Homeschooling by the Numbers

These statistics are a few years old, but give you a sense of how homeschooling stacks up.

Via: DegreeSearch.org

Home School 2012-2013

Taking a break from the Stanley Kubrick-weird RNC play, "Springtime for Statists and Amerikka" to talk about homeschooling, free style.

I just finished week four of this year's school and have gotten off to a rocky, yet typical start. You always say to yourself, this is going to be the year where everything is going to be organized. I think I've been saying that to myself since I was in First grade, but it never, ever happens, does it?

Ben Swann: Homeschooled Super-Star

This guy is really amazing: same age as me with as many kids as me: five. He's a journalist, no really, a real, true blue journalist that investigates stuff. Broadcasting from Fox 19 in Cincinnatti, this guy is single-handedly doing what the multi-billion dollar media refuses to do - get to the bottom of the controversies.

Stories he's broke:

• who wrote the offending Ron Paul newsletters and an awesome racism discussion
• the vote fraud in Maine
• Anwar-Al awlaki and the Constitution
• Just go to this link and check out all the awesome videos - it's really amazing

He finished high school at 11, got his bachelor's from Brigham Young at 14, got his master's in history at 16. What have you accomplished lately? Making me feel kind of negligent over here. Apparently, BYU has a great correspondence college program, which is why his mother selected that school. Looks like I need to get some tips from that lady, huh?

Here's just a sample:

My letter from HSDLA

I am a member of the Home School Legal Defense Association, a group that legally represents challenges to home education by asserting the Fourth Amendment.  They are associated with Patrick Henry College, the preeminent college comprising of mostly homeschooled children.

The Chancellor of PHC is Michael Farris who tells us how he wistfully looked at a picture of the original 85 students of PHC from the year 2000. Where are they now?

Ron Paul *Hearts* Homeschoolers

Whenever he has a chance, RP is always sure to mention homeschooling as an example of opting out of a government program. I haven't seen or heard any of the other candidates make a point to highlight homeschooling as an example of circumventing a government monopoly. Part of my support of Ron Paul comes from simple self-preservation. I don't trust any of these others to defend my fourth amendment right and my parental rights against the State. But I thought I'd share this little vid taken at a homeschooling get-together in the recent past where Ron Paul talks up homeschooling:

Saving America: Step 2

Exit Public "Propaganda" Education

Oh here we go, I know some of you will say. Another home-school mom telling me to be like her because she's so awesome and thinks everyone should do as she does. Not so, I realize that some people are not mentally equipped to home educate their children. Not stupid people, but those with mental issues I have thought man, these people shouldn't be homeschooling. But I don't want a huge police state that would be have to be big enough to get into everyone's business to monitor that. So you get the parents you came with kids, ok? But when you compare the socialization skills of homeschooled kids to public school kids, it really is no contest. You see, most homeschooled kids have never experienced bullying (outside of their siblings of course) or peer pressure or having to ask permission of an authority figure for bathroom privileges. At least not on a consistent basis do they have to experience these things. There minds, as a result are conditioned differently.

My motivation for urging people to leave government school system is primarily self-preservation. Yes, home education builds stronger families, stronger faiths and produces independent people. Why do you think the banking cartel of the early 20th century worked overtime to destroy it? Home education was the primary mode of education at our founding and America had the highest literacy rate of just about any country. Since compulsory attendance laws were passed in this country, the literacy rate have declined precipitously since WW1.

 from Family of Flowers:

Again, it doesn't take a majority to make an impact. If only 10% of Americans would find alternate pathways to educate their children, we can circumvent the pro-liberal-environmentalist-homo propaganda that permeates the government-mandated curriculum. It's becoming obvious that the internet has made the old industrial-revolution style of learning obsolete. The banksters have recognized this and according to Charlotte Iserbyt are going to "privatize" the schools and move us all into charters. Yay, conservatives will shout. However, the same collectivist agenda will be taught there as well. Also Bill Bennett was trying to peddle a public school at home type of thing to homeschoolers and was frustrated when we didn't go for it. You see, many of us homeschoolers realize that if you allow the government to "give" you a goodie, no matter how small, they think they own you. Don't take any candy from these people, kids.

You would think with record unemployment rate there would be enough adults out there available to take our kids back from the system.

I'll not rewrite what I have already written about getting out of the public indoctrination system. You can check out my previous posts:

Remove your child from Government-controlled schools.
Back to School Videos

In order to help some of you get started, I'm introducing a new page on this site called, Homeschool Quick Start Program, to be handy for people to get clued in. 

The faster we get kids out of the controlled school system, the faster we can educate a new generation of unconditioned "free" people to question and undermine the central planners.

The bottom line is that the public school system was designed to destroy the American family and crush the minds of the young. Charlotte Iserbyt and John Taylor Gatto have done extensive work on this and I'll not regurgitate it here - I'll just leave you with these parting thoughts by the people who have been in charge.:

The kindergarten or infant school has a significant part to play in the child’s education. Not only can it correct many of the errors of home training, but it can also prepare the child for membership, at about the age of seven, in a group of his own age and habits—the first of many such social identifications that he must achieve on his way to membership in the world society. 

-UNESCO Training booklet 1951

The ordinary teacher spends a good share of her time changing the cultural
and intellectual habits which the child acquires from its family and surrounding culture. Or else the teacher duplicates home training, in a complete waste of time. Here we can almost say that the school is the family, and vice versa. [emphasis in original]

-- BF Skinner, Walden II 1948

Large families can be changed from an economic asset to an economic liability if all members of society can be offered the prospect that through work, saving, and deferred spending they can achieve economic security for themselves and their children. For the already affluent middle class, larger families can be made an economic liability by increasing the incentives for and the costs of advanced education for their children....
Cultural changes to reduce the social pressure to marry and have a family can be pursued by changing educational materials which glorify married life and family life as the only “normal” life pattern, by granting greater public recognition to non-married and non-family life styles, by facilitating careers for single women....

--Revised report of population subcommittee, Governor's Advisory Council on Environmental Quality” for the State of Michigan,  April 6, 1971

 College is a whole other post:)

Happy Mother's Day!

Gotta do a Mother's Day post with this blog entitled, The republican Mother and all.

 ¹²For thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream: then shall ye suck, ye shall be borne upon her sides, and be dandled upon her knees.
 ¹³As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem.
--Isaiah 66:12-13

This is one of my favorite "mother" scriptures that illustrates not only God's relationship toward Israel, but the ideal behavior of a mother and child. Notice that the mother is always present, holding the child at her side, bouncing him on her knee, and the nursing babe being satisfied.

 

I'll never forget being at a local park back when I just had two kids. A little girl about 9 years old had ridden her bike from some condos next door and was attracted to my baby girl.  She asked where my older girl went to school, and I said that she went to preschool a couple of days a week. Then she asked, but where does she go after that. I replied, "she goes home with me." The little girl looked down and said 'oh', real sad. It really hurt me that going home with your mom or having a mother available to you wouldn't have entered her mind. You have to be going to somewhere all of the time.

God's plan for raising mentally healthy persons is for someone to be there with them, pretty much all the time.  (Deut 6.) For those of you who think you would be nuts if you were around your kids all the time, that's the first sign you're going off the tracks. You see, a properly domesticated child is not a butt-wipe to be around. In fact, the older my kids get, the more helpful and mature they become. They're modeling their behavior after me, not a bunch of kids in a "lord of the flies" situation. We have arguments and all that fun stuff, but I can say that I can take all my kids to a restaurant by myself and not be embarrassed. 

So when people ask me "what I do", I reply, I help preserve Western Civilization by raising children who can write cursive, know their multiplication tables, can diagram a sentence, question authority, fear God, are immune to peer pressure, etc. Not necessarily in that order, but you know what I mean. I could probably be making a lot of money sitting in some office somewhere, but in the long run, having children who have discernment and wisdom of the Word will pay far more than any salary you can imagine.

Busywork: Then and Now

Ever wonder what public schools did before copy machines? In many, if not most our schools, the school day is relegated to doing a worksheet, passing the worksheet up, and being handed the next worksheet. When my daughter was in school, she considered unionizing the second grade in protest of worksheets. So I pulled her out before she became a Jr. Norma Rae, for all the other usual reasons as well.

But this worksheet phenomenon made me wonder, what did kids do 150 years ago when paper was precious? Does it really take as much practice as many of the packaged curriculums offer to master a concept? Most of you probably know that practice work was done on a slate as there was no Wal-Mart to buy a ream of paper at. Many schools were only open for shorter terms than they are today, yet according to literacy tests of potential soldiers over the years, the literacy rate has been steadily falling since WW1.  If you haven't seen the exit exam for 8th grade from Salina, Kansas circa 1895, you ought to check it out. Ask yourself what traditionally schooled 8th grader or older could pass tests like that nowadays? When people say that "he only got an eighth grade education", I would submit that the eighth grade of yesterday is more than comparable to a high school, or perhaps associates degree of today. Ok, maybe more than that! For those who really want to challenge themselves, check out the 1869 entrance exam to Harvard. I can do the math, but the Greek had my eyes crossing!

I thought it would be instructive to compare textbooks of the 1800s vs. the textbooks of today. What you find is a lot less exercises in the older books. You could actually carry all of your schoolbooks and not develop back problems. There weren't as many pictures as well as busywork taking up 450+ pages.  I would note that many of these old textbooks are to be found for free on Googlebooks should any frugal homeschooler want to try them. I highly recommend the McGuffey Readers. There are also "notes to the teacher" found in these older books, indicating that there was not a "teacher's edition" with all the answers. I suppose the teacher was actually supposed to know their subject. My daughter and I have slowly been working through my grandpa's Latin book and really enjoying how much vocabulary we've been learning. Even if we do all the exercises for each lesson and taking it one lesson per week, it's not an overwhelming amount of work.

I've noticed that the big home school publishers that also provide most of the curriculum for private, Christian schools contain an obscene amount of busywork. I suppose to keep 25+ kids occupied all day, you've got to do something. This is why God made it to where kids are born at least nine months apart, so that this never happens in nature. So it's important not to just buy the grade 4 book because your kid is 9 years old, but actually review the contents and see if this will keep them challenged and occupied for the school year.  I wish I could reclaim all the wasted time I spent sitting in public school filling out useless worksheets, don't you?