarian about that?

My kids, on the other hand, have far more choices than the average public school student. Because they learn one-on-one, they don't have to waste time waiting in lines, waiting to use the restroom, waiting for the other kids to finish an assignment. If they're interested in an activity, they don't have to stop doing it when a bell rings or a teacher tells them to. They can eat when they are hungry, rest when they are tired, go to the bathroom when they need to, take a break if they need one, and get a hug from Mom if they want one. They have far more free time than kids who go to school every day, so they read, paint, build, color, daydream, explore, play with friends, sew, do crafts, experiment, cook, and much more - and they do those things when they want to and because they choose to. They can take their time when we visit a museum or the zoo, moving at their own pace so they can really take it in and make it their own.

At the same time, they are getting a far better education than they would in school, and will be far more ready for college and for the world beyond when they get there. How can I be so sure? I was homeschooled myself for six years, including all of high school. When I went to college, I watched most of my fellow students struggle to make the adjustment to the workload, the expectations, and the independence, while I moved easily into the college world. My kids are following a similar path.

I agree - "a child should be given an education that maximises it's (sic) liberty" - and that's exactly why I homeschool.

Evolution's Logical Conclusion

2008-02-28T08:13:00.002-07:00

In this month's Breakpoint Worldview Magazine, Roberto Rivera has an article entitled "Playing God." In it, he discusses the recent difficulty encountered by Dr. James Watson, the Nobel prize winning scientist who helped discover the structure of DNA. Apparently Dr. Watson has encountered significant problems lately because he has clearly articulated the only logical conclusion possible for those who believe in evolution - that there is no reason to believe individuals and races are actually equal in intelligence or in worth.

The article clarifies some of what got Watson into trouble:

The furor started with an interview Watson gave to the Sunday Times (UK). Watson told the paper that he was “inherently gloomy” about the future of Africa because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really.” While we want to believe in human equality, “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.”

Similarly, in the book that he was promoting in the Sunday Times interview, Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science, Watson writes that “there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.”

You see, if you believe in evolution, there is no way to justify the belief that humans are of equal worth. If evolution is true, why shouldn't one person be smarter, or wiser, or "further evolved," than another? In fact, the inequality of people would seem to be a logical conclusion of evolution - of course some people are further evolved than others. This helps to explain why so many early evolutionists advocated eugenics ("the proposed improvement of the human species by encouraging or permitting reproduction of only those people with genetic characteristics judged desirable" - MSN Encarta dictionary), sterilization of those considered "unfit," and even euthanasia. Those who believe in evolution are hard pressed to explain how people are equally valuable, since the theory of evolution requires improvement over time; thus some people would naturally be of more worth than others. (Please understand: I'm not saying that all evolutionists are prejudiced; I'm saying that if they are intellectually consistent, there can be no other conclusion for them.)

If people were created by one Creator, it makes sense that we should be outraged by Dr. Watson's statements; African humans are just as human - and just as intelligent - as anyone else. But for those who believe in evolution, why shouldn't Dr. Watson be right? Why should we "anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically"? I personally find Dr. Watson's statements offensive, but I must give him credit for being intellectually consistent. He believes evolution has continually led to improvement over time; the logical conclusion that some people are better ("further evolved") than others is inescapable.

The only logical basis for concluding that all people are of equal value is the theory of special creation. If in fact, we were all created by the same Designer, and we all came from the same original human being, then we are all one kind, and we all have equal worth. Skin color, facial features, cultural preferences - all these are just superficial differences, and have nothing to do with the inherent worth created in all of us by our Creator.

How Do We Engage the World?

2008-02-19T09:09:00.002-07:00

Because the majority of my readers are Christian homeschoolers, I want to highlight today's Breakpoint, Charles Colson's radio program. You can read the transcript of the program here.

The question he addresses in this program relates to the issue of secularism - according to the dictionary, "the belief that religion and religious bodies should have no part in political or civic affairs or in running public institutions, especially schools; the rejection of religion or its exclusion from a philosophical or moral system." Secularism is perhaps the dominant force in our culture, and many hold to it "religiously" ("relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality; scrupulously and conscientiously faithful; fervent, zealous" - Webster's).

Here's a short quote from the Breakpoint transcript:

At a recent conference on Christian worldview, a college student asked the question: “Is there a model for engaging secularism?” The panel of well-known experts was stumped, clearly unfamiliar with the fact that 200 years ago a small group of politicians, bankers, writers, and lawyers addressed and overcame the crisis of secularism and immorality in England.

He goes on to discuss the work of William Wilberforce and his friends in early-19th-century England, as analyzed in a new book, edited by Chuck Stetson, entitled Creating the Better Hour: Lessons from William Wilberforce. Colson's program discussed one of the strategies Wilberforce used in some depth (well, as much depth as possible in a 5-minute radio program!); Stetson's book includes 10 such strategies. I'm looking forward to reading it. In the meantime, check out Colson's program - even the first taste of this model will likely help you impact your world more effectively.

Another "Are the Schools Doing Their Job?" Post

2008-02-19T07:49:00.003-07:00

Over at Notes From a Homeschooling Mom, Ahermitt posted on Saturday about an important occurrence that hasn't hit the national news, but is tremendously relevant to anyone involved with education. (Oh, yes, and be sure to check out Ahermitt's second post as well: More on Clayton County's Accreditation Loss. It's a bit slow getting started, but she has some good points especially toward the end.) The public school system in Clayton County, Georgia, is losing its accreditation. This means NONE of Clayton County's 59 schools will be accredited - a frightening thought to the 53,000 students there, especially the 15,000 or high school students, many of whom may have been counting on that accreditation to win them state scholarships and smooth their path to college.

The report from the accreditation agency says the school system is "fatally flawed" and the problems are "overwhelming and extreme." Those are some pretty serious words. The accreditation agency is claiming, among other things, that the school board misappropriated funds, altered attendance records, and was involved in other unethical conduct, including significant conflicts of interest. One member of the school board, for example, is also the executive director of the teacher's union, and according to the accrediting agency's report, "pushed the board to abandon a curriculum program two-thirds through a contract because it wasn't endorsed by the union." And this was a program that was working well, reducing the number of first-graders needing the Early Intervention Program from 50% to 12% in just two years! In addition, the Board apparently harassed administrators and other district staff, calling them names, accusing them of playing games, and generally making their lives difficult - sometimes in publicly televised reports.

As far as I can determine from reading the report, most of the problems resulting in the loss of accreditation are ethical and personal issues. There's no doubt the board of Clayton County has some incredibly serious interpersonal problems. Unfortunately for the students, the problems that are probably going to result in lack of accreditation apparently have little to do with the quality of education those kids are getting. This is not surprising, considering this is the first time in more than a decade that a school district anywhere in the country is going to lose its accreditation - it would appear a poor quality education is not a reason for loss of accreditation in America today. But these kids are going to be penalized because their district's board is fighting, and is engaging in tremendously unethical behavior, and that's too bad. They've already lost a great deal because of their board's behavior, and now they stand to lose far more.

The school district is still trying valiantly to correct the problem; unfortunately, the report makes it clear that it's unlikely they'll be able to preserve their accreditation. Beginning September 1, this entire district will be unaccredited.

So the question now becomes, what are these families going to do? Many are already leaving the district, hoping for better results in some other school district. Hopefully that will make it possible for these kids to still qualify for scholarships and get into good colleges and universities. For those whose declining property values make it impossible for them to move, though, there will be serious challenges. Here are a couple of suggestions:

1) Challenge your state government to allow you school choice. In Colorado, parents are free to choose from any school in the state that has the space. This has been tremendously beneficial and has encouraged competition between schools, improving the quality of all. With a budget of $375,000,000 (that's over $7000 per student!), Clayton County should have done better. Convince your state government to let you find a school or district that IS doing better and enroll your student there.

2) Consider carefully whether you could homeschool your children. Rather than dismiss that possibility out-of-hand, as so many do ("I could never do that"), take the time to really think about it. Contrary to popular belief, homeschoolers don't rely exclusively on our own knowledge and abilities to teach our children; instead, we use whatever resources we can find. Sometimes we find curriculum so we can learn the subject first; sometimes we rely on an online course or an outside class; sometimes we hire a tutor; sometimes we find other ways to get the need met. We also aren't always patient with our kids, and some days we don't even LIKE our kids - just like you - but we are willing to work out our personal difficulties, and we find there are many rewards in being with our kids all day, too. Do some real investigation. Read some books, check out the web, talk to people you know who are doing it. You may find your kids will end up much better prepared for college than they would in your conflict-ridden, struggling public school system.

And for those of us who do homeschool, this may be a helpful reminder that sending our kids to public school isn't necessarily going to make our lives easier. After all, we could be sending them into a situation like Clayton County's, without even realizing it.

And a Fitting Conclusion to Why Study Literature

2008-02-18T17:04:00.003-07:00

So after all this discussion of why we ought to study literature, Dana over at Principled Discovery has this excellent post that makes my point about cultural references. (Thanks, Dana!) ;)

When you click over to it, be sure to follow the first link to the article by Katie Criss that's critical of homeschooling. (You will cringe to read it - it's full of errors - but in order to understand Dana's point, you need to see what Katie says first.) Then read Dana's post.

The better you know Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, especially the eulogy he puts in the mouth of Mark Antony, the funnier you'll find Dana's post. Here's just a taste of her parody.

Educators, parents, students, lend me your ears;
I come to bury homeschooling, not to praise it.
The evil that men do makes headlines,
The good is oft interred with their bones.
So let it be with homeschoolers.

The noble Katie Criss
hath told you homeschoolers hide abusers:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath homeschoolers answered it.
Here, under leave of Katie and the rest,
For Katie did her research;
So did they all, all well-researched people-
Come I to speak in homeschooling's funeral.

It is my lifestyle, precious and full to me:
But Katie says my reasons are unwarranted,
And Katie did her research.
It has brought many families closer together
Whose work did enrich their communities.
Did this in homeschooling seem pernicious?
When the poor hath cried, homeschoolers hath organized:
Isolation should be made of lonelier stuff.

There's more, including some of the funniest lines, over at Dana's blog. I hope you'll take the time to read the whole thing.

More on Studying Literature

2008-02-18T16:58:00.003-07:00

After the previous post, I received an answer from the original poster, clarifying the intent of her question. She pointed out that she wasn't asking, "Why read literature?" but rather, "Why study literature?" - referring to the struggle to analyze and understand literary terms, figurative language, symbolism, and so on. She said, "My son really hates having to pick apart the book after he has read it and understood the story."

Here are some of my thoughts on the topic.

I think this is a very good question, and it's a difficult one to answer. I also sometimes struggle with whether we really need to analyze the literature in-depth. I can think of a couple of benefits:

1) Literary terms are another part of the "common frame of reference" issue. If you have a conversation with another person about a book, it is easier to talk about it if you both understand certain terms. Terms like plot, character, and theme; conflict, climax, resolution; simile, metaphor, personalization, and even anthropomorphism, can help you explain what you did or didn't like about the book, and can enable you to discuss the book much more effectively.

2) In a similar way to your son's development of interest in the topic of Mrs. Giaconda, a grasp of literary terms can generate interest in areas he may not have been interested before. It can enrich your understanding of the story of Eros and Psyche, for example, to recognize similarities in the plot between that and C.S. Lewis' book, 'Til We Have Faces. Analyzing the similarities and differences in the plot and theme of the the two stories can also help you understand Lewis' theme much more clearly. Can you manage without knowing that? Sure! But does it enrich your life, in some small degree, to understand Lewis' theme in his story? I find that it does.

The point, of course, is not the little tiny bit of additional richness we gain from any one experience with literature (like your son's experience with Mrs. Giaconda), but rather the enormous wealth we gain from the accumulation of many such experiences over time. That's also why any one piece of literature is relatively insignificant, but a wide exposure to literature over time and across cultures is important and valuable. (I think that's why you may hear people say that if you don't like, for example, The Second Mrs. Giaconda, skip it and find something else; but don't skip literature or the study of it altogether.)

That said, I want to make it clear - I don't really think worksheets are all that significant to the process. The discussion of the literature is far more important than
filling out the worksheet. If it's more comfortable for your son, make a list of significant literary terms and features (maybe with definitions), and have him choose the ones he feels are important in this particular piece, point out examples, and/or explain why and how he feels they are important. When you find he's consistently leaving out some of them, choose a piece that contains "x" term, point it out to him, and talk about it. This of course demands more of you as the teacher, but it may be more effective for him. Or, just do the worksheet questions orally. Find a way that works for you and for him to consistently discuss the literature using literary terms. When I was using discussions in teaching literature, I always found I learned far more than my students, and I got far more meaning out of what I had read than they did. The more deeply you analyze, the better you understand the literature as a whole, and the more you usually end up appreciating it in the long run.

Finding the interesting things in literature and figuring out how to communicate that to students can be one of the most challenging things about teaching literature - but in the end it can also be one of the most rewarding.

Why Study Literature?

2008-02-18T16:44:00.003-07:00

On one of the email groups I'm a member of, we've been having a fairly long discussion about why we ought to study literature. One of the people on the list is math/science person, and so is her late-junior-high-age son. They both dislike studying literature, and so she asked us to help her think about whether and why it's important.

Well, as a literature lover and former literature teacher, I first reacted strongly. "What do you mean, why is it important to study literature?!" But I discovered that putting my thoughts and feelings into words was more difficult. So here, in somewhat random, conversational form, is what I posted to the list.

(This first is in response to the original poster's discovery that after reading The Second Mrs. Giaconda - which he hated - her son had then been very interested in an article about whether da Vinci had used Mrs. Giaconda as a model for the Mona Lisa.)

You commented that your son was interested in the article because he had just read the "boring book." But isn't that part of the point of education - to arouse kids' interest in areas they might otherwise never have thought about much? His life is richer (if only in a very small degree), and he understands more about Leonardo da Vinci, because he read that "boring book." Sure, it was hard to do - but if he has broader interests as a result, that seems like a worthwhile investment of time and energy to me.

Another reason to study literature - and one I consider critically important - is that it gives us a common frame of reference (both with members of our current culture, and more importantly with our cultural heritage). Reading Benjamin Franklin, for example, or Thomas Jefferson, or even Mark Twain, you'll find dozens - maybe hundreds - of references to literary sources, Shakespeare being one of the primary ones. Knowing the literature helps you understand what they're talking about.

I was just looking, for example, at Shadow of the Almighty, the story of the life of Jim Elliott (the martyr who gave his life to reach headhunters in Ecuador in the 1960's). His writing is scattered with literary references, and they tremendously enrich the reader's understanding of his life (and of what motivated him to give it to Christ).

Some of the most difficult literature to read (and I put Shakespeare in this category!) is some of the most quoted and has become part of our cultural heritage. How about this one: "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players" (from As You Like It)? I'm racking my brain for the book I remember reading a while ago with a chapter title of "Out, Out -- " because it has a cultural reference I didn't understand at the time. In fact, the reference is to Shakespeare's Macbeth, which contains this amazingly thought-provoking section:

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle,
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

This section is even more thought-provoking if you know the Macbeth story - that it is spoken by a character who is responsible for murder, and shows the despair of someone who is caught in the grip of human depravity and can see no hope for escape. And all of this significance is built into the author's use of "Out, out -- " as a title for his chapter. Without the cultural reference, you miss part of what the author was trying to say.

I'm afraid I may have obscured my point in the quotes and illustrations. What I'm trying to communicate is that literature provides a reference point for understanding both our current and our historical culture. Even scientists use these kinds of references, almost without thinking, assuming that we all are familiar with them. They are found throughout news articles, magazines, history books - especially the rich writings of our forefathers throughout the colonial period, the 1700's, the 1800's, and even the first half of the 1900's. Only in the last 60 years or so, as our society became totally invested in the space race, did we abandon much of this heritage and turn our focus almost exclusively to science and math.

That said, understanding our cultural heritage doesn't require reading every single book on any particular reading list. Some books aren't worth the effort. What's important in high school, in my opinion, is that you get a solid grasp on a significant number of the works that have been foundational in building our culture. Shakespeare would certainly be included, but so would many other authors. Some are easier to read, some are more difficult. And some are only tolerable when you read them in a setting where you can discuss them - preferably with a group of peers.

Homework Isn't Helpful

2008-02-12T08:25:00.000-07:00

In a study which must be a shock to the education establishment but comes as no surprise to most parents, two professors in Toronto have discovered that "Homework is of little benefit to students from junior kindergarten to Grade 6 . . . (and) it is often the source of stress and burnout in children, as well the cause of conflict – even marital stress – for many families." It's the first time the Canadians have studied homework, and much to their surprise, they've found the same kind of results we have here in America. An article in Saturday's Toronto Star highlights the findings of the study.

In their study, more than 1,000 parents were surveyed and said while they like the good work habits homework promotes, as well as how it helps parents be involved in their children's academic lives, the amount students are getting is interfering with family time, play time, causing stress and even marital troubles.

I've felt for a long time that with 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, schools ought to be able to give children the basic education they need. After all, as a homeschooling parent, my children generally get the basic subjects out of the way in 2-3 hours a day. Even my 6th-grader manages to do English, math, history, and science, along with logic, Latin, and Bible, in no more than 3-4 hours 4 days a week; the remainder of her school topics are covered in outside classes and activities and include: P.E. (swim team), music (keyboard lessons), art, band, drama, and sign language.

Unfortunately, most schools spend much of their time doing a lot more than giving children a basic education. Many schools seem to think it's their job to feed our kids, keep them off drugs, motivate them to care for the environment, provide them with s-x education, prevent them from becoming prejudiced, cure them of any religious notions, and generally counteract the careful training in values their parents are giving them at home. Little wonder, then, that they can't find time to teach them such insignificant things as reading, writing, math, and a love for learning during school hours, but have to send those things home for the parents to teach.

I have a friend who told me she started homeschooling when her son was in first grade. She found she was teaching him most of his "schoolwork" as homework at night. She finally decided if she was going to have to teach him at home, she might as well do it during his best hours, rather than in the evenings when he was exhausted and wanted nothing but to eat, play, and rest.

The study also found:
- Not only does homework cut into family time, it becomes a primary source of arguments, power struggles and is disruptive to building a strong family, including putting strain on marriages. Bruni said it even negatively affects family holidays.
- A large number of children in kindergarten are assigned homework, most of it "drill and practice."
- 28 per cent of Grade 1 students and more than 50 per cent of Grade 2 students spend more than 20 minutes on homework daily.
- More than three-quarters of parents with children in Grade 4 and under help their children with homework. But, by Grade 4, only half of parents feel they are competent enough to do so.
- Parents are unsure about the benefits of homework; by Grade 5, just 20 per cent of parents feel it has a "positive effect on achievement."
- Half of children in junior kindergarten are enthusiastic about homework; by Grade 6, it drops to just 6 per cent and by Grade 12, just 4 per cent.

The elementary-school children in our neighborhood get on the bus at 7:45 am and don't get home until close to 4:30 pm. During all of that time, they are almost completely structured. "Don't talk," "Stay in line," "Wait for the rest of the class," "Sit quietly," "Listen," "Raise your hand," the list of admonitions goes on and on. By the time they get home, they are exhausted and ready to be unstructured for a few hours. But at 4:30, how many hours do they really have? By the time they do homework (even if it's only half an hour, and for many it's a lot more than that), eat dinner, and get a bath, it's almost bedtime. When are they supposed to play, spend time with their families, or just sit and think?

As homeschoolers, I feel like our kids are so incredibly blessed. They have the one thing most kids today lack - the luxury of time. No wonder so many of our society's greatest achievers were homeschooled - they are the only ones who have time to really ponder how life works. Maybe it's time for parents to rebel against the workings of the machine - to say, "No, we are not going to run our entire lives by the values of the educational establishment." There's more to life than school!

We need to give our kids back the gift of time. Homeschool is one great way to do that, but even if you can't homeschool, you can set boundaries. You can tell teachers, "This far, and no further." A single parent alone may have trouble accomplishing this, but if we band together based on the research, maybe we can make a difference.

More on Why We Need to Vote

2008-02-09T10:03:00.000-07:00

Continuing on the basic theme of my post yesterday, there are other reasons why conservatives ought to vote even if they dislike and disagree with the eventual nominee. The big question relating to this year's election (and I think to every year's election) is this: What are the key issues facing the nation at this point in time? I think there are several, but perhaps the two most significant ones are national defense and the appointment of Supreme Court justices.

1) National defense. The number one priority of any nation's government is the protection of its people. We are at war, whether we like it or not; keeping our people safe is our government's most important responsibility. When considering whether we ought to vote or not, we must consider whether there is a significant difference in which candidate will keep our nation safe.

2) The appointment of Supreme Court justices. Undoubtedly the new president will face vacancies on the Supreme Court. Justice John Paul Stevens is almost 88 and is unlikely to stay in office for another four years; and Ruth Bader Ginsburg is nearing 75. With so many Supreme Court decisions currently being 5-4, whoever becomes the new president will likely determine the direction of the Supreme Court, influencing public policy powerfully for maybe as long as 30 years. Even if a particular candidate is not ideal, we must ask ourselves whether there's a difference between the candidates in their likelihood of choosing justices who will uphold our values.

Today's Wall Street Journal has an excellent article on the topic entitled, "Dobson's Choice." It's not a long article, and it makes a critically important point about why we ought not to abdicate our right to be involved in choosing the next president. Here's a quote:

Mr. McCain's harshest critics argue that his judicial picks could easily be as bad as anyone tapped by Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Obama. This is caricature, but even if it had merit, the likes of Mr. Dobson would be trading the risk that Mr. McCain picks moderates for the court for the certainty that his opponent would appoint liberals.

Especially if you are frustrated with the status quo and considering whether you even ought to vote this November, please take the time to read the article and consider carefully the core issues involved. (This article is only accessible to non-subscribers for 7 days.)

Do we dare risk the safety of our country and the makeup of the Supreme Court for the purpose of making a point?

Sitting on our Hands

2008-02-08T21:30:00.000-07:00

Tuesday night I did something I've never done in my 40-plus years of living - I went to a caucus. I didn't even know until about two weeks ago that Colorado HAD caucuses, and I had no idea how they worked. Apparently I wasn't the only one - we had record turnout that night, and the vast majority of the people there had no idea what was going on because they'd never been to one, either.

Waiting in line to get into the caucus meeting, though, I discovered something I hadn't known before, something that really disturbed me: there were a number of people there who swore that if John McCain were the Republican candidate for president, they would simply not vote. "We have to teach the Republican establishment a lesson," seemed to be their line of reasoning. "They don't listen to our values, so they'll just have to lose." I disagreed with that reasoning, but putting into words why it was so troubling to me has turned out to be extraordinarily difficult.

So I was please to discover that Dave Burchett had an excellent blog post yesterday entitled, "Should Christians Sit This Election Out?" His answer was no, for several reasons. The whole post is well worth reading, but the best portion I think is right here:

If there are two choices I assume that one choice has to be better than the other. I will prayerfully decide which choice comes closer to my values and beliefs. And I will vote for that candidate even if he or she represents only a part of what I value. Something, in this case, is far better than nothing.

You know, the people of Iraq and Afghanistan have risked death for the right to be part of helping choose their leadership, even though their leadership was certainly far from perfect. Our founding fathers also risked their lives for the privilege of voting. And our soldiers in other countries put their lives at risk every day in order to preserve our right to make these kinds of choices.

None of the candidates (in either party) has been perfect. In fact, none this year, in my opinion, has been anywhere near perfect. But as long as I have a choice, I will continue to choose the person who comes closest to my values and beliefs. The privilege of participating in electing our leaders is priceless. And if, through our own refusal to participate in the process, we end up with leadership that is dead set against what's most important to us, we have only ourselves to blame.

Are Our Kids Getting Dumber?

2008-01-30T09:49:00.000-07:00

On the blog "ideas from free minds" today, there's an interesting post relating to modern education in America (particularly high school education). The post includes a 12-minute video clip, produced by three young men in a Florida public high school, that is well worth making time to watch. I don't agree with everything they say, but the first 8 minutes and the last minute are revealing and thought-provoking.

The blog text also contains some worthwhile information. (A word of warning, though - toward the bottom there is a picture which includes some text that some of you will consider offensive. It's still worth the read - but you might not want to share it with your kids.) The part that caught me most off guard was this paragraph:

Then consider the greater than $48,000 average cost (four years) of state college tuition and the fact that many students (I’ve seen figures as high as 78.7%) require remediation once they are there. Consider that in 2005, starting salary averages for college grads were between $29,733 and $53,279. Add to it all the idea that you need be degreed before you can answer a phone and it becomes clear that our education system has been set up to weigh students down in debt before they make a dime.

What's frightening to me about the average salary for college grads is that while engineering graduates generally make excellent starting salaries, liberal arts graduates (which in my experience constitute the majority of college grads) generally make no more than about $35,000 to start. How long will it take to pay off almost $50,000 in student loans if you're making less than $40,000 per year? And that doesn't count graduate school, which is often necessary these days in order to get a long-term career position in either the arts or the sciences. My husband and I have been looking into graduate schools lately, and it would appear the least expensive M.A. degrees available, generally from public universities, are at least $25,000. Some cost as much as another $50,000. So by the time our kids get their bachelor's degree and their master's degree, they are looking at a debt of perhaps $100,000 or more. That doesn't include room and board, which must somehow be covered while the student is going to school full-time and trying to make time to study besides.

Anyone wonder why I choose to homeschool, and why my children will be going to college early? :) So click on over, watch the video, read the blog post, and see what you think. What are the problems plaguing public education? And how might they be fixed?

Is the Future Dim for Public Schools?

2008-01-30T09:02:00.001-07:00

An article published this morning in the Las Vegas Review Journal claims a recent survey shows that most people in Nevada would not send their children to public school if they were free to choose any available option.

The survey was conducted by the Nevada Policy Research Institute and the Foundation for Educational Choice. In the study, only 11 percent of Nevadans surveyed said they would choose public schools if they could choose between public schools, private schools, charter schools, and home schooling. Eleven percent! Of the rest, 48 percent would choose private schools, 23 percent charter schools, and 15 percent home schooling.

The article quotes Nevada Assembly Education Chairwoman Bonnie Parnell (D-Carson City) in defense of Nevada's public schools. She claims "the poll also provides some evidence that residents believe Nevada's public education system could be better funded." However, the survey showed that 61 percent of respondents believe the level of public education funding is "about right" or "too high." So in spite of the media and the government's repeated public brainwashing that education is not adequately funded, only 39 percent of respondents are willing to buy it any more. How much of our money do we have to give up before politicians figure out that the problem is not funding?

The article also quotes Keith Rheault, Nevada's superintendent of public instruction, who says "the support for voucher schools seen in the poll has not been demonstrated at legislative hearings on the issue."

Hmm - wonder if that might have something to do with the people who are invited to speak at and participate in legislative hearings? Certainly the teacher's unions and school organizations are going to do all they can to turn out as many people against vouchers as possible. Individuals who favor vouchers are much less likely to show up than members of unions; for one thing, many of them have children at home, which makes it difficult to attend long legislative hearings. Has the legislature actually surveyed people to determine how many would take advantage of vouchers? I doubt it - my guess is, they don't want to know how badly the public schools are perceived.

Mr. Rheault also claims, "the school choices listed by respondents also don't seem to reflect what is actually happening."

I wouldn't expect them to do that. The survey specifically asked people what they would do "if they had the freedom to choose any available option." While only about 1 percent of Nevadans currently homeschool, 15 percent say they would if they had the freedom to choose. Cost would certainly be a factor in this equation: Can the family afford to pay for curriculum? Can they afford for one parent to quit working in order to homeschool? Private schools, which were chosen by 48 percent (almost half), are not an option for many families, for the same reason. Charter schools may not be chosen by many of the 23 percent who'd like to choose them because they are simply not available in the area where the respondent lives.

Obviously more than 11 percent of Nevadans do in fact send their children to public schools; for most they don't feel they have another choice. It's unfortunate for residents of that state that they don't have a voucher system. However, it ought to make the public education system thankful; in the future they will be able to use this survey as evidence for why they shouldn't have vouchers. You see, they are right about one thing - if everyone were given vouchers, the public school system would collapse.

I wonder if it's ever occurred to the education establishment that instead of fighting so hard to force more kids into their failing schools, they ought to fix what's wrong with the schools. If the public schools were competitive with private schools, charter schools, and home schools, then handing out vouchers would not hurt them. Do you suppose they'll ever figure that out?

"Homeschooling" Preschool

2008-01-28T09:15:00.000-07:00

I've talked a bit in a previous post about homeschooling during the preschool years. Yesterday's Opinion section of the Buffalo News had a wonderful editorial by Beth Kontrabecki Walters, who has decided to buck public opinion and "homeschool" her 2-year-old. What she means is exactly what mothers used to do all the time - she's staying at home with her little boy and giving him a normal life. And the way she's responding to the criticism of well-meaning busybodies is excellent.

Here's an example:

When I hear about socializing my child, I can’t get out of my head the image of my German shepherd. A dog needs socializing.

Truthfully, I’m not terribly concerned about my son harassing the mailman and neighborhood children who walk past the house.

For generations, mine included, we somehow managed to grow into perfectly happy and functional adults; no socialization with scores of other children necessary. You either had your siblings, your cousins or the kid down the street.

I'm afraid I don't quite agree that a preschooler doesn't need socialization. But what kind of socialization does a toddler learn by being removed from his home (usually against his will) and placed in a room with a bunch of other toddlers? (It can't be good!) The socialization a preschooler needs is best provided by parents, by siblings, and by occasional interactions with other kids (at the park, at church, or at a birthday party) - "Be polite," "Be kind," "Share," "Make friends," "Treat others the way you want them to treat you." Most socialization is learned by modeling. Children watch how people around them interact with others, and they imitate what they see, observing how others respond to that imitation and modifying their behavior based on that feedback. So who provides a better model, the child's parents or their peers? And who can provide more appropriate feedback to the child's sometimes-clumsy attempts to mimic the examples around them - a parent, a teacher, or another child? It seems to me the answer is obvious - the parent is both the best source of modeling for the child and the best able to provide instant, appropriate feedback when the child tries a new social behavior.

Here's another example:

Then there’s the issue of activities. Because I choose not to be a member of any "mommy" group and do not send my son to a facility, it can only be concluded that we sit in a dark, quiet house all day staring at the walls. While this may be hard to believe, one can do the exact same activities as performed in preschool, thereby still gleaning the benefits of a preschool education, in the comfort of one’s own abode.

In my opinion, this is a very wise mother. It's frustrating to realize what poor reasons are being offered for why kids "need" to go to preschool! I've already mentioned this before, so I'll try not to get into a lot of detail now. But preschools spend hundreds (sometimes thousands) of dollars trying to imitate experiences children can have for free at home. Almost every preschool, for example, has little model kitchens so they can pretend to cook and bake; why not just let them stay at home and help Mom cook and bake for real? Teachers spend hours pasting pictures of fruit and vegetables on a bulletin board - isn't it better to take the child to the grocery store and let them actually see, smell, and handle the real thing (and maybe even taste some if Mom buys it and takes it home)? Preschools organize formal "learning experiences" pouring water from a pitcher into a cup, instead of letting kids in on the joy of pouring their own juice into their own little cups (even if they spill a bit). Toy phones are used to teach telephone manners, rather than let the child listen in on Mom's phone conversations and maybe even try it for themselves. In so many ways, preschool experiences are cheap imitations of what the home can easily do for real. Not only that, in the home, these experiences happen much more spontaneously, usually without interrupting the consistent schedules for naps, meals, and outdoor time these little people so desperately need.

Here's this mother's conclusion:

Generations of mothers before me were the sole educators in the lives of their children, teaching them not just reading, writing and arithmetic, but also how to get along in this world. In fact, some of their nonpreschooled progeny went on to make enormous contributions to history. I doubt Thomas Edison attended pre-K.

In the not-so-distant future, I will watch my son board the bus to kindergarten, unable to shield him from dirty words and bad habits, and my home schooling days will be a faint memory. In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy these precious years to the fullest.

In fact, Thomas Edison not only didn't attend pre-K, but he got pretty much all his education through homeschooling! And so did Albert Einstein; Alexander Graham Bell; Orville and Wilbur Wright; Claude Monet; Leonardo da Vinci; ten American presidents including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt; George Washington Carver; Pierre Curie; Winston Churchill; Benjamin Franklin; Patrick Henry; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; Charles Dickens; Mark Twain; C.S. Lewis; and dozens more. None of these people attended preschool - most of them didn't attend much school at all - and look how they turned out!

So, maybe Ms. Walters will put her son on the bus, and maybe she won't. :) After all these years of bucking public opinion and "homeschooling" her preschooler, maybe she will discover that there are similar advantages to homeschooling for elementary school (and for middle school, and for high school . . . !).

Whether she homeschools long-term or not, though, it's my opinion that she'll never regret the decision to keep her son at home during his preschool years. Children are not born in packs like puppies; they generally come one or two at a time because it's best for them to have the full care and attention of their parents, at least for a few years. Preschool deprives these little guys of the loving care, the routines, and the participation in real life they so desperately need and want during these early years. Good for you, Ms. Walters, and all the other moms like you who go against prevailing opinion and give your little children what they need most - you!

Education and Ice Cream: Why Homeschooling Is Better

2008-01-22T09:07:00.000-07:00

CrimsonWife over at Bending the Twigs has a great post, highlighted at the Carnival of Homeschooling (which incidentally is huge this week), entitled "Why Education Is Not Like Making Ice Cream." In her post, she quotes from the former CEO of an ice cream business on the topic of education, particularly in our public schools:

I have learned that a school is not a business. Schools are unable to control the quality of their raw material, they are dependent upon the vagaries of politics for a reliable revenue stream, and they are constantly mauled by a howling horde of disparate, competing customer groups that would send the best CEO screaming into the night.

She goes on to explain beautifully why homeschooling is a huge improvement over public education, addressing the majority of the issues cited in this quote. She's done a great job - be sure to click over and read the whole thing.

Homeschooling Regulation - How Far Is Too Far?

2008-01-16T08:19:00.000-07:00

The Opinionated Homeschooler has a rather frightening post pointing out how far the anti-homeschooling crowd is willing to go in regulating homeschooling. It's an excellent post, and well worth the read. The post quotes these paragraphs from the New York Times article on the Washington D.C. murders, which I referenced earlier:

Mitchell L. Stevens, an associate professor of education and sociology at New York University, said school officials, who are required by law to report suspicion of child abuse, were society’s best watchdogs of how parents treat children.

“Home schooling removes children from a lot of that surveillance,” Mr. Stevens said, adding that the vast majority of home schooling families are “overwhelmingly trustworthy people who place a very high value on parental autonomy.” And thanks to the advocacy of the legal defense fund, he continued, “they have been largely successful since the late 1980s in getting the law to favor parental rights.”
One example of that, in 1991, disrupted an effort by the District of Columbia to regulate home schooling, with rules that included unannounced home visits and required teachers certification for parents doing the instruction. Christopher Klicka, senior counsel for the Home School Legal Defense Association, met with District officials, told them they were on shaky ground because of the 1st, 4th and 14th amendments, and the rules were rescinded.

The Opinionated Homeschooler goes on with this comment:

Unannounced home visits. From representatives of the state. With no probable
cause. For families who have done nothing illegal. On the grounds that
"surveillance" is necessary because school officials are "society's best
watchdogs."

Wow! They might as well argue for unannounced home visits by police in everyone's homes. After all, police officers, who are required to report suspicion of crimes, are "society’s best watchdogs" of criminal behavior. "The privacy of the home removes people from a lot of that surveillance." Of course, the vast majority of families are “overwhelmingly trustworthy people who place a very high value on individual autonomy.” And thanks to the advocacy of privacy advocates, “they have been largely successful in getting the law to favor privacy rights.” You get the point!

I find the idea of unannounced home visits frightening, not because I have anything to fear, but because of the implications for individual rights and privacy. How is it that my 11-year-old daughter can have an abortion because of her right to "privacy," but if I choose to homeschool her, we have no such right and could be subject to unannounced home visits?

The last time I checked, the Fourth Amendment still preserves "the right of the people to be
secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, . . . , 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." Choosing to homeschool my children does not mean giving up this fundamental right.

And as The Opinionated Homeschooler and others have pointed out, unannounced home visits would not have helped the Jacks children. These children were in school! When they dropped out, the school district did their job, attempting to contact the family and reporting
the children's absence to authorities; the social service agency did not, and because they didn't, the children died. In fact, at least six child welfare workers in D.C. are going to be fired as a result of the failure of DC's Child and Family Services Agency to intervene. If the school district had been making unannounced home visits, they would still have reported to the same agency. These children were murdered as a result of failure to enforce existing regulations, not as a result of too few regulations.

Unannounced home visits to homeschoolers will not prevent child abuse. Requiring all children to go to school will not prevent them from being abused. And quite frankly, "society's best watchdogs" are also sometimes guilty of abusing children. Only enforcement of existing law has a chance of doing that - well, that, and more importantly, the redemption and transformation of human hearts through the power of God.

Is Homeschooling Really To Blame?

2008-01-14T08:49:00.000-07:00

On January 12, the New York Times printed an article about a mentally ill woman who was recently discovered to have murdered her four daughters. The article was titled, "Lack of Supervision Noted in Deaths of Home-Schooled," and it began with these paragraphs:

Ten states and the District of Columbia, where Banita M. Jacks was charged on Thursday with four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of her four daughters, have no regulations regarding home schooling, not even the requirement that families notify the authorities that they are educating their children at home.

The lack of supervision of the home-schooling process, some experts say, may have made it easier last year for Ms. Jacks to withdraw her children from school and the prying eyes of teachers, social workers and other professionals who otherwise might have detected signs of abuse and neglect of the girls.

When I read this, as a homeschooling mom, I was obviously disturbed. It struck me as unlikely that Ms. Jacks was really homeschooling. The further I read in the article, the more I wondered whether it was really the lack of supervision of homeschoolers that was responsible for these girls' deaths.

Apparently I'm not the only person who was concerned about this. Kate, over at "I Think, Therefore I Blog," posted this excellent response to the NYT article. She notes that in fact, five different government agencies had contact with this mother and family during the months surrounding the murders, and none of them chose to act. She also points out that, as noted in the article, Ms. Jacks was required by DC law to submit an "intent to withdraw" letter, which she never did. In fact, her children were not homeschooled - they were truant; and the social workers and police officers who were called out to investigate simply chose to use her claim to be homeschooling as an excuse to ignore her case.

Kate homeschools in Kansas, which requires almost no supervision of homeschoolers. But Ms. Jacks' failure to submit her paperwork would have been unacceptable even there, since it is required that homeschoolers notify the district that they are homeschooling.

I live in Colorado, which requires substantially more supervision. Here, not only is notice required, but our students are required to be tested in grades 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11; and I am required to keep attendance and immunization records as well as teach certain specific subjects. The increased supervision required by the state of Colorado would not have prevented Ms. Jacks from murdering her children, since they only left school in spring of 2007.

Even in the most highly regulated states, those increased regulations would not have stopped Ms. Jacks from murdering her children. No state requires that outsiders visit homeschoolers' homes to supervise on a regular basis - that is an unconstitutional violation of privacy. The most highly regulated states require parents to submit a portfolio each year of the child's work; Ms. Jacks' failure to submit the portfolio at the end of the last school year would have come too late, especially by the time it was investigated and prosecuted. Even if a state did require regular supervisory visits, it would not prevent a parent from committing murder. Ms. Jacks' behavior had already triggered multiple visits from government agencies who could have done something to prevent these deaths; another visit by another person would not have made social workers or police officers any more likely to intervene in an uncomfortable or possibly dangerous situation.

There is simply no amount of regulation that could have prevented this tragedy. Enforcement of existing laws regarding suspicions of child abuse might have proved helpful; further regulation of homeschooling could have done nothing.

Kate's final paragraphs provide an excellent summary of the truth about this case:

In this particular tragedy, the media is attempting to blame homeschooling by saying that it has an inherent “lack of supervision”. The fact is that Banita Jacks’ family had more contact with government agencies than most homeschooling families, and every single one of those agencies dropped the ball.

Homeschooling is not at fault for the deaths of these little girls. A lack of supervision is not to blame for their deaths. The freedom and ease with which families in ten states and Washington, D.C., can elect to homeschool their children are not to blame for these deaths.

Banita Jacks is to blame, as are all of the officials and agencies which did have contact with her but did nothing. They had evidence that she was mentally ill and failing to provide for her children, and they failed to follow up on that evidence.

What they have no evidence of is their claim that Banita Jacks was ever truly a homeschooling mom.

The prejudices of the New York Times and their "authorities" notwithstanding, the only way to have prevented the murders of these children was for those government agencies already in contact with the family to have made different decisions. The fact that she claimed to be homeschooling should not have prevented them from making those decisions. Those girls were public school students, all of them; when they dropped out of sight, absent a notice of intent to withdraw, the school should have pursued action.

Instead of accepting responsibility for their failure to act, authorities representing the position of public education, with the support of the New York Times, are blaming homeschooling and recommending more regulation. In truth, homeschooling families do not require more supervision; school authorities need to learn to discern between true homeschoolers and truants who claim to be homeschooling in order to avoid school involvement. Does this require some adjustment on the part of the schools? Perhaps. But given that the Supreme Court has determined that parents may determine how their children are education, it's the school's responsibility to make that adjustment.

Beginning the Homeschooling Process

2008-01-05T18:06:00.000-07:00

I saw a blog entry today from a relatively new mom who's just beginning to think about homeschooling. Her little guy is just two, and she's already evaluating whether he needs preschool or not. She has a lot of serious questions, and I am impressed with her thoughtfulness as she begins the process.

As I wrote a comment on her blog, it occurred to me what a privilege it is to be homeschool our preschoolers. Many women are not even at home during these special years; and of those who are, many don't take seriously the process of teaching, loving, and guiding these precious little people. Here's what I wrote to her, and what I'd recommend to any mom at home with preschoolers:

I remember being in a similar situation to yours. There are so many
questions when you are beginning to think about homeschooling. Fortunately, you
don’t have to decide right away. The best place for your son right now -
regardless of what some may say about how he needs preschool - is at home with
you, as you love him, care for him, and teach him. You have several more years
before you even have to begin the formal process of education, whether you
choose homeschooling or private school or some other option.

By the time my daughter was ready to begin kindergarten (and few states
even require that), I knew I could homeschool her - I had already taught her
more than she would have learned in preschool, just by remaining involved in her
life. She learned her shapes, colors, numbers, and letters - she learned to
count and to help cook and to figure out how many would be at the table if we
had our family and two guests. She learned to take care of a baby (by watching
me, not playing with baby dolls!), to enjoy an excellent story (by cuddling on
the couch, not sitting on a story carpet), to button and zip and snap her
clothes (by doing it, not having Mom finish in a rush and then imitating it on a
doll), to choose healthy foods (by going to the grocery store, not looking at a
food pyramid), to draw a pretty picture, and so many other things that would
have had to be simulated in preschool but could be done in real life at home
with me.

At this point, rather than answer all your questions about
homeschooling (which would make for a REALLY long post!), let me encourage you -
read about it, mix with other homeschoolers, and experiment with home
preschooling for a few years. Check out some homeschooling curricula so you
begin to get a feel for what you do and don’t like. Don’t get too formal about
it - just have fun and get to know your little guy, and guide him as you would
anyway. Go to the library together - and consider checking out books on a
particular subject each time (baby animals, firemen, the circus, sharks, the
mail, poetry, etc.). Play games and do fingerplays and read stories and bake
cookies and take care of a pet and do all the other things you can think of to
keep his life (and yours!) interesting and fun. And by the time you’re ready to
decide whether to homeschool or not, you’ll be so hooked on your little fellow
(and any future siblings) that you won’t be able to imagine sending him off to
school all day!

Here’s a really excellent homeschooling curriculum I used for many
years: http://www.sonlight.com. They have just put out a new, younger
preschool curriculum that’s perfect for beginning the process - in a year or so
when your son is ready, or even now if you think it’s time.

Have fun - you have a wonderful adventure ahead of you!

I forgot to add - take them for walks, especially to parks or other wild places if you have any available. Let them try "science experiments" - my younger daughter delighted in mixing soap and water or sand and water and seeing what happened. Let them play with bubbles and see what happens. Pray with them.

In the midst of the pressures of living with preschool children, hopefully this will be an encouragement. You don't have to do it all or know it all, and you don't have to decide on a schooling option today. All you have to do is be the best mom to preschoolers you know how to be. That way, whether you homeschool your kids all the way through high school, or send them to school at some point, you've given them a solid foundation for life.

What About Free or Independent Schools?

2007-10-09T08:19:00.000-06:00

I found another great article in the Home Educator's Family Times today. It's called, "The Difference Between Homeschool and School," and it's written by a woman who was unschooled from birth through college and is now raising her own son. It's rather deep and involves quite a bit of educational research; if you don't have time to read and think, you might prefer to skip this one.

The author considers the question of the "liberal" schools - free schools, holistic schools, Montessori or Waldorf schools. She discusses the benefits as well as the concerns of those schools. In the end, her conclusion is that while those schools are certainly much better at keeping kids motivated to learn, they suffer a couple of significant defects common to more traditional schools.

First, children in those schools still have to conform to the desires and schedules of the teacher or the other children. The need to manage a large number of kids means the students don't get the one-on-one time they would like, nor do they have the time to immerse themselves fully into the subject matter they are studying. As the author puts it,

What if a child wanted to take a nap? What if he wanted to be alone? What if he wanted to call his parents? What if he wanted his parents to hold him and read him a book? What if he wanted to feel the comfort of being at home? What if he just wanted to be left alone for a couple of hours to play a game or read some books of his choice? What if he didn’t want to be constantly watched and surveyed and monitored? Well, too bad. Sorry. In even the most holistic, free-school there is no special time or place for the individual child.

The other significant drawback to even an independent or democratic school is that the teacher does not have the deep, loving relationship with the child that a parent has. Educational research has shown that children learn best when they are deeply cared for. The author puts it this way:

I do believe that, aside from the unlimited learning possibilities, this is the very real and very important difference between the very best liberal school and home schooling: the loving, personal, and close relationships within the life learning family.

This article also brings up a really important issue in terms of socialization, and one that's not discussed much in homeschooling circles. The issue is this: how do we teach our children to live within the power structure of society? Here's how the author puts it:

In liberal circles the question of socialization is usually asked in this context: how will a child, who is not regularly in school, learn the values of the community and how will a child, who is not regularly in school, learn how to compromise and accept the status quo? This question is not so simple as to whether or not the child will learn how to talk to or relate to other people, but rather is based on the concern (or fear) that the home school child may not be willing to compromise her values when her values are counter-hegemonic. When we break down the reasons that make us feel like school might be better than home schooling, we find that the reasons for going to school are rather contradictory to a liberal and explorative education. That is, the reasons for going to school are actually the opposite of liberating. In fact, the reason for going to school is to learn to fit in and obey the very same power structure that mainstream society (and public schooling) operates under.

When we break down the ultimate purpose of schools to be the transmitters of culture, and when we explore how schools transmit this culture, it becomes clear that we are dealing with a very invisible, yet very powerful and active structure. Even the most liberal schools are perpetuating a system that takes power out of the hands of the individual and family and transfers the power into the hands of an entity - an institution - and the culture of power. By using this system as the sole means for learning and education, we are surrendering our inherent ability to be the leaders of our own learning, education, and future.

And here is where the rubber meets the road when it comes to schooling. If the "ultimate purpose of schools" is "to be the transmitters of culture," the first question that must be asked is what kind of culture we want to be transmitted to our children. If "the reason for going to school is to learn to fit into and obey" a given power structure, we must ask ourselves whether we in fact WANT our children to learn to fit into and obey the current power structure, or whether we have other goals for them. Perhaps our goal is that our children break free of the current power structure; perhaps it is that they create a new power structure; perhaps it is that they submit themselves to a different power altogether from the one our society is subject to. But if any of these is true, sending our children to any currently existing school is going to defeat our purpose. Teaching our children at home allows us to carefully build into them the culture and values we believe to be most significant.

And perhaps that's the core reason why the current system opposes homeschoolers so vehemently. Unlike even so-called "independent" schools, we homeschoolers represent a threat to the current culture and power structure. We are raising our children to be truly independent of the pervading culture, to think for themselves and to become all they can be. No wonder the system fears us!

The Difference School Makes

2007-10-09T08:02:00.000-06:00

In the most recent edition of the Home Educator's Family Times, there's an excellent article entitled, "Leaf Jumpers." In the article, the mother describes what happened to her son, who seemed "made for school," when she actually put him in school. She tells how he went from enthusiastically playing the leaves one fall to, "I don't want to jump in the leaves," the next (at age 7). And she explains why she thinks the change took place.

Take a look:

Ben went from playing half of the day in the leaves with his sisters to playing half of an hour on a black top. He went from cuddling on the couch with his family doing math games, reading, and workbooks, to sitting in a classroom in a hard desk with thirty-one other kids, filling out worksheet after worksheet, raising his hand to talk, standing in line – a lot, and keeping his mouth shut. He went from lingering over lunch in his kitchen while talking about the latest topic of interest, to gulping down his food quickly in a loud lunchroom with concrete walls and little windows. It’s no wonder that in just a short two month period this boy no longer wanted to play in the leaves… his spirit had forgotten how. It just didn’t “fit” anymore. He went from actively experiencing God in his everyday life with his family, to mundanely learning about Him on paper…that was the difference.

If you've ever had a child child who seems "made for school," you understand her motivation in putting him there in the first place. My older daughter is like that - she loves other kids, she's a leader, she respects adults and seems to soak up knowledge like a sponge. I've seriously considered putting her in school more than once. But my fear is exactly what happened to little Ben - that she will lose her enthusiasm for life and learning when she meets with situations like those above. And she is turning out so beautifully that I'm very satisfied now keeping her at home.

Fortunately for the author of this article, she was able to pull her son out of school and he regained his joy in living. This year (age 8), he's again anxiously anticipating jumping in the leaves.

The Homework Trap

2007-10-04T08:28:00.000-06:00

There's an interesting article on the Wall Street Journal online site. Written by Jeff Opdyke, it's called "How Homework Is Hurting Our Family," and the life it describes is a fresh reminder of why I'm homeschooling. Here's part of his description:

The result is that my son's life -- and by extension our family life -- is a constant, stress-laden stream of homework and tests and projects. It overshadows everything we do, always hanging over our head. It affects our weekends, our meals, our vacations, our work time, our playtime, our pocketbooks.

And to what end? Maybe I'm missing something, but when did schools determine that the best place for kids to learn math, science and English is at their own kitchen table?

Funny - schools aren't usually the ones proposing this option! And when homeschoolers propose it, schools are generally against it.

It turns out he's stressed out. He told Amy that he wishes he could do better. But he already wakes up on school days between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m., panicked that he doesn't know the material he has already studied. He wakes up Amy to help him go over his notes one more time. He studies in the car on the way to school. Some nights he's up past 10 p.m., writing, reading or memorizing. He spends parts of many weekends reading and doing projects.

Every time I've looked at putting my daughters in school, I've been disturbed by the way the school seems to assume control of their students' whole lives. Even the parents lives are largely directed by the school. Take them here, go there, be here at such-and-such a time, pick them up within 10 minutes or pay a fine, do a project this weekend, read 20 minutes every day this week - as if they didn't already have the kids 6 hours every day, somehow they assume they have the right to dictate what kids are going to do even in their free time.

I had a homeschooling friend a few years ago who told me she started homeschooling when her son was in first grade, because, in her words, "I realized I was doing all the teaching at home anyway - I might as well homeschool him and have him at home with me rather than sending him off to school."

The more I read and hear about the amount of homework schools are giving these days, the more thankful I am that we are escaping the rat race. My kids get to do their schoolwork during their best hours, and they get to have a childhood, too. (HT: Janice Campbell)

Marriage on the Mend

2007-10-02T11:50:00.000-06:00

On the Townhall blog yesterday, I noted a great article by Michael Medved. I haven't seen Michael on that blog before, but I've always liked what he's written, and this article was no exception. Entitled, "Marriage Gloom-and-Doomers Are 'Divorced From Reality,'" his post highlights a recent New York Times article by Professors Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, on the state of marriage in America. And surprisingly, that state is improving!

Here are the quotes he gives from the New York Times article:

The great myth about divorce is that marital breakup is an increasing threat to American families, with each generation finding their marriages less stable than those of their parents,” they write. “The story of ever-increasing divorce is a powerful narrative. It is also wrong. In fact, the divorce rate has been falling continuously over the past quarter-century, and is now at its lowest level since 1970. While marriage rates are also declining, those marriages that do occur are increasingly more stable. For instance, marriages that began in the 1990s were more likely to celebrate a 10th anniversary than those that started in the 1980s, which, in turn, were also more likely to last than marriages that began in the 1970s.”

Near the conclusion of their column, Stevenson and Wolfers cite specific numbers: “The narrative or rising divorce is also completely at odds with counts of divorce certificates, which show the divorce rate as having peaked at 22.8 divorces per 1,000 married couples in 1979 and to have fallen by 2005 to 16.7…. The facts are that divorce is down, and today’s marriages are more stable than they have been in decades.”

The New York Times article also points out why the figures became so incredibly skewed that we began to believe that half of all marriages end in divorce:

The Census Bureau reported that slightly more than half of all marriages occurring between 1975 and 1979 had not made it to their 25th anniversary. This breakup rate is not only alarmingly high, but also represents a rise of about 8 percent when compared with those marriages occurring in the preceding five-year period.
But here’s the rub: The census data come from a survey conducted in mid-2004, and at that time, it had not yet been 25 years since the wedding day of around 1 in 10 of those whose marriages they surveyed. And if your wedding was in late 1979, it was simply impossible to have celebrated a 25th anniversary when asked about your marriage in mid-2004.
If the census survey had been conducted six months later, it would have found that a majority of those married in the second half of 1979 were happily moving into their 26th year of marriage. Once these marriages are added to the mix, it turns out that a majority of couples who tied the knot from 1975 to 1979 — about 53 percent — reached their silver anniversary.

In fact, Medved says, census figures show that "over 70% of first marriages manage to last until one of the partners dies." So, he asks, why do we keep hearing about how bad the situation is?

The left promotes the lie in order to indicate that timeless family institutions no longer apply in the 21st Century, and we need new, experimental, exciting and “liberating” arrangements--- like living together without commitment, or single mother households, open multiple partner relationships, or gay marriage, or whatever. The right goes along with the claims about moral collapse because the bad news conforms to the gloomy, “we’ve-lost-America” temperament of too many conservatives, as well as confirming the (often ill-informed) nostalgia for the recent past.

I'm afraid he may be right. Nevertheless, it's very encouraging to hear that the divorce rate is declining, and that Americans are staying together more and more. As one of those committed "till death do us part," it's nice to know that we aren't the only ones who have been married over 20 years! And as we consider the state of marriage in America, those of us who stand for "forever" marriages need to take heart, and not give up. A divorce rate of 16.7 per 1000 marriages means less than 2% of marriages break up every year. That's not ideal, but it's an improvement, and it speaks well for the future of marriages and families.

Do Teachers Need Credentials?

2007-10-02T07:46:00.000-06:00

I'm almost afraid to bring this up, because it's so controversial. But after homeschooling for 8 1/2 years and teaching in the public school system, I think this question has to be asked.

It's generally assumed that credentialing for teachers is very valuable. Liberals and conservatives, up to and including President Bush, advocate for teacher licensing. Every new president's education program seems to require more in terms of licensing for teachers. When a teacher has a teaching credential and specialization in their major, they are considered "highly qualified," and if they don't have the credential, they aren't. In Colorado, someone with a teaching credential is fairly easily able to add a new area of specialization - just take a test, or a few classes, or prove you've had some experience, and voila - you can teach it! But if you don't have a teaching credential, you may as well forget it - you must have that little piece of paper.

So what exactly do teachers have to study in order to get that piece of paper? I was planning to be a teacher for a while; I took the majority of the classes, in an excellent private university. We studied child development - material most of America learns by watching their children grow. We studied classroom management - how to get 30 kids to sit down, shut up, and listen. We studied motivation - how to get 30 kids interested enough that they actually learn something. We studied choosing curriculum - something most teachers don't get to do, because they are told which curriculum the school uses, and that's it. We studied lesson planning - something else teachers generally don't do a lot of since the textbook tells them what to do every day and they really don't have time to do anyway. And we learned a lot of technical jargon and contemporary learning theories, all of which are completely out-of-date and have been replaced by a lot of new technical jargon and new learning theories (and I graduated only 20 years ago).

Much of what teachers study is a waste of time. Most teachers learn to teach by experience and imitation. If they are fortunate, they have a positive experience and draw a good teacher to imitate; if not, they have to make the best of what they have. Many good teachers are already teachers at heart before they take a single class. Hours spent sitting in a classroom listening to lectures do not make a teacher; there is no substitute for actually teaching, a few kids at a time and eventually up to a whole class. And any kind of teaching or other leadership can make that happen - Sunday School, afterschool clubs, piano lessons, homeschool co-op groups, anything that requires the adult to lead groups of kids.

I'm not against teacher training; I'm against the bureaucracies that entrench requirements for classes like "Psychology Applied to Teaching." I'm against requiring a piece of paper rather than actual experience. I'm against a system that allows mediocre and even poor teachers into the classroom and eliminates excellent ones, simply because they haven't taken classes they don't need. I'm against judging the quality of teaching experience based on whether it happened in a school or in another context, and eliminating anything that didn't happen in a school. I'm against principals who don't help beginning teachers with potential, and experienced teachers who seem to think they are better simply because they've taken some classes. I'm against an education establishment who thinks they "paid their dues" so you should have to, too, and who judges the quality of a teacher and the value of their work based on how much technical jargon they can parrot back and whether they understand "contemporary learning theory" - whatever that happened to be when a particular teacher graduated from school.

Instead, I'm in favor of teachers being given guided experience. I'm in favor of teachers' knowledge being given as it's needed, rather than dumped on them before they can use it. I'm in favor of all teaching experience being taken into account. I'm in favor of principals providing support and training for their teachers, and more experienced teachers receiving bonuses for spending off-duty hours helping less experienced ones improve. I'm in favor of good teachers being paid based on their quality, not the number of years they've been there; and poor teachers being eliminated even if they've been teaching for years. I'm in favor of testing that is carefully designed to test the most important things - and then I'm in favor of teaching to that kind of test, and of judging teachers' performance based on that testing. I'm in favor of our kids being exposed to "the best of the best," that lets John Elway teach football and Paganini teach violin even if they haven't taken years of teacher training classes and student teaching.

The current teacher training system is just not working. I see no reason why we should be graduating high schoolers who can't read; why businesses should be complaining about not being able to find workers who meet basic minimum standards. Obviously the classes teachers are taking are not providing what they really need in the classroom. In the meantime, we are eliminating teachers who have years of experience teaching, who have great reputations and turn out excited and motivated students, and who are outstanding in their fields, simply because they don't have a piece of paper that says they've been trained to teach. We are requiring those teachers - who can make more money in the private sector - to take dozens of classes they don't need, and to be apprenticed under a "master teacher," who may not be as a good teacher as they are and for whom they will most likely end up grading papers for a semester, just so they can get that credential.

And what does the testing show about the need for those credentials? It shows that they provide no benefit whatsoever when it comes to results. Homeschooling students whose parents have credentials don't score any higher than those whose parents have a high school diploma. Students in public schools, whose teachers are required to have credentials, score lower than students in private schools, though their teachers often have no credentials at all, and lower than homeschooled students as well. Michael Smith has an interesting article on this subject, and on why high academic achievement among homeschoolers is so threatening to the education establishment. Essentially, his argument is that when homeschoolers do well, it destroys the fundamental assertion of so many education experts - that credentialling is not necessary to produce good teachers. And I think he's right.

More Encouragement for Homeschoolers

2007-09-25T19:12:00.000-06:00

Still looking for encouragement about the results of homeschooling? (I know I can always use it!) Check out this blog post on ProgressiveU.org entitled, "I Was Homeschooled, So What?" It's written by a rather articulate homeschooled young lady who will be graduating from her homeschool this year. She makes a great case for the benefits of homeschooling.

Take a look at her concluding paragraphs:

Basically, I know that homeschooling can’t work for everyone. Some kids hate their parents too much or vice versa. The truth of the matter is, homeschooling is an amazing option for everyone. It’s not just for kidswho flunk out or social outcasts. There’s a huge network of support andthe ability to reach out to public and private schooled kids. In all my ramblings above, I didn’t even mention my friends at dance, or on the many advisory councils I assist. Nor did I mention my activism on the political front and all the people and things I’ve done there. Homeschooling has allowed me much more freedom in choosing my activities then public schooling would have allowed. I don’t want to seem arrogant, but being homeschooled has been a great opportunity for me and I’ve seen more kids succeed in a homeschooling atmosphere then not.

I was homeschooled. So what? I'm still a normal teenage girl.

"I've seen more kids succeed in a homeschooling atmosphere than not." That's an encouragement to me. And reading the rest of her post, you'll find all kinds of reasons why homeschooling can be extremely positive for many kids. It's definitely a "read the whole thing" post.

The Natural Benefit of Homeschooling

2007-09-23T21:01:00.000-06:00

A regular reader of this blog, Shawna, has a great entry today on her own blog, The Homeschooling Experiment, entitled, "Oh, How I Remember Now!" Shawna is just beginning her "homeschooling experiment" - she's been teaching her son at home for a whole three weeks, and already she's learned a really important lesson many homeschooling parents never learn.

Shawna was a teacher some years ago, and she remembers the way the school fragments a child's day. She describes it this way:

10 minutes for roll call, collecting homework, going over that nights homework, get out the Scarlett Letter, lets begin reading, alright 10 minutes is up, books away and take out your grammar text and turn to page 236, alright 10 more minutes up let's move on to our spelling work--Latin roots for 10 minutes. . and wow a whole 8 minutes for any questions, problems or disciplinary issues that came up. BELL RINGS off they go!

I wasn't teaching. They weren't learning or enjoying themselves or even having their interest piqued.

Shawna was smart enough to see how this kind of approach was making it difficult for her son to focus or even really to enjoy his Language Arts. Here's what she did:

I pulled all of the spelling sheets and let him work on them until he was done--finished or uninterested. I pulled all of the reading comprehension and did the same thing. I am not going to bounce back and forth between subject within the same subject, not pull him from the subject that he is submerged in, not give him time slots to complete work.

It frustrated me as a teacher: I can only imagine it frustrates children as students.

I find Shawna's observations very perceptive, especially for a brand-new homeschooler. While classroom teaching may require artificial time breakdowns, one of the advantages of homeschooling is precisely the fact that we don't HAVE to break subjects down that way. In fact, that kind of breakdown goes totally against the way kids learn. If you've watched kids play for any significant amount of time, you've seen the way kids learn - totally focused on one topic, sometimes for hours; then switching to something else, often related to that, in a natural flow. How frustrating bells and deadlines are to the natural learning process!

In our homeschool, not only do we pursue a topic for as long as the interest dictates (or maybe a very slightly shorter time period, so the interest is still there the next time the topic is introduced!), but we often co-ordinate many of our "school subjects" so that we study in a more unified form. For example, for the last three weeks we've been studying ancient Egypt, with both my sixth-grade and my second-grade daughter. We've studied ancient Egyptian history, ancient Egyptian art and architecture, ancient Egyptian science(from the book "Science in Ancient Egypt"), ancient Egypt in the Bible (religion), and ancient Egyptian mythology (literature). We've done art and craft projects related to ancient Egypt. Even our writing has been about the ancient Egyptians. The only unrelated topics have been math and grammar (we can even pull spelling and vocabulary from the books we're reading).

By running our homeschool this way, we follow the kids' natural interest cycle. For three weeks, everything revolves around ancient Egypt; now we will move on to another topic, and follow it in similar depth. The more I do this, the more strongly I believe THIS is the way children are meant to learn. It's one of the greatest advantages of homeschooling I know.

Homeschooling High School?

2007-09-23T20:24:00.000-06:00

Ahh - the quandary of the homeschooling parent: How long do I homeschool?

When we first started homeschooling, my older daughter was 3 1/2. I knew then she was advanced - the primary reason we decided to homeschool instead of sending her to preschool was that she already knew everything the preschool was teaching their kindergarteners. We took homeschooling one year at a time, figuring it would be clear, year by year, what was best for our daughter. But I didn't realize then what is quickly being brought home to me now: that a child who's ready for first grade at 3 1/2 will likely be ready for middle school work by about 10, and for high school work by 7th grade.

Now that said daughter would be in sixth grade (yikes! high school work next year?!), we're beginning to face the question of what we should do about high school. And it's a tough one. I don't so much struggle with the academics of high school - I figure I'm smart enough to learn any high-school-level subject if I want to put the work in, and if I don't, I can find a self-teaching curriculum and/or someone to tutor her, or she can take a class at the local school. But she's amazingly talented musically; she's been playing the flute for a year (no lessons, just homeschool band), and is easily playing second/third year music. Does she need a "real" high school music program if she's going to be ready for college music? And are there other things about high school that would benefit her? And would they benefit her even if she's on the young side for high school - next year, for example, or the year after?

An article in today's Fort Wayne Journal Gazette online is helping me think about this. It's called "Colleges Embrace Home-School Students," and the first anecdote is about a young lady who was accepted at Indiana University-Purdue University as a piano performance major. There's much more, of course, including some fascinating information about how colleges in Indiana are actively seeking out homeschooled high schoolers. The most helpful paragraph, for most homeschoolers, is this one:

"We love having home-schooled students because we find that they are prepared for college,” says Allison Carnahan, Indiana Tech’s vice president of enrollment management. “They are used to being independent and are very eager for the campus experience. Often, they have done career exploration more than a private- or public-schooled student. They tend to know their majors pretty quickly.”

So - "real school" high school, or homeschool high school for our daughter? That remains to be seen. It's nice to know at least that colleges these days don't think homeschooling is a disadvantage.

Iran: Are We Already At War?

2007-09-23T17:32:00.000-06:00

Robert Tracinski has a disturbing article today on RealClearPolitics, entitled, "The Buildup to a U.S.-Iran War."

Here is his first paragraph:

For more than a year now, I have been arguing that war with Iran is inevitable, that our only choice is how long we wait to fight it, and that the only question is what cost we will suffer for putting off the necessary confrontation with the Islamic Republic.

Despite the title, the content of the article makes it clear that the author thinks Iran is already at war with us, whether we choose to believe it and respond to it or not. This sounds frighteningly like what happened to America with al-Qaeda during the 90's; they were at war with us, but we were blissfully unaware of it. The author points out several indications of Iran's war with us:

1) Their threat to bomb Israel if either the U.S. or Israel attacked Iran.

2) The speculation that Israel's recent bombing raid in Syria targeted a facility where Iran and Syria, with the help of North Korea, were building a nuclear weapon.

3) The AP report that a recent explosion in Syria was a factory being used to build chemical weapons, including VX and Sarin nerve agents and mustard gas.

4) American arrests of Iranian Republican Guards Corps' Qods Force members in Iraq, where they are, according to General Petraeus' testimony, "training, arming, funding, and in some cases directing" Iraqi insurgents.

I would add to Mr. Tracinski's list a couple of other evidences, including Ahmahdinejad's clearly war-oriented rhetoric, which sounds suspiciously like that of Osama bin Laden, and the display of Iran's military might which took place immediately before Ahmahdinejad's visit to the U.S. to speak at Columbia University. I've seen displays like this before - most often on TV in old World War II films, when Hitler held them to build support for the Axis powers, but also in Iraq throughout the reign of Saddam Hussein, when he was at war with Iran and with the United States, and in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. They appear to be a mechanism used by brutal dictatorships when at war with democracies, to intimidate both their own people and those they are fighting against. That Iran's president feels this display appropriate immediately before his visit here suggests he and his government believe they are at war with us.

Robert Tracinski concludes:

The coming of the war with Iran has very little to do with our intentions and has everything to do with the enemy's intentions. Our only choice is how we will respond. Will we continue to evade the need to confront this threat--or will we finally begin to fight back?

I think the thing that disturbs me most about this is that, unlike the Iraq war, fighting a war with Iran is likely to be ugly. Iran is much bigger than Iraq, and much more difficult to fight. And we are already a divided people, with far too many of us willing to surrender easily for the sake of our own comfort and convenience. If we are going to fight Iran, we will have to do it together, recognizing that failure to do so may mean we will be overtaken by the Islamic jihad. And with the elections looming, I find it hard to believe that the American people will be willing to set aside our creature comforts and do the difficult work of fighting an enemy who is determined to be at war with us.

Quick Update

2007-09-20T20:35:00.001-06:00

Hey everybody,

Sorry I haven't had much to say for a couple days. Some unpleasant little virus has decided to make its home at our house and I've been on autopilot. I hope to be back in a day or two.

Homeschooling Comes of Age

2007-09-18T09:21:00.000-06:00

That's the title of a great post from Isabel Lyman at the Ludwig van Mises Institute's website today. It's an unlikely place for a highly positive post on homeschooling, a website that claims to be "the research and educational center of classical liberalism, libertarian political theory, and the Austrian School of economics." But highly positive it is, in the vein of John Taylor Gatto's writing, if you're familiar with that.

Here are some of the highlights:

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the modern home education movement was in its infancy. At that time, most Americans viewed home-styled education as a quaint tourist attraction or the lifestyle choice of those willing to endure more hardship than necessary.

What a difference a few decades makes.

Homeschooling has undergone an extreme makeover. From maverick to mainstream, the movement has acquired a glamorous, populist sheen.

Isn't that the truth? Though I must admit, it sort of annoys me to think that I'm involved in anything with "a glamorous, populist sheen"! I started homeschooling because it was best for my children, not because it was mainstream, glamorous, or populist. In fact, when my daughter was 3 and we decided to homeschool, it was barely coming out of the shadows, and only just beginning to be accepted as a legitimate schooling option.

The article goes on to discuss star athletes, winners of national competitions, presidential candidates, and high achievers such as Micah Stanley, who recently passed the California state bar exam at age 19. Fortunately, the author does not pretend all homeschool students achieve these unusual levels of success and notoriety.

Although it's commendable when the young achieve Herculean goals, homeschooling has always been more about freedom and personal responsibility than winning an Ivy League scholarship or playing at Wimbledon. In general, it has attracted working-class families of all ethnicities and faiths, who have been eager to provide a nurturing, stimulating learning experience.

She then points out one of the real problems with public school education:

In a legal sense, homeschools serve as a glaring reminder of a complex issue
that has become the stuff of landmark Supreme Court cases: does the state have
the authority to coerce a youngster to attend school and sit at a desk for 12
years? Whether said child has the aptitude and maturity for such a long-term
contract (or is it involuntary servitude?) remains an uncomfortable topic
because, in the acceptable mantra of the day, "education is a right."

Oooh - involuntary servitude? Ouch! But isn't that the truth? It has become accepted practice in this nation - and in most "civilized" nations around the world - for us to lock our children up most of the day in classrooms, from the time they are five or six until they are adults. By the way, have you ever noticed how many of our schools look and behave more like prisons? Small windows, locked doors, children only allowed in certain places at certain times, herded around like sheep - Ugh! What a way to take the spontaneity out of childhood! And by calling it "education," we also remove all the joy from learning.

Ms. Lyman's concluding paragraph sums it up beautifully:

Above all, the merit of homeschooling is that it allows for experimentation, flexibility, and trial and error. Here is the great contrast with state-provided education. As with all systems hammered out by bureaucracies, public schools get stuck in a rut, perpetuate failures, respond slowly to changing times, and resist all reforms. Errors are not localized and contained, but all consuming and system wide. It's bad enough when such a system is used to govern labor contracts or postal service; it is a tragic loss when it is used to manage kids' minds.

Nicely put! I hope some of the apparently liberal readers of that website read this article and take it to heart. Meantime, it provides a great endorsement of homeschooling, and an encouragement for those of us who may find it challenging at times to deal with our own kids day in and day out.

What Happens After Homeschooling?

2007-09-17T08:53:00.000-06:00

This morning I was reading a blog post by someone who didn't know a lot about homeschooling, someone who had recently discovered that homeschooling is becoming increasingly popular among the African-American community. This person was beginning to ask some serious questions about homeschooling, questions met by their more liberal readers with scorn and critical comments.

Among the poster's questions were these:

How well does homeschooling work? Does the “product” - an educated person -
perform well afterwards, once they’ve rejoined educational settings with the
more traditional social environments (colleges and universities). Does the
reduced level of social interaction during those homeschooling years have an
adverse effect, or is it compensated for by social interaction that presumably
takes place after school? Perhaps there are arguments that the reduction in
social interaction even helps in some ways?

Given the powerful influences of peer pressure, stereotyping and the like which
skew a child’s perception of what sort of careers they can aspire to pursue (I’m
- of course - thinking of black kids and science, girls and science, but also a
broader spectrum as well), might homeschooling reduce some of that? (I say
“reduce” but not eliminate, given the same stereotype problems that exist in the
images in entertainment and the media at large) Do the numbers bear that out?
Are there numbers on that at all?

As might be expected, I had something to say about some of these things! :) Here are my answers to these questions.

The research shows conclusively that most homeschooled students do exceptionally well, both academically and socially, after they leave homeschooling. Take a look at www.nheri.org, especially the link there entitled "NHERI Research." The National Home Education Research Institute has found, for example, that "The home-educated are doing well, typically above average, on measures of social, emotional, and psychological development. Research measures include peer interaction, self-concept, leadership skills, family cohesion, participation in community service, and self-esteem. "

Not only that, but research is being done on adults who were homeschooled, and they have found that they: "1) participate in local community service more frequently than does the general population, 2) vote and attend public meetings more frequently than the general population, and 3) go to and succeed at college at an equal or higher rate than the general population."

OK, enough statistics - now for some personal anecdotal evidence. I was homeschooled myself for grades 1, 6, and 9-12. My years homeschooling provided me with some of my best memories and my strongest relationships. I slipped easily into college, which I greatly enjoyed, and graduated magna cum laude from one of the more challenging private colleges in the country. I actually made the transition into college much more successfully than my public-schooled husband, who made few real friends there and was thrilled when he got a C on his first test, because he had never learned to study.

I have homeschooled my daughters for their whole lives. My older daughter is 11, and is doing beautifully both academically and socially. My younger daughter is 7, and is still ironing out some rough edges and learning what friendship is all about (as are most 7-year-olds). I do make it a priority to ensure my girls gets significant social experiences, including some that are consistent enough to make real friends. Both girls are enrolled in a one-day-a-week enrichment program, where they take band, drama, art, Spanish, and other subjects that are hard to teach one-on-one.

I find most homeschooled kids are actually better socialized than most public-schooled kids. I think this is because social skills and cultural values are more effectively taught by adults than by large groups of children. When my daughters encounter difficult social situations, I am usually immediately or quickly available to help them process their feelings and their responses, and to provide a mature perspective on the situation. They don't have to wait all day, stewing on their feelings and maybe making the situation far worse. Not only that, I'm there with them to model mature, adult social behavior (which I hopefully exhibit most of the time!). They see how I deal with difficult social issues, and they learn to respond in a healthy way, rather than watching a bunch of other 7-year-olds (or junior-highers), and modeling their behavior after them.

I think you're right, too, that homeschooling can reduce the effects of peer pressure and stereotyping. My daughters don't learn that "girls can't do math," for example; in fact, my younger daughter is exceptionally good at math, and I would not be at all surprised to find she ends up in some math-oriented career. Because I'm with my daughters most of the time, I see their strengths; because I provide their primary input, I can encourage them in the directions in which their gifts lie. My older daughter is a great leader, and school interactions with peers and teachers don't squash that tendency.

I remember in college interacting with a professor about what I wanted to do with my life. That professor belittled me, saying, "Do you really think, in this day and age, you can actually do that?" I struggled with that question, because it was a person of some authority and someone I respected who had told me that. But my previous experiences, especially being homeschooled, gave me the courage. I decided I WOULD do that, no matter what this professor or anyone else thought; and I have done just that. I believe the foundation I'm giving my girls will help them, too, to accomplish whatever they set their minds to do.

It seems to me that homeschooling, when done thoughtfully and correctly, can provide extremely positive answers to the questions the original post asked. When done carelessly, of course, it can make adjusting to post-graduation life more difficult, socially and academically; it can extend stereotypes and limit a child's options. But the format of homeschooling, and the fact that most homeschooling parents are doing it because they want what's best for their child, mean that the average homeschooler is likely to do better in life after homeschooling than the average public-schooled student.

Just my 2 cents' worth, of course! :)

Turning the Tables on the NEA's Homeschooling Statement

2007-09-15T18:33:00.000-06:00

On the Home Education Magazine's News and Commentary page today, Valerie Bonham Moon has a great rewrite of the NEA's statement about homeschooling. It's so great, I'm not just linking to it, but I'm also reproducing it here in full.

2007 - 2008 NEA Resolutions
PDF-page 45
B-75. Home Schooling The National Education Association believes that home schooling programs based on parental choice cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience. When home schooling occurs, students enrolled must meet all state curricular requirements, including the taking and passing of assessments to ensure adequate academic progress. Home schooling should be limited to the children of the immediate family, with all expenses being borne by the parents/guardians. Instruction should be by persons who are
licensed by the appropriate state education licensure agency, and a curriculum approved by the state department of education should be used.
The Association also believes that home-schooled students should not
participate in any extracurricular activities in the public schools.
The Association further believes that local public school systems should have the authority to determine grade placement and/or credits earned toward graduation for students entering or re-entering the public school setting from a home school setting. (1988, 2006)
And, since the NEA has had their shot at us, I thought I’d try one in return:
B-75. Public Schooling The (fictitious) National Homeschool Parent
Association believes that public schooling programs based on parental choice cannot provide children with a nurturing childhood. When public schooling occurs, all small children attending must all have a lap to sit on, and a stuffed animal to hug. Older children should have comfy armchairs. The children must be able to go to the bathroom when they need to, and have cups of cocoa, animal crackers, and a good book
nearby. When public schooling occurs, children must not be subjected to boring textbooks, tests that have confusing answers, or have their square corners sanded off to fit into someone else’s round holes. Instruction should be by persons who care about the children, and know their middle names without peeking at a list to find out. An interesting curriculum should be used.
The Association also believes that publicly schooled children should not have their free time monopolized by extracurricular activities in the public schools that restrict full student-body participation because of grade point averages or talent tryouts. French Club doesn’t have a French test for members, why should the football team?
The Association further believes that parents should have the authority to take their children out of class or gorgeous sunny days to go for walks, on rainy days to splash in puddles, and on snowy days to ride on sleds.
What great points she makes here! And honestly, aren't the things she describes also a significant part of a child's education? When the NEA talks about "a comprehensive education experience," they are missing this very important aspect. I may make a stab at rewriting this myself; don't you want to try one too? :)

"God's Harvard"?

2007-09-05T11:27:00.000-06:00

There's a very interesting review on SFGate this morning about the new book by Hanna Rosin entitled God's Harvard:A Christian College on a Mission to Save America. The book is a report on the year and a half Ms. Rosin spent embedded at Patrick Henry College, the well-known "homeschooler's college." It's an interesting term, "embedded" - it wasn't widely used until the Iraq war, but now it appears to mean anyone who spends significant amounts of time living with and studying, and then reporting on what they see.

Ms. Rosin is Jewish, which gives her a different perspective on Patrick Henry College from either the prevailing secular or the homeschooling point of view. But unlike so many reporters, she actually spent the time really studying PHC and getting to know it from the inside. It sounds like she quite fairly assesses the reality of life at PHC. Look at these paragraphs from the review of her book, for example:

Patrick Henry College, or PHC, which opened its doors in the fall of 2000, was founded on the principle of enlisting "the purest of born-again Christians in a war to 'transform America' by training them to occupy the 'highest offices in the land.' " Not a modest goal. But ever since Patrick Henry's first students unpacked their Bibles and Palm Pilots, class after class has shown an almost single-minded determination to meet it. Over the past five years, at least one of the school's 300 students has won a place in each set of the coveted three-month internships offered by the White House. After graduating, some have gone on to attend elite law schools, including Harvard. One graduate is making connections in Los Angeles with the aim of writing major Christian-themed screenplays.

We might not have suspected the homeschooling movement to cultivate such outgoing personalities. But those are precisely the students Patrick Henry works to attract.

And this one:

At the heart of this book, though, are portraits of PHC students, from the "ultraconservatives" who follow the rigid Student Handbook to the letter, to the overachievers shooting (without irony) for the White House, to members of the "den of sin ... [a] group of boys [who] had worked the roommate selection process to commandeer one wing of a dorm," into which they smuggled cigarettes and beer and where they hung a "Pulp Fiction" poster.

The students she portrays are not the brainwashed automatons usually found in the descriptions of homeschoolers - especially the PHC variety - given by the secular press. I found the review of this book fascinating, and I'm really looking forward to reading this book. I'm not sure where I stand on Patrick Henry College myself - I have some significant concerns about it. And I know I will disagree with some of Ms. Rosin's conclusions. But it seems to me this book will be a worthwhile read for those of us in the homeschooling world who may be considering what our children will be doing for college.

About "Homeschooling Information You Don't Hear About"

2007-08-31T21:14:00.000-06:00

A recent entry posted on "Flixya" was called "Homeschooling Information You Don't Hear About." As might be expected, the author assumed that the only information people hear about homeschooling is positive - quite a strange assumption considering how much criticism is levelled at homeschooling. Nevertheless, I did find the "information" mentioned interesting and, compared to many negative articles about homeschooling, relatively fair. Here are some of the most significant points, along with my thoughts about each.

The previous information about home schooling is what is so often published to try to sway you to home school your children, but are they being up front and honest, telling you everything that you need to know? Of course, many of you already know that the answer to that question is no. You need to be aware of the bad things that come along with home schooling, so that you can make the best decision for both you and your child.

While I can't argue that it's best to make an informed decision, considering both positives and negatives, I'm not convinced that those who support homeschooling are failing to be "up front and honest" or are not "telling you everything that you need to know." In most cases, parents considering homeschooling seem to be well aware of the downside of homeschooling, particularly the issues mentioned by the author. Still, let's give this person the benefit of the doubt.

You need to remember that your child’s academic success or failure will weigh solely on your shoulders, so if you slip, if you don’t assign homework, or if you don’t make him do his homework, or settle down long enough to learn, then you are to blame. You have to be certain that your child stays on the same academic level as his peers, and if he isn’t do whatever it takes to get and keep him there.

This is a very significant point. However, the assumption here is that it's difficult to "be certain that your child stays on the same academic level as his peers." In truth, there are few homeschoolers who don't accomplish at least that much. In many cases simply turning off the TV and video games and allowing the child to explore his or her world will allow that child to stay at the public school's academic level. Adding an hour or so of reading aloud to the child and some time interacting over grocery shopping or baking can provide what most children need in terms of math, science, and history during the first 4 to 6 years of their education. CAN you do more? Of course! Do you NEED to do more to keep your child up with their peers? Probably not.

On the other hand, homeschooling does require that parents make deliberate choices about whether kids need to "keep up with" their peers or not. It also does require that parents do whatever it takes to get the child to the parents' own minimum expectations. For us, that means I insist on reading and math, no matter how my children protest. Other families may establish other minimum goals, but the accomplishment of those goals obviously lies entirely on the determination of the parent and the student.

One of the good and possibly bad parts of home schooling is that you get to spend almost all of your time together with your children. This is good in that you develop a closer relationship, and you know what is going on, without having to rely on someone else to nurture and teach your child. The bad part of this is that when your child is having a bad day, or you are having a bad day, you can’t take him to school, go somewhere and relax, and then pick him up later. You have to deal with the tantrums and bad behavior all on your own, so you need to make sure that you have enough patience to do so.

This is one of the biggest things that keeps parents from choosing to homeschool. "Oh, I don't have the patience for that," is what I hear from so many, as if I, the homeschooling mother, had some sort of supernatural patience. In truth, it takes no more patience to homeschool than it does to live with a preschooler. Sure, there are many difficult moments; there are also many highly rewarding moments that help make it worth the cost. See my post on "Homeschooling Secrets" for more on the incredible rewards and benefits of homeschooling.

You also need to remember that teaching your child will become your full time job. Your husband will become the sole source of your family’s income, and you will have to learn how to cut corners to stretch your budget as far as possible. If you can’t live on that budget, or if it will cause undue stress and strain on your marriage, then home schooling may not be the best route to take at this time.

This is not entirely true. Homeschooling does not take up every spare minute of a parent's time. Yes, you may have to give up a full-time job in order to homeschool. But there are many hidden sources of savings in homeschooling, including the lower cost of clothing (both for Mom and for kids), significantly lower meal costs (since you eat out less and use fewer convenience foods), and generally lower transportation costs. Often parents are surprised to discover how much less it costs to live when one parent is home much of the time. In addition, there are many homeschooling parents who work at least part time. I work two part-time jobs (a total of about 15 hours/week) and bring in about $700/month to our home, almost entirely tax-free. And many of my friends work when Dad is home; some even work full-time and arrange homeschooling around that. The budget issue need not be a "deal-breaker" for homeschooling.

You can’t be a pushover for your child; you have to make him do his lessons and his homework, no matter how much he tries to convince you otherwise. No one loves your child like his parents, but you have to be strong enough to make him do the things that are best for him, even if he doesn’t realize it at the time.

Here I can't argue. Unless you're going to "unschool" and let your child run his or her own day, there are going to be times you will have to make your child do what is best for him or her. To me, that is well rewarded by the incredible joy of seeing my children learning, growing, and prospering, and knowing I've been a part of that.

Never underestimate the pride and the thrill you will experience when your child turns to you and says, "I did it! I read the whole book!," or when you hear someone else compliment you on how gentle your pre-teen is with younger children. Those rewards make all the difficulties worth it. And I think THAT'S the homeschooling information you don't hear about!

"Turning the World Upside Down"

2007-08-29T07:15:00.001-06:00

That's the title of yesterday's Breakpoint radio program (transcript here), given by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley. And it's a great one!

We don't hear much about Christians in China these days. Their government continues to be hostile toward them, and news is often hard to come by. But the church in China is still growing, by leaps and bounds. According to Earley, 10,000 Chinese become believers every DAY - that adds up to 70,000 per week. There are now 111 million Christians in China, and "more Chinese worshipping in 'house churches' than belong to the Communist Party"!

And these believers are not content to hide out in China; they are turning their sights on winning the world for Jesus Christ. Take a look at this excerpt from the Breakpoint transcript:

The Asia Times columnist “Spengler” recently wrote that China may soon occupy the role that the United States has occupied for the past 200 years: “the natural ground for mass evangelization.” He adds that “if this occurs, the world will change beyond our capacity to recognize it.”

He foresees Chinese Christians, like their Korean counterparts, “[turning] their attention outward.” Only, with a Christian population fifteen times the size of Korea’s, and a Chinese Diaspora all over the world, the impact will be far greater. “Spengler” uses the word “earthquake” to describe it.

According to John Allen of the National Catholic Report, the most “audacious” Chinese Christians dream of taking the Gospel along the historic “Silk Road” into Muslim lands. As David Aikman has written, they believe it is their task to complete the mission of preaching the Gospel in every land. To that end, Chinese Christians are already secretly “training missionaries for deployment in Muslim countries.”

This is what “Spengler” means by an “earthquake.” As he puts it, “the greatest danger to Islam” comes from Chinese Christians looking westward toward Jerusalem.

I don't know if this news excites you, but it does me! Once again churches in countries where we once sent missionaries are sending missionaries themselves. The fruit of effort put in by people like Hudson Taylor, Gladys Aylward, and Eric Liddell, is finally being reaped.

The challenge is for those of us in American and European churches. Will we continue to lead the way in winning people to Christ? Or will we instead sit back and slowly become irrelevant, while the people in less developed and more restricted nations use what little they have to transform the world.

Time Management for Homeschooling Moms

2007-08-24T21:55:00.000-06:00

Marianne over at TheHomeschoolMom.com recently posted an excellent article entitled, "Homeschooling - Making Priorities." Her post seriously challenged me. She starts off using the illustration of filling a bucket with rocks, pebbles, sand, and water. You've probably heard the illustration before - if you start with the little stuff, you'll never get the big stuff in. But if you start with the big rocks, then add the pebbles, then the sand, and finally the water, you can fit far more into the same bucket. (I use this principle almost every day in putting my second-grader's toys away!)

Marianne goes on to point out that our time is the same way. We can schedule everything in tiny, 15-minute blocks, and maybe we'll remember to get everything in. But if we really want to get in what's important (the "big stuff"), we have to put it into our schedules first, and fit the other things in around it.

Then comes the really convicting part.

So, what are the gemstones in your life? What is important to you? Here we are once again grappling with the goals you have - where are you headed and what is significant to you?

At a recent conference, I was challenged to prioritize my life according to roles. I had never thought of that before. The roles I have as a Christian, wife, mother, teacher, friend and so on, should determine my priorities in my life and these should play an important part in how I prioritize my life and days. I have considered three of my roles below.

Firstly, I am a child of God and therefore one of my large gemstones should be time set aside in communion with my Father, Creator, Saviour and Lord. We all know, and I am acutely aware of the shameful truth that if this time is not scheduled in my day and given priority, the sandy cares of life will smother my day and the most important rock of my life will not fit in the bucket anymore.

Secondly, I see my role as a wife. Is it not true as homeschoolers that our husbands can often feel short-changed in the whole process of homeschooling? Here, too I am guilty of spending an enormous amount of my time being devoted to programs, schedules, book orders and so on, working hard on what we see to be important, but at the same time - leaving out our spouse and forgetting what God has called us to do and be in that regard. How do we make our husbands a priority? By giving them quality time. Schedule in some special time together - it may be an outing, a walk around the block, or dinner together after the children are in bed. Whatever it may look like, or however fancy or commonplace it may seem, there needs to be intentional time set aside for relationship building and time-out with your husbands. Your children will be blessed by seeing their mum and dad enjoying a strong, vibrant, fun-loving relationship together. So, set aside time to make it happen!

Thirdly, I have the role to be a mother to my children. Even though I spend all day with my children, it does not necessarily mean that I am connecting with each of my children in their time of need. For some children that may mean a gentle, warm smile. Others may need time together - going for a walk, flying a kite, baking a cake.... spending special time. For other children, kind words of recognition or a thoughtful card would touch their hearts. Each of our children have different needs and one of our roles as mother is to communicate our love and acceptance. Also, as a mother, I want to teach and instruct my children. We want to encourage them to persevere in their difficulties and develop their areas of strength. We want them to grow more and more into the image of Jesus Christ and be the unique person which He has created them to be. What a wonderful blessing it is to walk beside our child, encouraging them and watching the work of God in them.

As we contemplate the enormous task of homeschooling and the limitations of a 24 hour day, we need to differentiate the "significant" from the "ordinary." If we do not deliberately make time for the "significant", our days and weeks and years will be filled up with the "ordinary." I'm not against schedules or day planners - not at all! What is important - is what you put in them! It isn't difficult to work out that our relationships - eternal and personal, are the gemstones in our bucket, so therefore the schedules and plans we make should reflect our priorities.

Homeschooling should be synonymous with relationship-building, since we share our lives so closely with our family members. But, the danger can overtake us so easily and we can fill our days with the sand and grit of the ordinary. Our challenge is not to forget the real gems in our lives and prize them close to our hearts.

Ouch! She has hit on something here that's been bothering me, at the edges of my mind, for quite a while - the feeling that my time is getting "filled up with the 'ordinary.'" If you're feeling that way, maybe you'll want to join me in looking again at what's really important in our lives, and making sure we get the gemstones in.

Time to End the Stem Cell Controversy

2007-08-23T17:16:00.000-06:00

The time has come to put an end, once and for all, to the stem cell controversy. There is no doubt that adult stem cells actually work - in contrast to embryonic stem cells, which have so far produced no - that's right, NO - effective treatments. If we wanted proof of the efficacy of adult stem cells, the results are becoming more and more common. Chuck Colson, on today's Breakpoint radio program (transcript here), makes that clear in a broadcast entitled, "Your Own Stem Cells Work!"

Colson describes the case of Carron Morrow, who suffered from severe heart disease. Here's an excerpt from the transcript:

Carron, a 58-year-old Alabama mother, was in bad shape last year after suffering four heart attacks. The right side of her heart was functioning at less than 50 percent. Carron needed a new heart—but 100,000 people were ahead of her on the transplant list.

By fall, she told CitizenLink, “I couldn’t walk 20 feet without being on somebody’s arm.” Her church rallied round her in prayer.

Meanwhile, Carron’s nurse was researching adult stem-cell therapies and discovered a groundbreaking study at the Texas Heart Institute. Researchers agreed to include Carron in the study, which included surgery not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

In October, surgeons removed 500ccs of bone marrow from Carron’s left hip. The cells were cultivated, and four hours later, 30 million stem cells were injected into the right side of Carron’s heart.

Within two months, Carron relates, “I could sing a whole song at church,” and was back at work. Four months later, she had another CT scan to see how her heart was functioning. The news could not have been more—well, heart-stopping.

As Carron put it: “The doctor calls and says, ‘Ma’am, the right side of your heart is normal.’ I was in la-la land for several days.” The procedure cost just $600. Not a bad price for what amounts to a brand-new heart.

Wow - $600! That's absolutely amazing! So why are the politicians so busy debating the funding of stem cell research? Embryonic stem cells have produced no effective treatments; adult stem cells provide more promising results every day. Businesses are investing in adult stem cell research, because it works! It's time to tell our legislators to quit trying to destroy embryos and to fully fund adult stem cell research.

Homeschooling Ups and Downs

2007-08-22T16:46:00.000-06:00

Why is that homeschooling is so full of ups and downs?

Our school year is fully five days old now, and already it's had more than its share of ups and downs. Yesterday Sweet Pea, age 11, was almost in tears because the ancient Egypt projects she was going to do turned out to involve a shoe box and construction paper. "I thought it was going to be something that would look GOOD!" she whined. Doodlebug, age 7, at almost the same time, was happy because she was making a salt map showing different landforms: mountains, island, plateau, and so on.

Then there were the maps. When I first mentioned labeling maps, Sweet Pea complained and made faces and stomped around; Doodlebug was thrilled. By the time the maps were done, though, Sweet Pea was having fun, and decided to keep going to finish the project, though she really didn't have to for another day or two.

Today we had royal riots over writing the answers to questions (Sweet Pea) and math (Doodlebug). But an hour later, Sweet Pea was excitedly doing an extra vocabulary lesson and more Latin, and Doodlebug was begging for more read-alouds.

What is the deal here? Why do we face complaining and whining one minute, excitement and enthusiasm the next? (And how do public school teachers do it with 30 kids at a time?!)

I think I have an answer: because homeschooling involves people, and people are inconsistent. We have ups and downs, we hate some things and love others, we get hormonal or just don't understand things. And when you throw three of us (or more) together in a house all day, every day, there are bound to be some peaks and valleys.

So what do we do? We learn to grow, each of us individually, through our challenges and struggles. We expect to have some rough moments - actually, lots of rough moments - and we try to be patient with each other. We listen to each other, we adjust where we can, and we try to become more mature through the ups and downs.

Proverbs 27:17 says, "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." In the New Homeschoolers Translation, it reads like this: "As iron sharpens iron, so a mom and her kids sharpen each other." :) If you're homeschooling, won't you join me for this adventure, as we all get "sharpened" together? And if you're not, won't you pray for us? Sharpening can be painful and wearing on both the sharpener and the "sharpenee."

And You Thought Public Schools Were Free . . .

2007-08-21T19:11:00.000-06:00

As we start a new school year, one of the big things that makes me wonder whether homeschooling is a good idea or not is the cost. I think I spent about $1200 on school for my two girls this year, between curriculum and school supplies. When I compare that to the free public schools, it seems like a lot.

Then I ran across this article, from Chicago's Daily Herald, by Burt Constable, who sends his kids to a public school in one of our major metropolitan areas. Take a look at how much this "free" public school is costing him.

My wife and I could buy a 42-inch plasma HDTV with the money we spend on fees required to send our three kids to public schools.

There’s the “instructional materials” fee of $205 for each of our middle-schoolers, the $76 grade-school version of that fee, the “lunch supervisor” fee of $84 and myriad charges for gym uniforms, musical instrument rentals, field trips and general whathaveyou.

Topping it all off, we are required to send our kids to school with treasure troves of school supplies that include glue, Scotch tape, soft soap, a 54-function scientific calculator, a 512 MB flash drive and more Crayons, markers, colored pencils, pens, binders, folders, notebooks, scissors, erasers, highlighters, correction fluid, paper and sharpened No. 2 pencils than our kids can carry in their humongo backpacks, which are of a weight usually associated with sherpas.

When I was a grade-schooler, I included a pencil and maybe even a back-up pencil in the Swisher Sweets cigar box that carried all my supplies to school. Now, in this age of computers and printers, our sixth-grade twins are required to cart a mind-numbing total of 18 dozen pencils, pens and markers to school.

Mr. Constable is trying to keep this cost in perspective by comparing it to a homeschooler near him. But the homeschooler he's comparing himself to spends $7000 to school six kids. That sounds like a lot to me! I have a book on my bookshelf entitled, How to Homeschool Your Child for Free. I'll grant you, I don't use that method much, and I do spend significant money homeschooling. But I use excellent quality materials, and every year's curriculum I buy contributes a significant number of great titles to our home library. I don't buy many textbooks or workbooks, and I certainly don't spend money on "instructional materials" or "lunch supervisors," nor on supplies to restock the teacher's closet! The majority of the money I spend on curriculum and supplies provides our family with long-lasting value - not just this year, but for many years to come.

And for those who have less to spend, there are many resources they can use to homeschool for much less than I spend. Libraries are full of excellent, interesting books that can be borrowed free. People with more than one child can combine some resources, especially in areas like literature, history, and science. Some of the best curricula out there expects you to combine your kids for everything except math and language arts, or to re-use materials for younger children, substantially reducing the cost.

Statistics say the average homeschooler spends $600 to $1000 per child. That includes those individuals like Mr. Constable's acquaintance who spend $1200 each for six kids, which means many families homeschool for much less. Mr. Constable is already spending somewhere around $1000 for his three kids; it wouldn't cost him much more to homeschool.

As for me, it's a real encouragement to know that homeschooling isn't all that expensive compared to public school.

I am so honored . . .

2007-08-20T11:48:00.000-06:00

Dana over at Principled Discovery has nominated my blog for the Thinking Blogger award! I am surprised and thrilled. (You can see the award displayed on my sidebar.)

Now, the trick is figuring out five great blogs to pass it on to. Here are the ones I've come up with that make me think; I hope you enjoy them.

Thought-Provoking Homeschooling Blogs:

The Common Room - The Dear Head Mistress always has lots of valuable insights, on homeschooling but also on lots of other topics, and is a prolific writer. She writes generally from a Charlotte Mason/classical perspective, which fits our learning style well. I like reading the posts by her kids, too.

Dominion Family - Another great blog with a classical viewpoint. Her current post points out that teaching doesn't actually happen until students learn.

Buried Treasure Books - I never look at this blog that I don't end up thinking about something in a new way. (She doesn't just write about books, either!)

Thought-Provoking Christian Blogs:

Dave Burchett - Every time I read Dave's blog, I find myself motivated and convicted. He doesn't post about homeschooling, just about life; but he always has something I need to read. If you follow this link, be sure to scroll down to his post called "Don't Miss This Phony Baloney Holiday," from Thursday, August 16.

Mark D. Roberts - Sometimes on the deep side for this busy mom, I generally find it worth my time and effort to read what Mark writes. He is a senior pastor, teaches at Fuller Seminary, has written 5 books and numerous articles, and in between finds time to post thoughtful blogs pretty much every day.

So, to these great bloggers, I present the "Thinking Blogger Award," giving them the honor of posting the award on their website and of nominating 5 other bloggers for the same award.

Thanks, Dana, for thinking of me for this award, and congratulations to the new Thinking Bloggers!

Do Homeschooled Kids Have Wings?

2007-08-17T18:13:00.000-06:00

In an editorial in today's USA Today, founder Al Neuharth wrote that "Parents should give school-age kids wings." (HT: Alasandra) Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Most of us are familiar with the old quote, ""There are two lasting bequests we can give our children. One is roots. The other is wings," and most of us agree with it.

But Neuharth takes the idea further. When he talks about "giving kids wings," he apparently believes homeschooling parents refuse to do that. Look at this quote from his editorial:

My concern about our educational system is for those who aren't part of it — these home-schooled:
* An estimated 1.7 million to 2.5 million will be taught at home by a parent this year.
* They are tied to their mother's apron strings or father's bootstraps.
Not letting kids try out their own wings after we've provided the right roots will disadvantage them later in life.

Wow! Does Mr. Neuharth really think the several million homeschooled kids throughout the country are ALL still "tied to their mother's apron strings or father's bootstraps"? Does he really believe we should send our 5- and 6-year-olds to spend 8 1/2 hours - 1/3 of their days - in an environment we rarely even witness, let alone are able to impact in any significant way? And can he actually think that if we don't think that's such a great idea, we will therefore keep them tied to our apron strings for the rest of their lives?

There are some of us who believe that the process of releasing our children ought to be gradual, to be done only when they have a solid foundation - "the right roots." There are some of us who believe the first five years of a child's life are a bit short to sink their roots deeply. Even for a tree, the process of building solid roots takes many years; it can't be accomplished overnight. How much more true is that for a child? There's a reason our country keeps parents accountable for their kids' actions until they are at least 18 - because we recognize children aren't adults until then. They need time to sink deep roots. Homeschooling facilitates that.

Once the roots are firmly established, THEN we encourage our children to fly. We give them opportunities, first with plenty of parental involvement, and then gradually weaning them to their own direction. Just like a gardener, we gradually release the stakes that support them, one at a time, not all at once. So when they do leave home (for swim team, for camp, or for college), we don't worry as much, because we know their roots have gone deep. These are not shallow-rooted trees that will tip over in the first big windstorm; they are solid, mature oak trees that will stand against the worst weather.

My older daughter is 11. I am even now giving her more and more control. She decides what she will wear and what she will have for lunch - and she has made her own lunches most of the time since she was about 8. (She can do that, you see, because she's at home all day. She's not limited to what I pack in her lunch or what the school serves that day.). She does her own laundry (at her request). She chooses most of her own clothes (with some guidance from me). She chooses her own friends (though I still exercise considerable guidance because this is a more difficult decision than what to have for lunch or what clothes to wear - as she gets older, she will have more control). She chooses her extracurricular activities, whether gymnastics or swimming or band or whatever, and has since she was 5 or 6. This school year, while I give her the assignments, she decides what her day will look like, as long as she gets her assignments done. (What school child has that kind of freedom?) She could go to school if she wanted to - she recognizes that homeschooling gives her far more freedom and more control over her day. In the meantime, I am confident in the decisions she's making, as I watch her continue to make wise choices. I believe by the time she's ready to leave home, she will not only have solid roots, but strong, fully developed wings as well. While I will miss her, I'm looking forward to that day, to watching her soar on her own.

I hate to disagree with you, Mr. Neuharth, but I'm convinced you are badly mistaken in this assessment of homeschoolers (how many homeschooling families do you know, anyway?). I very much want my children to fly. I just don't believe that pushing them out of the nest before they have their flight feathers is going to do anything but land them on the sidewalk for the neighbor's cat to feast on.

Art Through the Years

2007-08-14T15:05:00.000-06:00

If you are a homeschooling parent, you're probably planning to try to teach both history and art at some point this year. Clearly the two topics are interrelated, since all art was created at some point in history, and almost all periods in history are characterized by art in one form or another. (There may be time frames from which we no longer have any preserved art, but as people created in the image of our Creator, it seems pretty much all of us value some kind of artistic/creative expression.)

Until today, though, I hadn't thought much about how art reflects the philosophies and mindset of the artist, and particularly how artistic styles reflect the philosophies and mindsets of the historical times in which the artists lived. But on his Breakpoint radio program today (click here for transcript), Chuck Colson points out the relationships, and he does so in a simple, easy-to-understand way. At the same time, he explains something I've been wondering about recently: Why do many people today think animals create art, and why does that idea seem so strange to me? Take a look:

Imagine we’re touring an imaginary art museum. Beginning in the medieval section, we see figures that are stiff and formal, set against gold backgrounds. This is art expressing an otherworldly philosophy of life.

Next comes the Reformation. Figures begin to look like real individuals instead of symbols. Reformation artists believed God could be represented not just by icons but by paintings of real human beings, who are made in His image.

Next we come to the Enlightenment. Paintings show respectable figures in fashionable dress. Landscapes consist of neat, orderly fields—nature under the dominion of reason.

But in the next room, the plowed fields give way to craggy mountains. Romanticism in art celebrates wild, untamed nature, the Noble Savage, ancient legends.

Finally we approach the room housing modern art, beginning with Impressionism, when art was taken over by subjectivist philosophies. Definitions of art shifted from the subject matter being portrayed to the way light strikes the artist's eye; from great themes of human drama to daubs of paint on canvas; from objective standards of beauty to the artist's psyche.

Expressionism and Surrealism probed deeper into subjective experience. Eventually art lost sight of any objective standards of form and beauty. Art became defined as whatever an artist does.
But without objective standards of form and beauty, even unformed, random marks on canvas—not unlike the dabblings of a dog—can be regarded as art.

Art used to be regarded as the expression of a civilization’s highest ideals. Great painters shared a communal vision of the good and beautiful. But today art has become so subjective that many people cannot tell the difference between works that have artistic merit and works that don’t. A museum might exhibit a paper plate next to a Rembrandt—who is to say which is art?

Christians ought to care about art because God calls us to lead the way in renewing our culture. Artistic talent is a gift of God, to be cultivated for the service of God and our neighbor.

So while we may regard the “work” of canine Picassos as amusing, we should spend our money supporting those humans who are called to create, as the Scripture puts it, “for the glory of God and for beauty.”

If nothing else, Colson's program here helps me understand how the philosophy of a given historical time period influenced the art of that period. I find it fascinating, for example, that as the concepts of right and wrong, good and bad, became more and more blurred in society, art became more and more subjective. "If I think it's good, what right do you have to say it's bad?" became as accepted in art as in morality and religion. As I teach my children history and philosophy, I can now show them how the culture of the time influenced its art.

But Colson also explains why I don't think a dog's creation (or an elephant's, or any other animal's) can be called art. True art can only be created by people, as an expression of the gift God has given them (whether they recognize it as being from Him or not). True art gives us a glimpse of "the good and the beautiful," to use Colson's words. And the best of true art is produced to glorify God and make the world a more beautiful place.

The Difference Redemption Makes

2007-08-09T12:59:00.000-06:00

I'm not really a sports fan. Oh, I like to know the score, and I cheer for the Rockies, the Broncos, the Nuggets, and the Avalanche; but truth be told, I don't really care all that much. My life is not significantly affected by what happens in professional sports. Until today, when I casually clicked on a link at Crosswalk.com called, "A Tale of Two Superstars."

In that post, Dave Burchett talks about two major sports figures: Barry Bonds, and Michael Irvin (former Dallas Cowboys player). He compares them, pointing out how Barry Bonds' attitude has made him difficult for many people to like, and reminding us how Michael Irvin was once just like him. Then he talks about the acceptance speech Irvin made as he was inducted into the Football Hall of Fame last weekend. (I didn't hear that speech, of course - I've already told you I pay little attention to sports - but I'm very glad Burchett commented on it.) Here's what he had to say.

Michael Irvin seems to be a changed man. On a day when he was being recognized as one of the best football players to ever take the field you would expect that Irvin would display more than a little pride in his athletic giftedness. He chose to humbly confess his sinfulness. I believe it took more courage to utter some of the words Irvin spoke Saturday than it took to catch a pass knowing that a linebacker was drawing a bead on his chest.

Irvin started with a prayer. He alluded to the success on the football field. But the comments that won my respect were his up front and honest confessions at a event that rarely sees such moments. This excerpt from The Dallas Morning News is a sample of Irwin's amazing speech.

Then came some very personal and emotional apologies for his failures off the field during the 1990s – the parties, the women, the drug arrests.
He spoke directly to his wife, Sand, bringing a tear to her eye.

"For better or worse – those are the vows we take before God in marriage," Irvin said. "It's easy to live with the 'for better,' but rarely can you find someone who sticks around and endures the 'for worse.'

"Sand, my wife, I have worked tirelessly to give you the 'for better.' But I also gave you the 'for worse' – and you didn't deserve it. You didn't deserve it."

Irvin broke down in tears about 21 minutes into his speech when he addressed his sons, Michael and Elijah.

"That's where my heart is," Irvin said of his sons. "I say to God, 'I have my struggles, and I made some bad decisions, but whatever you do, don't let me mess this up.' I say, 'Please help me raise them for some young lady so that they can be a better husband than I.' "

And suddenly a night dedicated to football had nothing to do with football at all.
I did not used to be a fan of Number 88. He is winning me over. Partly because he could play at the highest level of professional sports. But mainly because he was man enough to recognize his mistakes, humble himself before his Savior, realize what really matters, and confess all of that when he really did not need to.

Dave Burchett goes on to discuss the value of redemption, the impact it can make on a person's life, and the power of God to redeem anyone (even Barry Bonds). He concludes with this:

I never would have believed that Michael Irvin would move me so much while he was living his former life. That is what redemption is all about. A Savior who stands always ready to meet us at the moment we turn to Him. Michael Irvin did it. I did it. Barry Bonds is not a bigger sinner than me or Michael Irvin. We are all the same in the eyes of a Holy God . All of us, whether rich or poor, famous or anonymous, face the same question about how we can be reconciled to God. Paul summarizes it nicely in Romans.

This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

Paul goes on to say that we can not take credit for any of this.

Can we boast, then, that we have done anything to be accepted by God? No, because our acquittal is not based on obeying the law. It is based on faith.

Redemption is available for all of us. Even super stars.

How badly I need this reminder! It's so easy for me to look critically at others, especially those "superstars," and blame them for the way they behave. But God is able to take those people, just as He took me, and redeem them. He can take lives that are worthless today, and give them eternal value. His redemption can change people forever.

And that's a good lesson to remember, whether we're interested in sports or not.

Too Much Excitement?

2007-08-08T21:56:00.000-06:00

Dennis Prager has a must-read article over on Townhall.com entitled "Excitement Deprives Children of Happiness." If you've never heard of Dennis Prager, he is a conservative Jew who hosts a radio program on the Salem Radio Network. Every Friday he has what he calls "The Happiness Hour," when he focuses specifically on how people can be happy - and it's not what you think. He means REAL happiness, not the artificial kind caused by indulging our selfishness, so he spends this hour talking about how giving and sharing and focusing on others rather than yourself will make you happy.

In this article, Dennis talks to parents about how to help their children be happy people. His basic premise is found in the first two paragraphs:

If you want your children to be happy adults and even happy children -- and what parent does not? -- minimize the excitement in their lives. The more excitement, the less happy they are likely to be.

In both adults and children, one can either pursue excitement or pursue happiness, but one cannot do both. If you pursue excitement, you will not attain happiness. If you pursue happiness, you will still experience some moments of excitement, but you will attain happiness only if happiness, not excitement, is your goal.

He goes on to discuss how our children become so surrounded by excitement that they become jaded, so when something exciting isn't happening, they are bored. Then he offers this prescription:

The solutions are as simple to offer as they may be difficult to enforce. Limit the amount of excitement in your children's lives: the amount of video games, the amount of non-serious television, the amount of music whose only aim is to excite. If they are bored, they will have to remedy that boredom by playing with friends, finding a hobby, talking to a family member, walking the dog, doing chores, reading a book or magazine, learning a musical instrument or foreign language, memorizing state capitals, writing a story or just their thoughts, exercising or playing a sport, or just thinking.

The younger the age from which children are deprived of superficial excitement, the longer they will remain innocent -- i.e., not jaded -- and capable of real happiness. For as long as they live under your roof, and therefore (hopefully) under your control, you can implement excitement detox. If you do, they may hate you now, but they will thank you later, which is far superior to liking you now and hating you later. And in parenting, that is often the choice we must make.

As a homeschooling parent, I think this is tremendously valuable advice. I love the suggestions he makes about ways to help kids remedy their boredom. And I find my homeschooled kids, having more free time than the average child, end up doing many of these kinds of things. My older daughter (now 11), for example, spent a significant part of last year copying the Declaration of Independence onto parchment-type paper with a calligraphy pen; she has also taught herself to play the piano reasonably well, and has learned to amuse younger children easily. My younger, only 7, is still working on what she can do, but she likes to be alone and creates elaborate story lines for her Polly Pockets and Littlest Pet Shop animals.

This has been an interesting summer for us. I have rarely heard the complaint, "I'm bored," though we watch a movie less than once a day (and no TV). This afternoon we have a gymnastics class going on out on the back lawn for my two girls and two friends from the neighborhood (led, of course, by my natural-leader 11-year-old!). My girls are busy, and you know what? In spite of the lack of excitement sitting at home, they are happy. They create their own excitement by exercising their imaginations and their creativity - and that's a far better excitement than the cheap thrills they'd get from artificial excitement.

I appreciate Dennis' article. Even as a homeschooler, it's so easy to fall for the current idea that kids need excitement all the time - the TV, the video games, the zoo, the amusement park, the beach, the mall - and miss what will lead them to really be happy. Take a few minutes to read his whole article; it may well change the way you are parenting your children, and will certainly encourage you to consider the impact of excitement on their ultimate happiness.

Oh, and one more thing - maybe we ought to consider the impact of excitement on our own ultimate happiness. Can it be possible that too much excitement limits adult happiness as well?

Carnival of Homeschool #84 Is Up!

2007-08-08T21:04:00.000-06:00

The most recent Carnival of Homeschooling, hosted this week by NerdFamily, is up tonight, and my post "What Are Homeschoolers Really Like?" is in it.

I especially liked the sections on organizing (be sure to read the post from All Info About Homeschooling entitled "Ideal Schedule vs. Real Schedule") and on the politics of homeschooling vs. the public school system. One of the best posts was from Why Homeschool? and is inconspicuously titled, "Response to a Comment," but all the posts highlighted in that paragraph are excellent.

There are many other good ones, including one called, "Adult Workers and Clones," by The Thinking Mother, and a funny comic strip entitled simply "Home Spun Comic Strip #119." (I'll have to check out these comic strips - they look good!)

This Carnival of Homeschooling is HUGE and there are lots of great articles, so be sure to click over and take a look.

Educating Christians - What It's All About

2007-08-08T14:51:00.000-06:00

On Prison Fellowship's website today, from Breakpoint's "Worldview Magazine," T. M. Moore has an excellent article entitled "Educating for Christian Rulers." I found the article thought-provoking, especially on a couple of significant points.

American education is doing an excellent job at its stated objectives: creating economical and political men and women who will find their niche in the materialist economy and bow their knees to the system of political power, believing that every ill can be amended and every need addressed by economic and political means. The economy is growing. So is government. Politics has become a year-round sport. And the evening news reminds us, day after day, that, at the end of the day, the only things that matter are the bottom line and the opinions of those in power (including themselves). I disagree with the naysayers: American education is doing just fine.

However, I do agree with the opinion stated by Charles Silberman back in 1978, just before all this educational hand-wringing and faucet-fixing began to heat up in earnest. In his book, Crisis in the Classroom, Silberman wrote, “Almost everybody who wrote about education [in the past] took it for granted that it is the community and the culture—what the Greeks called paideia—that educates. The contemporary American is educated by his paideia no less than the Athenian was by his. The weakness of American education is not that the paideia does not educate, but that it educates to the wrong ends” (emphasis added).

Those of us who've been homeschooling for a while, especially those who are familiar with John Taylor Gatto's writings, have to agree with this. American education is creating exactly what our community and culture have asked it to create. But it's NOT creating what most of us want for our kids. More and more Americans (religious and nonreligious alike) are realizing that what the community and culture have asked education to create - slaves to the economic and political system - is not what we want for our kids.

The present paideia is likely to continue unfazed and unchanged by critics, at least in the short term. But if that paideia is ever to change, it will require the infusion of new thinking and courageous new leadership—political, educational, and familial—at every level of society. Those new leaders must be developed by a different paideia, with a perspective and worldview more like that of the founders and less like that which obtains today.

Mr. Moore goes on to prescribe what kind of education we need in order to create the kind of leaders we want.

Certainly education that seeks the kingdom of God must be rooted in Scripture and the grand tradition of the faith (2 Timothy 3:15-17; 2 Thessalonians 2:15). It must be committed to wide learning, for the earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it (Psalm 24:1; Ecclesiastes 1:12-13), and He is putting all things under His feet to advance His rule on earth as it is in heaven (Ephesians 1:22-23). The new paideia must focus, in all its expressions, on the formation of godly character—minds captive to Jesus Christ, hearts enthralled with God and His Law, consciences trained to wisdom, and lives progressing in godliness (2 Corinthians 10:3-5; Psalm 119:97; 1 Timothy 1:5; 2 Corinthians 7:1). Such an educational program can be accomplished only through a curriculum established in loving discipline, in which all willingly submit to those spiritual exercises and regimens that train the soul and life for godliness. It must be a community undertaking, a conscious collaboration of home, church, and educational specialists at all levels.

Finally, education for the rule of Christ—education designed to nurture Christian rulers—must concentrate for the long term on the realization of a new spiritual order: the kingdom of God. Four general objectives must guide all our instruction and assessment: the achievement of divinely ordered lives, divinely ordered relationships, divinely ordered communities, and divinely ordered culture. If we keep these objectives in mind, and order all our instruction to achieve them, we will certainly come closer than at present to nurturing a generation who rules their own lives, and every sphere of their lives, according to the kingdom agenda of our Lord.

Is such an education possible? Past generations of the followers of Christ have realized more of it than we in our own generation have even dared to dream, often against the most impossible of odds, and in the least likely of settings. The martyrs of the first three centuries; the Celtic Christians; the generations nurtured by Alcuin and Rabanus during the Carolingian revival; sixteenth-century Lutherans in Germany and Calvinists in Geneva; Hollanders at every level of society under Abraham Kuyper; and many, many other examples from Church history stand ready to encourage and enlighten us . . . .

I find it interesting that Mr. Moore's terms for what a solid education would involve are met to a large extent in homeschooling. Consider the benefits of homeschooling when it comes to:

1) "Rooted in Scripture and the grand tradition of the faith." For Christian homeschoolers, this is an important part of our education, and perhaps for many of us one of the reasons our kids are not in the public schools.

2) "Committed to wide learning." Whether Christian or not, most homeschoolers recognize that homeschooling allows our kids far wider learning than a traditional school system. While we are deeply committed to being solidly grounded in Scripture, we are equally committed to exposing our kids to as much as possible of what life has to offer.

3) "Focus . . . on the formation of godly character." Again, for most Christian homeschoolers, godly character is a high priority. We don't just want our kids to excel academically; we are far more interested in their becoming people of great character and integrity, people who imitate Jesus.

4) "A curriculum established in loving discipline." I don't know about other homeschoolers, but without discipline my homeschool falls apart. Whether it's comfortable for me in the short run or not, I am forced to maintain discipline - both my own and my children's. I train my children to live godly, disciplined lives and to submit themselves to the Lord's direction.

5) "(Concentration) . . . on the realization of a new spiritual order." Secular education simply can't do this at all; but homeschooling provides a natural lead-in to it. When I look at Christian leaders, people like Jim Elliott, Mary Slessor, Eric Liddell, Amy Carmichael, George Mueller, and Gladys Aylward, I see people I want my children to model themselves after, people who made the Kingdom of God their #1 priority. Fortunately, in our homeschool, we are able to focus on that, too.

If you're up for some deep but thought-provoking reading, take a look at the full article. Mr. Moore never mentions homeschooling, but if you're thinking in that direction, you can't help seeing how well it meets exactly the criteria he's established.

In the meantime, let's keep our focus on just what it is we are trying to accomplish. It's not about the academics. We are here to build Christian leaders for the future, and to hopefully influence our culture toward godliness. That's what it's all about!

Homeschooling Secrets

2007-08-06T13:03:00.000-06:00

Tammy, over at Just Enough, and Nothing More, has a great post entitled "5 Homeschooling Secrets." Take a look at this:

One of the best things about homeschooling stereotypes is that they keep our secrets. On the one hand, it’s frustrating when non-homeschoolers criticize this educational option. On the other, it’s a blessing in disguise: if they only knew these secrets, we’d have a nation-wide educational epidemic on our hands, with families falling left and right out of our school systems! Our society as we know it would collapse!

Thank goodness people don’t know our homeschooling secrets. Just in case you wondering what they are, and you want to be in on it, here’s what we homeschoolers aren’t telling you:

1) Homeschooling moms/parents/families have a LOT of free time. We have so much free time, that we are able to fill that time with our own personal projects, go places, visit friends, and balance our busy lives with rest and relaxation. Our time is ours, to do as we see fit. We don’t have to overextend ourselves and be super-families. And, even if we are doing the same amount of school work and the same number of classes as a non-homeschooling family, we STILL have tons of free time. We aren’t rushed and we don’t have to squeeze in family time.

2) Homeschooling is hyper-ultra-super efficient. I won’t even explain this one. Let me just say, that the time in active learning/amount learned is an amazing ratio.

3) Homeschoolers have a lot of fun. I mean a LOT. If you are a homeschooler that hasn’t been told this secret, consider yourself informed. Homeschooling is a fun and exhilirating and an exciting opportunity to take control of our lives and be our authentic selves. People who are their authentic selves have a great time in life. Homeschoolers are, overall, the most authentic people you’ll meet.

4) Homeschoolers are THE people to ask about what’s going on around town. If you aren’t a homeschooler, and you want to know about guitar teachers or the free museum days or anything - ask a homeschooler. They’ll either know, or they’ll know where to find the info. Homeschoolers are informed and have their pulse on the community. The whole socialization thing is a front to keep this secret from being public knowledge.

5) Fill in your secret here. What should be #5?

I love her point about homeschooling stereotypes. It never occurred to me that when people see us through the lens of their stereotype, they miss out on these great secrets! I always want to tell people who say, "I could never do that," that I'm not doing what they think I'm doing. I'm not some sort of "supermom"; I prefer homeschooling because it's better for my kids, but I've discovered over the years that it's also better for me.

Sure, homeschooling is hard at times; but so is sending kids to school. I discovered in the past few days, looking at the public school schedules, that if I sent my kids to public school I'd be having to take my 6th-grader to school at 7:30, then turn around and have my 2nd-grader at a different school (about 15 minutes from my 6th-grader's) at 8:30. Then in the afternoon, I'd have to pick up my 6th-grader at 2:30 and my 2nd-grader at 3:30, five days a week. Or they could take the bus - my 6th-grader leaving at 6:30 and my 2nd-grader at 7:45, each to a school only about 10 minutes away, and then returning at 3:30 and 4:15 respectively. Then since my 6th-grader swims four days a week, I'd have to take her to swim practices at 5:30 and pick her up at 7:30. And then homework - most likely at least a half-hour for my 2nd-grader and an hour or more for my 6th-grader, not counting special projects which come on someone else's schedule rather than our family's. And if they were going to school, I would certainly be working rather than sitting around all day waiting for them to get home - meaning when they were rushing around to get to school, I'd be rushing around to get to work, and all of us would spend our best hours apart. Ugh! And this is better because . . . ?

I much prefer homeschooling. I get up when Dad gets up to go to work and he and I have a quiet early morning together, or sometimes my 2nd-grader will come and snuggle with us in the morning. If the kids aren't up, Dad kisses them and wakes them when he leaves for work. After we all get around, get dressed, and have breakfast (which we sometimes do with Dad if the kids are up in time), we gather on the couch to read Bible. Then we tackle "schoolwork," the hardest stuff (like math, grammar, and phonics) first. After the hard stuff is done, we snuggle on the couch to read interesting books for history and science, and great kids' books (start to finish, not just a chapter or so) for literature. When the kids are hungry, we take a quick break for a snack or lunch, or maybe a Popsicle or hot chocolate if the weather is appropriate. If they are restless, we can go on a bike ride or walk to the park for a half-hour break before continuing. If they're focused, there are no bells to announce the time for that subject is up; we keep going as long as we choose. Sometimes we watch an educational video over lunchtime. We're often done by noon or within an hour after lunch, and then the kids have time to play, explore, rest, or read before we have to take my 6th-grader to swimming. When we get home, there's no homework, and we're not under pressure to get to bed since we can usually sleep in the next day if we need to. We have our best hours of the day together, building relationships with each other. Problems are met as they occur rather than having to wait to be discussed later.

So which is better for everyone?

And I haven't even gotten to my proposal for #5 on Tammy's list:

Homeschooling means I get to keep learning too! I have learned far more since I started homeschooling my kids than I ever learned in school myself, even in college. As we read those interesting books, I am able to make connections I never thought of before, and to see things from new perspectives. The "big picture" of how the world works comes together for me in a whole new way.

After having homeschooled my kids ever since my older daughter was born, I'd never trade it. Even if one or both of the girls eventually decides to go to school, I still feel this has been by far the best approach for these early years, and I'm in no hurry for it to end. Tammy's right about secrets - if everyone understood what I've learned in the last few years, the schools would be having a hard time keeping students!

Safely in Iraq

2007-08-06T07:40:00.000-06:00

The following letter was posted on an online military moms group by a member who had "adopted" the author. This soldier had sent an email letting the poster know that he had arrived safely in Iraq. The posting member replied with a question: "Isn't "safely in Iraq" a contradiction in terms?" The Marine agreed to allow his reply to be shared with anyone.

"Safely in Iraq" is not a contradiction in terms here. It's pretty accurate. This is a very safe base.

When people ask about whether or not the job is getting done in Iraq, I think about this place now. 2 years ago, Fallujah and its "suburbs" were the worst place in the country. Now, statistically, it is the second safest in this entire province. I have more to worry about at home driving down the road than I do here... at least in regards to my own safety. I think about Haditha, where I was last year. We got hit with mortars every 3 or 4 days throughout the entire deployment. Apparently now it is a very safe place, with a large police force and a large civilian watch. It takes time, but we're getting the job done here, no matter what the media says.

It takes a couple years to really show the fruition of our work... but we're doing it. And if I have faith in this ----hole, everyone else should :)

The author of this letter, the soldier involved, was Corporal Daniel Redding, USMC, Fallujah, Iraq.

A Journalist Gets It Right On Homeschooling

2007-08-04T08:28:00.000-06:00

All too often, the journalists in our nation completely misunderstand homeschooling. But this morning Linda Whitlock, columnist for the Roanoke Times and adjunct English professor at Virginia Western University, has a wonderfully positive article entitled "The Best Deal on Schools." In fact, the article is so impressive I'm quoting the whole thing here:

Except for the long days and the chance to sit on my porch swing, I'm not a big fan of summer. Fall, with its crisp, clear days, blue, blue skies and Trix-colored foliage, is my season. But this particular time of summer does have an appeal for me beyond the long days, porch swing and, oh yeah, the end of the summer semester at Virginia Western -- cheap school supplies.

Yes, I must admit, I'm a sucker for pens, pencils, highlighters, whiteboard markers, notebooks, sticky pads, Wite-Out (especially Wite-Out), and the sundry other paraphernalia on sale virtually everywhere right now. Guess it's the writer and teacher in me. Or maybe just the kid who always got excited at the start of each new school year.

If you have school-age kids, you're probably even now scouring Wal-Mart and the malls for good deals on school supplies, backpacks and back-to-school clothes. But you may be overlooking the best school deal of all -- the one right in your living room, or dining room, or family room -- anywhere you have space to teach your kids at home.

Don't look so surprised. It's not that odd anymore. Lots of people are doing it. Chances are you already know someone who's taken that step. Despite the work
involved, most home schooling parents love it. Chances are the kids do, too. That's been the case at least with the home schooled kids I've come in contact with both at Virginia Western and as an online writing coach for home schoolers.

And why not? Home schooling has loads of benefits -- many of which I described a few columns back -- for both parents and kids.

Probably the most significant benefit of home schooling, though, is one I didn't mention in my previous column. Home schooling puts parents back in control of their children's education. That's not to knock the legions of dedicated public school teachers who do their best to educate kids. But when someone else is educating your child, it's that person's philosophy of education and his or her ideas about what's important -- not yours -- that govern what's taught. That and the SOLs, of course.

True, you can try to influence what happens in your kids' schools and what's taught in their classrooms. But it's hard work; it doesn't always, or even often, work; you
run the risk of being labeled a censor or troublemaker; and in the meantime, your kids aren't being educated the way you'd like. Why put yourself or your kids through all that when you can educate them at home?

I can hear all the objections now. But I don't have a college degree. But we can't do
without the second income. But curriculum and materials cost too much. But my kids won't want to leave their friends.

Valid concerns, all.

But you don't need a college degree to teach your kids. According to the National Home Education Research Institute, "Homeschool students score above average on achievement tests regardless of their parents' level of formal education." And no matter where you think your academic deficiencies lie, abundant resources are available to assist you.

As for doing without that second income, maybe you should take a close look at what it's costing you to bring in that extra money. After factoring in child care expenses, fast-food runs and transportation and clothing costs, you might find it doesn't make as big a contribution to the family coffers as you thought.

Curriculum doesn't have to be expensive either. A public library and the Internet can provide most of what you need. Anything else you can more than likely pick up used at a reasonable price. Besides, it's not as if there aren't any costs associated with sending kids to public schools.

Your kids might surprise you, too. It's just possible they'll leap at the chance to escape the public school rat race. OK, maybe not. But once they figure out the benefits of home schooling for themselves, they'll come around.

Education, the home school license plate says, begins at home. If you decide that's what you want for your kids, it will require sacrifices on the part of the whole family. But achieving a worthwhile goal always does require sacrifice. And that's not a bad lesson for any of us to learn.

I appreciate Ms. Whitlock's article in particular because as a college professor, she sees our homeschooled kids right after they graduate, as they are adjusting to the "real world." So many critics of homeschooling express concerns about how our kids will manage when they get to college - when they have to deal with other kids and with professors like Linda Whitlock. It's a tremendous encouragement to see one of these professors speak out in favor of homeschooling.