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.

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!

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.

Dude, What Happened To My Country? (With Apologies to HotAir)

Warning: This post may contain information of a political nature. Those of you who wish to keep your blood pressure in the normal range or do not have a vomit bag nearby might consider returning tomorrow.

Dude, what happened to my country?


Claudia Cowen, writing on Foxnews.com,  reported on a new provision in the health care bill that requires small businesses with more than 20 employees to provide health care to their workers. Apparently, this has been taking place in San Francisco restaurants for over a year. Customers in these restaurants pay either a flat fee or a percentage of their check as a surcharge to cover the cost of health care for waitresses, bus boys, and cooks. In some restaurants patrons do not mind this additional charge. In others, business is hurting. San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsome enthusiastically supports the plan, claiming that it keeps restaurant employees out of emergency rooms and on the job.

"Businesses get the benefit in the back end," Newsom is reported to have said.

Apparently, the customers will get it in the back end, too; although, I’m not counting it as a benefit. My wallet is getting lighter every day under this administration. It’s just one more reason to eat at home if you live in the Bay area.


The Guerrilla Homeschooler linked to a Greta Van Susteren interview with Senator Lindsay Graham concerning the student loan provision of the new health care reform law. Did you know that student loans were a pivotal point in solving the health care crisis in this country? The federal government will no longer allow banks to make student loans. All loans will come from the government. Why? According to Senator Graham, congressional Democrats and the current administration believe that “the banking system doesn't work, that the private lenders ought to be taken out of the equation, no private sector entity should make money sending kids to school.” Instead, the federal government will make money sending kids to school. “They're lending money at 6.4 percent, [while] we're borrowing it at about 2.6 percent.” The 3.8 percent difference is profit for the federal government. Apparently, it’s alright for the government to make money off of student loans, just not private enterprise.


Can any explain to me how this is any different from Hugo Chavez’ take-over of private businesses in Venezuela?


Lastly, Drudge linked to a KOMOnews.com article titled “Mother furious after in-school clinic sets up teen's abortion.” Ballard High School in the Seattle School District facilitated an abortion for one of its students without the consent of the parents, without even informing them that the abortion was taking place. Once again we see government officials replacing parental rights and responsibilities with their judgment. Still, public schools officials do not seem to understand why more and more people in this country simply do not trust them. Homeschooling is growing larger and larger every year, although I predict that at some point during this current administration there will be an attempt to make homeschooling illegal. Just look at ICE’s effort to overturn a judge’s decision to grant asylum to a German homeschooling family. If only they were so diligent with our foreign bretheren who do not attempt to enter the country legally.  I cannot help but wonder if the principal of Ballard High School would be happy if it was his daughter getting the abortion without his knowledge, facilitated by the staff of her high school.


Hey, school administrators, listen up - my children are my children. They are not the property of the state.  Keep you hands off!

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.