A Suggested Revision to Illinois SB 136

I spend a lot of time each day sitting in the main office at Apathy Elementary School, waiting for Captain Chaos to complete her therapy services. This gives me the opportunity to observe parents as they arrive at school to pick-up a child and take them to doctors appointments, dentist appointments, the hair salon, and to their non-custodial parent’s house. I have been shocked by the number of parents who cannot tell the receptionist the name of their child’s teacher, their room number, and in a few instances, their child’s grade level. In the interest of fairness, and passing legislation that might make a difference, I suggest that Illinois Senator Edward “I’m full of boloney” Maloney submit the following bill for consideration:

97TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

State of Illinois

2011 and 2012SB0136

Suggested to be Introduced by Sen. Edward D. Maloney

SYNOPSIS AS INTRODUCED:

105 ILCS 5/2-3.25o

105 ILCS 5/26-1 from Ch. 122, par. 26-1

Amends the School Code. Requires the parents or legal guardians of children attending public schools, a defined term, to demonstrate that they know what in blazes is going in their children’s lives.

A BILL FOR

SB0136 LRB097 02721 NHT 42742 b

1. An act concerning education.

Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois, represented in the General Assembly:

A Demonstration of a basic awareness of WTF is going on in their children’s lives.

(a) Findings. The General Assembly finds and declares that frequently parents of children attending public schools lack a basic knowledge of where their children go and what they do each day, such as the name of their child’s teacher or the classroom number where their child spends six hours each weekday.

Parents should be able to answer basic questions such as:

1. How old is your child?

2. What is the name of your child’s school?

3. Where is it located?

4. What is your child’s grade level?

5. What is your child’s teacher’s name?

6. Can your child add?

7. Correctly?

8. Can your child subtract?

9. See question #7

10. Question #7 comes before question #8 and after question #6.

11. The “#” symbol means “number.”

12. What is your child’s cell phone number?

13. How many naked pictures has your daughter taken of herself and texted to her boyfriend’s cell phone?

14. Any other questions as deemed appropriate by the Department of Education, a competent government agency, the average six-year-old homeschooled child.

(b) Homeschooling families, by definition, know the answers to the questions enumerated above, as well as Latin, the theory of relativity, and how to make some really excellent apple pies with some pretty darn flakey crusts, and are exempt from the requirements of this bill.



This should give Truant Officer Bill Reynolds something to knock on doors and talk about. He can assume that parents of public school students who do not wish to answer his questions are in violation of the law, criminally stupid, or just plain clueless, and take appropriate action as he sees fit.

Feel free to add your thoughts to this bill.

Butt...Butt...Butt...How Can You Keep Them Home From School?

Our Apathy, Kansas, school board president has a bit of a legal problem. She is seeking a “Diversion” in court for her DUI arrest. She was arrested in September of last year on the way home from an Apathy Educational Foundation Gala fundraising event. If the request for a Diversion is granted, the case might be dismissed after “certain conditions” are met. I don’t know what the conditions are. I am hoping that she will be required to give a presentation to Apathy high school students on the dangers of alcohol and driving. Her actions undermine the credibility of any teacher who warns against drinking and driving. It’s a do-as-I-say-and-not-as-I-do situation. I'm certain the students know what she has done.

As if that wasn’t enough local trouble, a former Apathy police officer and school board member was arrested last month in Kansas City after he attempted to meet a fourteen year old boy for a sexual liaison. This man was a DARE officer. Ironically, he was also the coordinator of the Safe Kids program. He was our town’s Officer of the Year in 2008. This man only resigned from the police department and the school board last November. Blessedly, the fourteen year old boy was really a police officer. No one was hurt. So far, no children have come forward to say that they were molested by this man. This guy successfully did what every pedophile wants to do. He gained the trust of children, parents, and school administrators, as well as access to children.

In Oak Park, Illinois, a high school student is in trouble for starting a Facebook page where he rated Oak Park-River Forest high school girls on their physical appearance and level of promiscuity, while a former Fresno, California, high school wrestler is facing criminal charges for performing a “butt drag” on a fellow wrestler. The former student, now expelled from high school, claims that he was performing a legitimate wrestling move where one wrestler grabs his opponent by a buttock and drags him across the mat. The “draggee” claims that it was a sexual assault, since two of the dragger’s fingers allegedly penetrated the young lad’s anus. I cannot imagine any former high school classmate ever being willing to stick his hand in the crack of another student's rear end for any reason. I am also curious as to what the boys were wearing that would allow such penetration to occur. Standard wrestling gear should prevent such an occurrence. This will be an interesting court case to follow.

People wonder why homeschoolers opt out of participating in public schooling. I think these stories answer their questions.

$350,000.00 - Not a Bad Paycheck for a Third Grader

I am not a big fan of the litigious society that we have become. More often than not, when I hear of a court-awarded financial windfall for someone I mentally thank Stella Liebeck for opening the litigation floodgates. Having written that, I must admit that I was quite pleased to read of the $350,000 settlement for Alex Barton. I almost wrote about Alex when I first read his story. In May of 2008, his kindergarten teacher allowed her students to vote on whether or not the young man would remain a member of the class. Apparently, young Alex had been a bit of a disruption. The teacher decided to hold a reality-show style vote with the rest of the kindergarteners determining Alex’s fate. Alex lost. This must be an example of the socialization that homeschooling critics argue for when they state that students will never learn how to interact with society if they do not sit with their peers for six hours each day in a public school classroom.


Well, it turns out that young Alex had a very good reason for his inability to control his behavior in the classroom. Alex Barton is autistic. Specifically, he has Asperger's syndrome. Young master Barton completed his kindergarten year in a homeschool. And what happened to kindergarten teacher Wendy Portillo, one of those college educated, licensed, professionals whose credentials are so critical to educational success that they are held up as an example to homeschooling parents as reasons why we shouldn’t attempt to teach at home? She was suspended for a year, but has since returned to the classroom with her tenure reinstated.

You can read Brian Hamacher’s complete report here.

If the Apples Fall Any Closer to the Tree

General, have you read at least one chapter of Animal Farm?

“I’ve read four chapters. I like the book.”

Good. What is it about? What have you learned so far?

“Well, it’s about some animals…on a farm…”


Someone, please, just shoot me.


Major Havoc, have you completed your math?

“I’m having some problems with a couple of problems.”

That's appropriate. (reading from his math paper) Draw a shape that has four angles. How many  sides does it have? Major, you know which shape has four angles.

“Oh, yeah,” he replied, a silly grin crossing his face. “A square. I thought it said ‘angels’.”

Honestly, if the apples fall any closer to the tree I'm going to have a lump on my head.

The Larson Affect

The General was sitting at the kitchen table, quietly working on a grammar assignment, when he started laughing for no apparent reason. When I inquired about the source of his amusement, he read the following sentence out loud:

The famous words of General MacArthur when he left the Philippines were, “I shall return.”

He followed that sentence with, “So that’s what Gary Larson meant!”

Apparently, Gary Larson has become the measuring stick by which we measure the depth of my son’s memory and the breadth of his common knowledge. It’s a bit frightening, really.

I’m just glad he’s learning something.

Isn't Homeschooling Worth Defending?

Linda, over at The Homeschool Apologist, has an interesting post that asks the question, "Isn't Homeschooling Worth Defending?"

Check it out!

The Homeschool Apologist

You may have noticed a new entry on my blog roll. The new blog is The Homeschool Apologist. I started The Homeschool Apologist as a sight where I can refute common criticisms of homeschooling in the news, as well as provide a forum for homeschoolers interested in reading and discussing the same. I have plans on expanding The Homeschool Apologist with a few services unique to homeschooling websites. I will announce those as they develop. Most importantly, I wanted a homeschooling forum separate from Boarding in Bedlam, which focuses on family life.

To help make this venture a success I invited Linda Difino, aka Prodoceo, to co-host the blog. She eagerly accepted the offer. Linda is a veteran homeschooler of four children. She’s been educating her children at home for over twenty years. Her oldest recently graduated college while her youngest is in second grade. She’s smart, funny, writes very well, and does not hesitate to explain why homeschooling is the best option for a child’s education. Linda writes at The Joyful Journey.

I encourage anyone interested in homeschooling to bookmark the site and visit regularly. Spread the news of this site amongst your homeschooling family and friends. There are already four entries. There are many more to come. I hope you enjoy the blog.

Now, I’m off to paint the back of the house.

Enjoy!

Let's Not Make a Deal, Mr. Hall

The first question that I would like to ask Nicholas Byron Hall, a student at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, is whether or not he has observed a successful homeschool in operation. If the answer is “no,” I respectfully encourage this young man to return to his philosophical studies (he’s a political science major, too) and leave the subject of home education to people who know what they are talking about. Specifically, that would be homeschoolers. I suspect that the answer to my question is “no,” since his article “What are the disadvantages of homeschooling?” published on Helium.com offers absolutely no evidence for his critical view of home education, contrary to the statement in his biography that his "claims are well-supported by available evidence in accordance with philosophical and scientific standards."  His only qualification appears to be his job as a “Channel Manager of Social Values & Norms.”

Do people really get paid for that?

Mr. Hall manages things. “I suggest titles, monitor quality, encourage new writers, and perform other tasks. If you need assistance with something, let me know,” he wrote.

I need assistance, Mr. Hall. I need help stopping my head from exploding after reading your highly qualified essay. Do not misunderstand me. Mr. Hall is not highly qualified to write about homeschooling, but he appears to be incapable of writing a statement without qualifiers. “Homeschooling can come with a variety of disadvantages.” He countered that with the observation that “homeschooling may come with advantages.” Later in his essay he wrote that “this makes it appear that perhaps homeschooling is the best option,” before continuing his criticisms. These quotes highlight another problem with Mr. Hall’s anti-homeschooling opinion – he’s all over the map.

Mr. Hall, take a stand. Pick a side of the argument and argue for it using strong, bold statements. Allow me to provide you with an example.

Mr. Hall, you are wrong!

You were wrong when you wrote that “Parents are rarely qualified to teach their children; sorry, it's true.” If parents are not qualified to teach their children basic reading, writing, and arithmetic then the entire public schooling system should be scrapped. A person with the IQ of a melon should be able to teach ABC, 123; red, green and blue, and how to glue, to a kindergartener. Anyone with a high school diploma should be able to teach a child basic grammar school curriculum through the third grade. Parents with a college diploma should be well qualified to teach a variety of subjects to their children. Have you paged through a curriculum guide lately? Home education isn’t that hard!

Mr. Hall was wrong when he argued that “the best education, in theory, would be under someone specifically trained to educate students.” The best person to educate my children is the person who knows and understands my children, knows and understands how my children think, has my children’s best interests at heart, and creates an educational experience that serves my children’s needs. There are thousands of excellent, well educated and well trained teachers operating in classrooms across America, but no one is better suited to meet the criteria for teaching my children than I am. Those teachers are casting an educational net over a classroom of twenty or more children and hoping to capture most of them. I have my sights set on a more manageable number.

As for the argument that when people “opt out of a corrupt system rather than work together to change it, these and other [“poor”] children suffer,” I must tell you that I will not offer my children’s education as a sacrifice for some communal good. I will not allow my children to toil away in a substandard educational system and hope that along the way while we all try to fix the problems that they will learn enough to succeed later on in life. I will provide my children with the best education that I can possibly offer them. They will be far healthier, happier people, and better citizens, if I give them a solid educational foundation.

Finally, Mr. Hall, if “public education puts kids of multiple backgrounds together, and they challenge the values that their peers have,” then I will not put my children in a public educational system until I have trained them to defend their values and withstand the peer pressure brought on by their classmates. I would be a negligent parent if I allowed society to shape my children’s values. Should their values be shaped by children who value drug use? Should their values be shaped by children who value pornography? Swearing? Violence? Theft? Will your desire to see my family’s values challenged be satisfied when my son contracts HIV from little Susie Hottotrot after she gives him a diverse educational experience underneath the bleachers at school? Mr. Hall, when you wrote that you wanted children put together so that they are exposed to other values what you really meant was that you want my children exposed to your values. You want to challenge my family values through my children in your preferred educational setting. You’ll have plenty of time to challenge their values when they are older, have graduated, and started their own lives.

Until then, hands off!

That’s Homeschooling in Bedlam

One day General Mayhem and his dad looked over the day’s math assignment…


Step One: 3 1/2 a=490


Step Two: 7/2 a=490


Step Three: 2/7 x 7/2 a=490 x 2/7


Step Four: a=490/1 x 2/7


Step Five: a=70/1 x 2/1

                                                              
Step Six: a = 140


Step Seven: (The Check) 3 1/2 a=490


Step Eight: 7/2 (140)=490


Step Nine: 7/2 x 140/1=490


Step Ten: 7/1 x 70/1=490


Step Eleven: 7 x 70 = 490


Step Twelve: General Mayhem: “I say to you, do not forgive a man seven times, but seventy times seven.”


Step Thirteen: Dad (speaking like Herschel and Hyam): “490 forgives! Oy! We’re going to be here all day, but by tonight you will be well forgiven! I forgive you! I forgive you. I forgive you…”


Step Fourteen: General Mayhem (singing in his best Pa Grape voice): “We are the grapes of wrath,We'll never take a bath, It is our style to seldom smile, And never laugh!”

And thus completed the journey from math to Bible studies and on to pop culture in one short lesson.

That’s homeschooling in Bedlam!

Educating Our Children: A Question for All Parents

I received a comment from Subvet on yesterday’s post concerning homeschooling. He wrote:

The "social factor" is the prime reason my two autistic sons are in the public school system. We felt they needed daily interaction with the same peers. Were we wrong? Are autistic children in more need of this than regular kids? I'd appreciate the views of yourself and the other commenters here on this. If the wife and I have been barking up the wrong tree we'd sure like to change it. Thanks.

I have a lot of respect for Subvet. I wrote about him last November. He is the only blogger that I am aware of who regularly writes stories about the men and women who serve our country and leave their lives on the battlefield. This man understands honor. He is a career veteran of the US Navy who spent much of his time underwater on submarines. That wasn’t an easy life. I must admit, I enjoy his saltier dialogue when his writing topic makes him angry.   Subvet obviously loves his family. On her blog, Mrs. Subvet wrote, “My Husband "Subvet" says that when our first son "Sonshine" was born the sun rose on our world, when our second son "Alligator" was born the sun laughed and when our daughter "Sugars" was born all the flowers bloomed. That says it all.”

I cannot answer Subvet’s question because the educational choices that we make for our children are highly personal choices. There are a multitude of factors that are considered when parents choose the right school setting for their children, including but not limited to the community in which they live, the school district within that community, their economic status, political views, religious views, talents and abilities. My reasons for homeschooling my children and for placing one child in a public school part time are quite different from those of my readers. My reasons for completely homeschooling two of my children are different from my reasons for placing one child in school part-time. They are not easy choices.

Homeschooling isn’t the right choice for everyone; however, homeschooling should be a choice available to everyone. In the land of the free, citizens should have the right to choose homeschooling if they want to. No matter how many times I write it, I know that I have readers who think that I am rabidly anti-public schools. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. I am highly critical of some aspects of public schools. I’m highly critical of some aspects of private schools and homeschools, too. I’ve taught in all three. Each family makes the choices that are in their children’s best interests. Probably the biggest challenge in deciding whether or not to homeschool is the least understood aspect of homeschooling. Homeschooling is not simply recreating a classroom in the home between nine a.m. and three p.m. each weekday and then going about normal life. Homeschooling is a lifestyle. It takes enormous commitment.

I am throwing Subvet’s comment out to my readers for response. I encourage you to share your ideas with Subvet.  Since the majority of my readers are homeschoolers, I invite you to share this with your readers.  The homeschooling community covers the entire spectrum of student abilities from high achievers to special needs kids and everyone in between.  I know that my regular readers will be respectful in their replies, but to new readers to this blog or the drive-by responders, please keep your comments respectful. Stay focused on the topic. I will delete inappropriate comments as well as comments that are personal attacks.

Subvet wrote:

The "social factor" is the prime reason my two autistic sons are in the public school system. We felt they needed daily interaction with the same peers. Were we wrong? Are autistic children in more need of this than regular kids? I'd appreciate the views of yourself and the other commenters here on this. If the wife and I have been barking up the wrong tree we'd sure like to change it. Thanks.

What do you think?

The Carnival of Anti-Homeschooling Part II: One Dad’s Cheeky Response to a Warning about Homeschooling

Parents should be aware that total home schooling can cause as many problems as it solves.

Whoa! This line grabbed my attention. It was the teaser line in an email alert for a most amusing article written by the Rabbi Shmuel Gluck. It was published on the website Yeshiva World dot com. Rabbi Gluck wrote a series of articles titled “Unhappy & Doing Something about It.” They were dedicated “to the art of understanding and, then, reacting, to uncomfortable situations.” Part three of the Rabbi’s three-part article contained a strong warning about homeschooling, filled with warm, home-spun Yiddish wisdom for those of us who are unhappy with our public and private educational choices and are doing something about it. I read this article thoroughly. If I am causing as many problems as I am solving by homeschooling my children, I’d like to know about it!

One of the greatest challenges of home schooling is the social factor. Without peers, children can’t learn the necessary skills needed in order to be reintroduced back into the classroom.

Well, there’s an interesting assumption. Where did the good Rabbi get the notion that homeschooled children will be reintroduced to the classroom? The vast majority of homeschoolers I have met in person and online assume that they will be homeschooling their children indefinitely, which is also the primary cause for prematurely gray hair, wrinkles, and the occasional afternoon conference with Johnny Walker by homeschooling moms and dads.

Rabbi dude, the “social factor” is one of the primary reasons we keep our children home from brick-and-mortar schools. I won’t go into a laundry list of societal ills right now, but rest assured that homeschoolers know that these early years are the important years for parents to train their children on how to interact with society while maintaining their morals and values, rather than sending our young children into the world and having society shape their morals and values. It is far better for us to teach our own children than to have their education shaped by teachers who profess political and societal views to which we are diametrically opposed. Besides, I’ve (temporarily) reintroduced one child to the classroom. His biggest problem was dealing with the language arts teacher who confiscated all his school supplies and the cute, jug-eared blond thing who was captivated by my son’s freckles.

If parents decide to remove children from school they must be confident that they can create all (not most) of the necessary components. These include: teachers, mentors (they can be the same), friends, patience on the part of the entire family, making sure that the children attend and participate in the home schooling, and the ability to keep the children as busy as they would be if they were in a regular school.

Rabbi dude, what incense are you burning in that funky candelabrum? I cannot speak for the rest of the homeschooling community, but it isn’t too difficult to get my children to attend our homeschool. They rarely get lost during their 27 foot journey from their bedrooms to the kitchen table. I keep my children busier than they would be if they attended a regular school because we don’t have all the distractions that take place during an average brick-and-mortar school day. We don’t need to take attendance. We don’t take lunch orders. We don’t line-up to go anywhere. We don’t lose instructional time while attending mass like students did at the parochial school where I taught. We are not constantly interrupted with disciplinary problems like I was with the students who wore their Buchanan County Juvenile Detention Facility jumpsuits to school as a fashion statement once they had been reintroduced back into the classroom.

Parents must also keep in mind that once the children are out of a regular school they may become so comfortable that they may not agree to go back.

We can only hope.

Most parents attempt home schooling as a temporary step, but find that, once the children are home schooled, they do so well that it “doesn’t make sense” to send them back. However, that may be more than the parents can handle. Home schooled children, even with an army of teachers, will require several hours a day from the parents.

Actually, Rabbi, most parents do not attempt homeschooling as a temporary step. We gladly invest several hours a day for the instruction of our children. They are our children. We invest this time and energy for one simple reason. We love them. God gave us these children and the responsibility to raise them. We take that responsibility seriously.  By the way, those of us who do homeschool don’t need an army of teachers. We are an army of one. And educationally speaking, we kick ass. Just read the test scores.

In other cases the homeschooling experience turns out to be a failure, but the children, who’ve been home for weeks, refuse to go back to school. In many of these cases the parents, who were so angry at the school, finally realize that it’s the children, and not the school, that’s in need of fixing.

Here we see the truth behind Rabbi Gluck’s analysis of homeschooling. He is dealing with broken families. He views homeschooling through the prism of broken families. I do not doubt that the youth he works with have genuine problems that need serious attention. There is one more step to take when parents realize that “it’s the children, and not the school, that’s in need of fixing.” If there are children that are in “need of fixing” there are families with challenges that go beyond education. My professional experience has shown me that poor academic performance is usually a symptom of other problems and the not the root problem. Obviously, that is not an absolute. Children may attempt to “refuse to go back to school” but that doesn’t mean that parents must capitulate to those demands. If they do, the tail is wagging the dog.

I’m willing to bet that Rabbi Gluck doesn’t know many homeschoolers. He probably has not visited and observed a successful homeschool in operation. He painted a monochromatic picture of homeschooling with an extremely broad brush. I encourage him to increase his knowledge of and experience with homeschooling before he publishes any more articles on this subject.

I Thought I Was a Tough Homeschooler

I thought I was a tough homeschooler. That was until I spoke with the parent of one my writing students and discovered that she is sending her son to a week-long Boy Scout summer camp with a week’s worth of homeschooling assignments to be completed before he returns home. She decided that two hour’s worth of work each day was good. Wow. This kid has had to work hard fund raising for a year to get the money for a week-long trip to the Rocky Mountains and he’ll spend a portion of that time calculating Pi. I’d rather be eating pie. I shared this information with the General and could see that he suddenly appreciated me more than he ever has in the past. I’m not sending him to space camp in Hutchinson, Kansas, with homeschooling work to complete each evening.

The General is quite the day-dreamer. I just caught him staring out the window with a math test in front of him. The pullets were pecking at the back door. I’m certain they captured his attention. After a few minutes of watching him stare into the back yard, I gently suggested that he stop daydreaming.

“I’m thinking!” he told me, a hint of exasperation in his voice.

I know he’s thinking. The problem is that he isn’t thinking about math!

Our homeschool year has taken a bit of a turn during the last week. General Mayhem has tabled most of his subjects for reading. He has to remain current on his math assignments, but we’ve decided to shelve everything else while he reads the Percy Jackson series of novels. He can finish reading one book in a day. We borrowed book #3 from the library yesterday. We are returning it today for books #4 & #5. It isn’t worth fighting him on this issue. He will be so distracted by his imagination that trying to get him to complete his other subjects with any degree of accuracy before reading each day is an exercise in futility. Once he completes the series he’ll be able to focus on his school work. I like the fact that we have the freedom and flexibility to make these temporary changes. One benefit to his reading is that it has rekindled his interest in writing. He’s been working on an original short story when he isn’t completing his daily math assignment or following Percy’s adventures.

The Boss and I are watching this young man grow into his feet. This is the year that we will buy him three or four new pairs of shoes as he skyrockets towards the six-foot tall mark. The boy spends all of his non-academic time roaming the house in search of something else to eat. It’s really quite frightening. I may need to get a part-time job just to feed him.  But he's a good kid.  I think we'll keep him.

La La La La Lollipops!

“L.” It may be the most difficult sound to learn to produce in the English language. That and “r.” Like most kids, Captain Chaos has struggled with learning her “l” and “r” sounds. Recently, there has been a language explosion with the girl. I’m not talking about the doubling of her daily word output from ten to twenty gazillion words each day, although that has been a challenge to my central nervous system. I’m sure that’s just genetics. On her mother’s side. This week the girl started clearly pronouncing the letter “l” both mid-word and at the beginning of each word. I noticed this while she was singing a song that she learned in pre-school.

There once was a speckled frog

Who sat on a speckled log,

Eating some most delicious bugs.

Yum! Yum!

He hopped off into the pool,

Where it was nice and cool.

Now there’s no speckled frogs

At all, on the log.

Those may not be the exact words for the song, but it’s as close as I can decipher. What caught my attention was how she slowed down her singing as she worked to produce the “l” in “speckled,” “delicious,” and “log.” I asked her who was teaching her how to say “l.” She told me that it was her preschool teacher, Mrs. Keri. When I asked Mrs. Keri about how she taught the Captain her “l” sounds, Mrs. Keri looked at me like I was insane. I only wanted to know what technique she used because I had been trying without success for months. Keri assured me that it must have been the speech therapist. Captain Chaos assured me that it was not the speech therapist. I think the Captain barely tolerates her trips to the speech therapist. Of all the people she works with in preschool, the speech therapist is the one person the Captain rarely mentions, never voluntarily, and rarely with pleasure.

I discovered the answer to my question when I interrupted the 1, 472 verse of “Speckled Frog” in the van to ask the Captain who had taught her that song. “Speckled Frog” is sorta like “100 Bottles of Beer.” It’s the song that the preschool crowd sings to drive their short-bus drivers insane. When she told me that Mrs. Keri taught her the song I instantly understood who had taught Captain Chaos her “l” sounds and why she didn’t realize that she had done it. It was Mrs. Keri. The Captain mastered her “l” sounds while trying to learn the song.

I have always written that my homeschool is an industrial strength homeschool. We focus on academics, get them completed, and move on with our day. I am not the most creative person when it comes to arts and crafts. This is something upon which I know I must improve. Neither has music been a big part of our homeschool instruction, unless you count teaching the children about 70’s rock. None of the kids really show an interest in singing, with the exception of the girl and her daily rendition of Crocodile Rock. I do regret playing that song for her. It was only this week that the Captain came home from preschool singing a song. When I made the connection between her singing and her speech I was reminded of the importance of incorporating age appropriate music into our home instruction. This reminder made me appreciate even more our decision last year to hold the Captain back from entering kindergarten last September, as well as appreciate the hard work of her special education preschool teacher. Now it’s time to search Youtube for some old Sesame Street Ernie and Bert clips.

La-la-la-la-lollipops…

S-T-A-P-L-E-R, That Spells "Love"

That soft ka-chunk you just heard?

That’s me.

Yeah, that’s me, happily stapling away on my brand new stapler. And it’s not just any stapler.

Nope.

It’s a Swingline. It’s a Swingline model 747xx. It’s a real stapler, not one of those cheap plastic staplers that repeatedly jams and doesn’t have enough “umph” to push a staple completely through a piece of paper. This one is metal. And it’s fire engine red!

Pretty racy.

I know you’re jealous. I know you want one, too. And I’ll let you in on a little secret. I know how you can get one. If you want a real, jen-yoo-ine metal, fire engine red stapler, the kind they used to make here in America but are now only produced in China, I can tell you how to get one. I’ll buy one for you. All you have to do is come over to my house and teach my children. For one day. Just one. But not any one day.

Nope.

You need to come over and teach my children on a day where they wake up with monster truck leaf springs where their glutei are supposed to be so that the slightest distraction, like a one degree change in wind direction, causes them to drop their pencils, bounce off their chairs, and run outside to investigate. Spend an afternoon with 13-year-old Belch and his younger brother Gas during a game of “Top This!” that puts an entirely new spin on teaching John 3:8, "The wind blows wherever it pleases." Come on over and try to get them to sit still long enough to compute 2+2=4 and spell c-a-t and learn that the American flag has three different colors on it and try to get all of that accomplished by four o’clock in the afternoon so that you can start dinner and feed the children and get them in their scout uniforms and out the door in time to start the evening activities without going completely insane. Show me how that is successfully accomplished and I’ll buy you your very own stapler, too.

I couldn’t do that last Wednesday. When the Boss surprised me by coming home early from work so that I could leave with the boys and not have to bring the girl along we ended up in the bedroom behind a closed door for a little mom-and-dad alone time. It’s not what you think. “Alone time” meant that the Boss sat on the bed smiling serenely while I sat on the floor and shared with her my frustration with a day that had been fairly good until the witching hour hit, that two hour period between 4:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. when I have too much day left for my patience. I shared with her my frustrations with two energetic boys and their younger sister who only wants to beat them at whatever activity they are doing in what I am sure was a rather long run-on sentence that ended with, “and for crying out loud why can’t I have a stapler that actually staples papers together instead of jamming on every third staple or folding the staples on the top page without actually puncturing the paper? Doesn’t anyone make a decent stapler anymore, like one of those good, heavy, never failed Swingline staplers that you could get in the fifties but can’t seem to find anymore?”

The Boss took the boys to scouts that night. I remained at home with the girl. We bounced on the bed, had a pillow fight, watched cartoons, chased chickens in the back yard, and basically played until it was her bedtime. It was good therapy. The Boss returned home from scouts, told the boys to get ready for bed, and handed me a present.

Ka-chunk!

It was fire engine red. It said “Swingline” on the handle. It was metal.

Nothing says “I Love You” like a stapler.

The OCD Lawn Boy

We’ve often joked about Major Havoc being the child who puts the “O” in OCD. He does tend to get a little testy when things aren’t just so (which is downright baffling when you see the condition of his room). When the boy gets something in his noggin’ he doesn’t let it go. Yesterday it was the length of the grass in our backyard.

“Dad, can we mow the lawn?”

Why?

“Well, I want to be able to play in the back yard.”

Okay.

“It’s hard to do when the grass is long.”

Really?

“We need to mow. Do you remember when I asked you yesterday if we can mow the lawn?”

Yes, I do.

“Well?”

He was correct.  This was day two of the great lawn care embroilment of aught-ten. We had held a similar conversation the previous day.  I wonder if his mother is putting him up to this.

I looked out to my back yard and admired the patches of lawn surrounded by large bare spots. A quarter of my back yard is zoysia grass that takes a long time to turn green. Half of the grass is just a general assortment of prairie crab grasses and those weeds that the chickens will not eat. The other quarter is dirt. I’ve often been told that zoysia grass is the wonder grass that spreads aggressively, chokes out every other grass, and provides a nice green lawn. I’ve lived here for five years. I’m still waiting.

The Major studies Saxon Math 2. Right now he is learning how to use a ruler to measure things. I’m considering sending him into the back yard with a ruler to measure the length of each blade of grass. If there is a blade taller than 3” I’ll mow. If there isn’t, the Major will have gained valuable training for his career as a code enforcement officer, patrolling some unsuspecting community, measuring the height of their lawns, and issuing citations to people with unruly grass.

Whoever said homeschooling doesn’t prepare children for the real world?

Was Your Day This Bad? Part One - A Tongue-in-Cheek Look at the Difficult Days

One week ago last Tuesday, the morning after we discovered that Captain Chaos put herself to sleep with her Madeleine doll, a 24 pack of toilet paper and three karate trophies,

I was more than a little surprised when I found a small brown blob of stuff in the metal dish of my food scale.



I immediately recognized the small brown blob of stuff, prompting a question that parenting classes never prepare you to ask.

“Who put a chicken on my food scale?”

Not the chicken, as in the chicken breast or the chicken leg or the chicken thigh. A chicken, as in a real, live, clucking type of chicken. We temporarily had a few week-old pullets living in a box in our kitchen. Homeschoolers, you know. We do things like that. It is amazing what children will think of to do with cute little hopping and chirping baby chickens, like weighing them, even if they have no clue how to read the numbers on the scale, or by playing “Bumper Chicks,” sliding the young hens across the linoleum floor and gently “crashing” them into each other.

“I didn’t!” answered General Mayhem, when I attempted to identify the culprit.

“I didn’t!” chimed in Major Havoc.

“Yep! I did. That’s me!” bragged Captain Chaos.

I should have known. She is the ring-leader in this house. If there is mischief afoot, she’s at the center of it. These are the same children who decided that having chicken for breakfast meant placing a bird on the kitchen table next to their cereal bowls.

Later in the morning, when General Mayhem should have been completing his math assignment, I found him on the kitchen floor, setting up a battle scene with his toy soldiers. He has not played with his army men in a long time. I assumed that watching Band of Brothers with his mother spurred his imagination. Moments later, in a Godzilla-meets-Calvin-and-Hobbes moment, I discovered a room full of slain soldiers, trampled to death by…three chickens.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

This took place on the same morning that I sent the children into the backyard to enjoy our wonderful spring weather. Ten minutes later, I thought the back yard was a little too quiet, since there were supposed to be two children running around outside for the first time in months. I poked my head out of the back door only to discover Captain Chaos catching a few rays…on the chicken coop roof.

 
This was all before lunch.


Major Havoc was quiet because he had discovered a mud puddle. Judging by the amount of mud on his person you would have thought the puddle empty, but apparently there was more than enough mud to not only cover himself but also the side of the neighbor’s garage. I learned that the Major threw mud on the neighbor’s garage later that afternoon when the neighbor’s nine-year-old son confronted me in front of our house. He approached me on the driveway, explained that he did not throw mud on his parent’s garage and then asked me to explain how the mud got there.

What the -?

A nine year old. His mother was standing a few feet away while he attempted to take an adult to task for mud on his parent’s garage. You would have had to have heard his tone of voice to appreciate how inappropriate he was. I politely explained to him that this was a conversation for adults, and that I would discuss this situation with his mother.

After the young lawyer left I told his mother that I would handle the situation. Gauging the distance between the mud puddle and the garage, accounting for wind direction, speed, and the distance Major Havoc can throw, left little doubt that he was the offending party. Major Havoc readily admitted that he threw mud on the garage. He took a bucket of soapy water and a rag and washed off the dirt. General Mayhem supervised the clean-up and hosed off the building. I made the Major apologize to our neighbor (the mom, not the boy) and promise not to do it again.

As the witching hour hit, the two hour period between 4 PM and 6PM when I am helping the General wrap up his school work, cooking dinner, and getting the family ready for evening activities, Captain Chaos discovered our new cast iron display. I have a large collection of cast iron that I cook with regularly. I have more than I can display at one time. Captain Chaos sees the pans as a cast iron xylophone, playing them with all of the energy, enthusiasm, and complete lack of musical skill that she possesses.

It was very loud.

The day didn’t end there, but if I continue in too much detail I’ll need another blog. Our scheduled plan to drop off scrap sheet rock at the home of another homeschooling family was shelved for a trip to the Wal-Mart Optical Department for glasses for the Captain. The Boss was treated to the heavy sighs, eye rolling, and constant complaining that are the hallmarks of customer service for “Angela,” the Vision Center clerk who is always on duty when we are in the store. Angela makes it very clear that working in the Vision Center would be a pleasurable job if she just didn’t have to interact with customers. She might have found fitting Captain Chaos with glasses to be easier if she…oh…actually paid attention to the girl, answered her questions, or interacted with something other than complete disgust. Angela never did get the proper measurements to order the Captain’s glasses. It’s hard to do your job when you expend all of your energy complaining because you’ve abdicated complete control to a five-year-old. It took a trip to another store to find a competent employee who obtained the Captain’s eye measurements in two tries, keeping the young girl engaged and talking the entire time.

That was my day, one week ago last Tuesday.

How was yours?

The Carnival of Anti-homeschooling

I am a glutton for punishment. I have my Gmail account set to receive news up-dates containing the word “homeschool.” Each day my inbox is filled with links to news articles that range from mundane references to homeschool curriculum fairs to direct attacks on a parent’s right to direct the education of their children. This provides for some truly entertaining reading, and helps me remain current on the pulse of home education across our fair nation. While reading some of these news articles last week, I thought of the Carnival of Homeschooling. Once each month a homeschooling blogger somewhere hosts a “Carnival of Homeschooling” where homeschooling bloggers share their thoughts and ideas about a variety of homeschooling-related topics. Participation in a carnival is a good way of finding talented bloggers, making contacts in the home schooling community; learning tips, tricks, and ideas for improving at-home education; discussing curriculum, making friends, and gaining readers. With that in mind, I bring to you “The Carnival of Anti-Homeschooling,” a survey of what non-homeschoolers have to say about our practice.

PZ Myers, a professor at the University of Minnesota, shared his belief that homeschoolers are “wrecking their children’s future by giving them a substandard education poisoned with a falsified ideology” in his post “Jerry Coyne Gets Email.” I’m assuming that PZ wants us to look past the very broad brush with which he paints homeschoolers. In writing about the current controversy concerning the treatment of the theory of evolution and the story of creation in textbooks, Mr. Myers made no distinction between Christian, atheist, secular, Jewish, Muslim, and un-schooling homeschoolers. He offered no hope that any Christian homeschoolers are capable of teaching their children critical thinking skills, or of exposing them to different ideologies, theories, political beliefs, or perspectives on life. Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.
 
Mr. Myers was referring to a post on Jerry Coyne’s website Why Evolution Is True, which, coincidentally, is tied to a new book by Jerry Coyne titled, surprisingly, Why Evolution Is True. There’s no better way to create book sales than to stir up a little controversy. In "The home-schoolers Respond," Professor Coyne shared some examples of truly ugly emails sent to him by very angry people who express hatred where they should show love, employing invective where they should show Grace. Mr. Coyne made the observation that “there’s nothing so vile as a Christian insulted!” It is true that Christians can be their own worst enemy, but expecting fallen, sin-filled people to behave like anything other than fallen, sin-filled people is like expecting a tiger to act like a dog and inviting the beast to share your home. One day that expectation is going to get tired of dog-biscuits and fetch, and is going to bite.
 
In “Secular Homeschoolers Find Darwin on Their Own,” Dianna Narciso discussed the difficulties faced by atheist and secular homeschoolers in trying to obtain fact-based science books “that aren’t saturated with Christian doctrine.” She failed to mention that those books are readily available from any major publisher supplying science textbooks to public schools across America.
 
The Washington Post carried an article on text books and their coverage of creation teaching versus evolution in “Top home-school texts dismiss Darwin, evolution,” written by Dylan Lovan.  Charles Johnson took that theme a step further writing at TrueSlant.com. In his post “Top Homeschooling Texts Reject Science” he argued that using homeschooling textbooks that reject the theory of evolution is a mild form of child abuse that should be stopped through legislation. Stating that “this kind of Dark Ages indoctrination is very bad for the United States,” Mr. Johnson failed to explain how suppressing the freedom of speech (and thought) through legislation is good for America. There’s that pesky Bill of Rights again, popping up in the most inconvenient of moments. I’m guessing that Mr. Johnson thinks that a diverse America is a country where every American thinks exactly like he does.
 
My favorite example of genuine concern for homeschooled children appeared in “Town Talk for March 10” on St. Louis Today’s Suburban Journals page. Titled “Do it right,” an anonymous writer stated:

About the homeschooling that's on the front page of this week's Journal. I've experienced many students who experience the homeschool atmosphere. Parents, I'm not going to say they're not dedicated, but they're not qualified, some parents, to educate their child. When the high expectations for these children to get into college, most of them don't meet that, because they don't have the necessary books or information to get their child to that level of college. Most of all, from the experience that I've had working with parents, they want their children to constantly go on field trips and socialize, which is fine to an extent. Even though some children get bullied at school, it is not fair for some of these children to sit home. They need the interaction with a group of children and they need to learn about routine. They need to learn schedules. Homeschooling can be fine for a few people, but you need a school to support you to do homeschooling.

Wow.

It’s safe to assume that since the writer did not self- identify as a formerly homeschooled child that they are a product of a public or private school. I’m not certain what is worse, the writer’s writing skills or the logic that assumes that no homeschoolers are exposed to bullies, routines, and schedules. I routinely bully my homeschooled children by giving them wedgies and swirlies, knocking their books out of their hands as they pass by, cornering them in the bathroom and demanding their allowance, and shooting them in the back of their heads with spit balls while they try to take a creation based, evolution denying, science exam. I’ve got to recreate the socialization experience of public schools, you know. The idea that most homeschoolers cannot get into college is laughable.

It is ironic that the people who claim that homeschooling is bad because it promotes narrow thinking demonstrate very narrow thinking in their writing. Maybe, just maybe, if any of these writers took the time to visit a well run homeschool, they’d have an opinion based in something other than their own myopic view of education. 

Now it's time to leave the carnival.  These carnies are a bit creepy.

A Rare Post on Homeschooling on a Homeschooling Blog

Last Christmas Santa left a cool package underneath the tree. It is a game called “Sequence States and Capitals.”

It is a fun and simple game. Each payer is given seven cards. Each card has a picture of a state with its capital city marked on it and the name of the capital city printed over it. There are also "ADD' cards and "REMOVE" cards which, ironically, allow a player to add or remove playing pieces from the board. 

The board has pictures of all fifty states with the state names printed over it. The rules are fairly simple. “Beginning with the player to the left of the dealer and moving in a clockwise direction, each player selects a card of their choice from their hand and places it face up on a discard pile (players should start their own discard pile in front of them visible to all other players) and then places one of their marker chips on a space on the game board that has the same state shape and color as the card played. Each card is pictured twice on the game board. A player can play on either one of the card spaces as long as it is not already covered by another marker chip.” The goal is to make two sequences. A sequence is “a connected series of five of the same colored chip either up or down, across or diagonally on the playing surface.”

We love this game! Major Havoc and I play one game each day as part of his school work. Yesterday, I saw him point to a magnetic map of the United States on the refrigerator and excitedly announce, “Hey, dad, look! It’s Helena. Montana!” He’s not only learning all of his states and all of their capital cities, but he’s practicing his reading skills as he reads aloud the state and its capital with each turn.   He's having fun and doesn't appear to realize that he is learning.  That's very cool.

This example of educational excellence comes without a tax increase for education, a pay raise for the teacher, an increase in costs for my health insurance, reading Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, or signing up my students to be members of President Obama's "Organizing for America" program as is being done in Ohio public schools. 

(Great post, Opus #6)

The Origins of Frecklations

I am surrounded by freckles. The Captain has them, although hers are the lightest and sparsest of anyone in the family. The General has them all over his face. The Major is the most heavily freckled child of the three, the one who most closely resembles his mother. She doesn’t have a bare spot of skin that has seen the sun and not become covered with those little brown dots. And I love them. Every summer the Boss’ freckles regain their strength and turn a darker brown, like a rechargeable battery after a night on the charger. It’s one of the many things that I love about her.

It was at dinner two nights ago that I wondered aloud if it were possible to detect a specific pattern of freckles on each of their faces. Did genetics allow for the possibility that each person had an identical spread of freckles in the same location much like a mole or a birth mark can be passed from one generation to the next, or were their freckles truly randomly spread? They each have so many freckles that it would be hard to detect a pattern just looking at them during daily interaction. We’d have to look at close-up pictures of their faces side-by-side.

“Do you mean a frecklation?” General Mayhem asked.

“Yes!” I laughed. “Freckle constellations on your faces.”

While the Boss patiently shook her head, we discussed possible names and stories for freckles on the nose, the cheek, or the chin. It could make for a fun homeschooling creative writing project. She thought that she had heard every freckle joke possible by this point in her life. That was before she met me and our heavily speckled off spring.

“Did you know that the word ‘constellation” is actually a mistranslation of the word ‘constipation’?” the General asked.

“Constipationem” and “ Constellationem” are fairly close. I guess it is possible.

“Does that date back to the time when the commode was outside and people who were waiting to go had nothing better to do than sit and look at the nighttime sky?” I asked.

The General started to laugh. The Boss grimaced.

“I suppose if you were pushing hard you might see double.” I puffed out my cheeks and made my eyes bulge. “That would explain Gemini, the twins.”

Since it was dinner, I reminded the young lad that we were pushing the envelope of acceptable dinner conversation quite far, a comment that received a nod of approval from the Boss. We dropped the subject.

It is fun to watch the General’s mind work. Some of the stuff he comes up with is original, surprising, and very funny. He’s a good set-up man. When he learns to finish the joke, I think he’s going to give me quite the challenge.

If anyone does assign a Frecklation myth as a writing project, let me know. We’ll post them here.

“Eunuch” Rhymes With “Yuck!”

Today, I had the pleasure of defining the word “eunuch” for a 13-year-old boy who embarrasses rather easily over even the most clinical description of anatomical systems deemed “private.” He stumbled across the term in his history studies. I am certain that he has read the word in the past. I am equally certain that if he asked what a eunuch was my answer was a vague reference to guards. That all changed today when I decided that at age 13 he could handle the truth. I explained in detail what made a eunuch a eunuch, an explanation that left his jaw hanging open while he squirmed in his seat.

“I don’t know about anyone else,” I observed near the end of the explanation. “But, I’d rather keep those things attached, thank you very much.”

“Wouldn’t we all,” he quickly replied. “Wouldn’t we all”