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Think you're not ready for homeschooling?

Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2014 7:30 am
by editor
The Final Nail in the Coffin: The Death of Freedom in Our Schools

By John W. Whitehead
August 26, 2014

“Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves.”―D.H. Lawrence
No matter what your perspective on the showdown between locals and law enforcement in Ferguson, Missouri, there can be no disputing the fact that “local” police should not be looking or acting like branches of the military.

Unfortunately, in the police state that is America today, we’re going to find ourselves revisiting Ferguson over and over again. Every time an unarmed citizen gets shot by a police officer who is armed to the hilt, or inclined to shoot first and ask questions later, or so concerned about their own safety, to the exclusion of all else, that everything becomes a potential threat, we’ll find ourselves back in Ferguson territory again.

Here’s the thing, though: whether or not it ever gets reported, whether it incites any protests or marches or showdowns of epic proportions, whether it elicits any outrage on the part of the citizenry, Ferguson is already happening over and over again, all around us.

It’s happening in small towns and big cities alike every time a citizen gets stopped and frisked for no better reason than they “look” suspicious. It’s happening on the nation’s highways and byways, where corporate greed disguised as road safety is making a hefty profit off of drivers who have the misfortune of passing a red light camera or a speed camera or a license plate reader. It’s happening in the privately run jails, which are teeming with prisoners doing time for nonviolent crimes that should have landed them with a slap on the wrist and a fine instead of hard time and forced labor.

It’s happening in our airports and train stations and shopping malls, where menacing squads of black-garbed, jack-booted, up-armored soldiers disguised as law enforcement officials are subjecting Americans to roving security checkpoints, allegedly in the pursuit of terrorists. And it’s happening in the schools, where the school-to-prison pipeline is fully operational and busy churning out newly minted citizens of the American police state who have been taught the hard way what it means to comply and march in lockstep with the government’s dictates.

Young Alex Stone didn’t even make it past the first week of school before he became a victim of the police state. Directed by his teacher to do a creative writing assignment involving a series of fictional Facebook statuses, Stone wrote, “I killed my neighbor's pet dinosaur. I bought the gun to take care of the business.” Despite the fact that dinosaurs are extinct, the status fabricated, and the South Carolina student was merely following orders, his teacher reported him to school administrators, who in turn called the police.

What followed is par for the course in schools today: students were locked down in their classrooms while armed police searched the 16-year-old’s locker and bookbag, handcuffed him, charged him with disorderly conduct disturbing the school, arrested him, detained him, and then he was suspended from school. Stone’s mother was never alerted to the school’s concerns about her son’s creative writing assignment or his subsequent interrogation and arrest.

Keshana Wilson, a 14-year-old student at a Pennsylvania high school, was tasered in the groin by a police officer working as a school resource officer, allegedly because she resisted arrest for cursing, inciting a crowd of students, and walking on the highway. One might be hard pressed to find a teenager not guilty of one or the other at any given time. Nevertheless, the tasering came after the officer grabbed the teenager from behind and pushed her up against a car, without identifying himself as a police officer. “The teenager had to be taken to hospital to have the taser probes removed before she was arrested and charged with aggravated assault on the officer, simple assault, riot, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, failure to disperse and walking on the highway,” noted one reporter.

Read the rest of this article:

https://www.rutherford.org/publications ... ur_schools

Re: Think you're not ready for homeschooling?

Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 10:18 am
by robertj
You think you want to homeschool, but you’re not ready. You may never be. And if you’re a perfectionist, it’s even worse, because your plans will never be perfect enough. So just do it. Jump in and declare that you are homeschooling and then worry about the rest after you’ve taken your first trip to the park and baked some cookies or whatever you like to do for fun.
Schools like to perpetuate the myth that a child who misses even a day of school will forever be behind. Oh, gasp, just think of the important wisdom he might miss . . . not! It’s convenient for schools to have every child there every day, and they also don’t collect funding for a child if he’s absent. So that’s what this is all about. As a homeschooler, you have plenty of time, and it’s ok not to keep regular school hours – in fact, it can be a good thing! You also have a full year to accomplish what you want, so be easy on yourself. Your child won’t fall behind.

Some do's and don't i found are really informative

A few do’s, don’ts, and suggestions.

Don’t assign a book report. If your child loves to write and wants to write an Amazon review or volunteer details about the books, that’s fine. But please don’t think you need to assign a book report just because schools do it. We don’t ask adults to do book reports. It would ruin the story for us. So don’t ask kids to do it!
Read aloud to your child, even if he or she is older and reading. Reading aloud is a wonderful shared experience. If you look for chapter books that are worth sharing and above his/her reading level, you will be doing some quality homeschooling. (For more information, see the list of books I read to my son when he was young and also some thoughts on why it’s ok for a child to be busy while you read.)
You don’t have to give tests. Same reason as #1 (you wouldn’t want someone testing you every time you learned something or to prove you were really paying attention). Just listen to your child and you’ll soon know what he understands.
Kids learn a lot while playing, so give them lots of unstructured time.
Get your homeschool ideas from many sources. There’s no one right way to homeschool, so take what you like from different books, speakers, and friends and make it your own.
Be prepared for the inevitable comments from friends and family who may worry about your homeschooling choice (and yes, your children will be socialized and go to college if they choose!).
What does your child want to learn? Ask!

Find a local homeschool group.

Don’t just find a group, go to their weekly park days and field trips, and contribute your great ideas. Get involved. This is your support group, and your kids may need the friends, but so do you! If you don’t like the group (it happens), start your own group and soon parents will hear about it and gladly attend.

Re: Think you're not ready for homeschooling?

Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2017 8:34 pm
by editor
"Flowers Are Red"
by Harry Chapin

The little boy went first day of school
He got some crayons and he started to draw
He put colors all over the paper
For colors was what he saw

And the teacher said, "What you doin' young man?"
"I'm paintin' flowers" he said
She said, "It's not the time for art young man
And anyway flowers are green and red"

"There's a time for everything young man
And a way it should be done
You've got to show concern for everyone else
For you're not the only one"

And she said, "Flowers are red young man
And green leaves are green
There's no need to see flowers any other way
Than they way they always have been seen"

But the little boy said
"There are so many colors in the rainbow
So many colors in the morning sun
So many colors in the flower and I see every one"

Well the teacher said, "You're sassy
There's ways that things should be
And you'll paint flowers the way they are
So repeat after me"

And she said, "Flowers are red, young man
And green leaves are green
There's no need to see flowers any other way
Than they way they always have been seen"

But the little boy said
"There are so many colors in the rainbow
So many colors in the morning sun
So many colors in the flower and I see every one"

The teacher put him in a corner
She said, "It's for your own good
And you won't come out 'til you get it right
And are responding like you should"

Well finally he got lonely
Frightened thoughts filled his head
And he went up to the teacher
And this is what he said

And he said
"Flowers are red, and green leaves are green
There's no need to see flowers any other way
Than the way they always have been seen"

Time went by like it always does
And they moved to another town
And the little boy went to another school
And this is what he found

The teacher there was smilin'
She said, "Painting should be fun
And there are so many colors in a flower
So let's use every one"

But that little boy painted flowers
In neat rows of green and red
And when the teacher asked him why
This is what he said

And he said
"Flowers are red, and green leaves are green
There's no need to see flowers any other way
Than the way they always have been seen"

Re: Think you're not ready for homeschooling?

Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2018 9:24 pm
by Brick Layer
Home education (schools are for fish). :mrgreen:

Re: Think you're not ready for homeschooling?

Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2018 9:43 pm
by Brick Layer

Re: Think you're not ready for homeschooling?

Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2018 6:43 pm
by editor
The way I understand it, Napoleon was the father of free government schooling. After his first failed attempt at world domination, he decided his biggest problem was communication. Every little village across Europe spoke languages and dialects just different enough from their neighbors, that no one could understand each other.

Lieutenants were chosen over squads because they could speak Napoleon's French, AND whatever dialect the lieutenant's squad could speak. The enemy knew if they killed the lieutenant, the rest of the squad would run around like a chicken with its head cut off, unable to follow orders.

Napoleon's plan required him to wait patiently for many years. He sent teachers out into the countryside, offering to teach all the children in villages to read and write for free. Parents were eager to take advantage of this free benefit.

Of course what the parents didn't know is Napoleon's plan to conscript their boys into his armies as soon as they had all learned a common language and were old enough to fight.

Some families may have suspected. I'd imagine it was a small thing to hire a few shills in each village who could be depended upon to ridicule those families who were reluctant to participate. That along with peer pressure would have made the offer almost impossible to refuse.

Re: Think you're not ready for homeschooling?

Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2018 10:37 am
by ElijahJan
What a fascinating story. I knew that Napoleon improved military communication a lot but I didn't know this bit of information.