Archive for April, 2006

World Wide Words

BevK April 27th, 2006

http://www.worldwidewords.org

If you are a wordologist, you’ll love this site.

World Wide Words
More than 1600 pages on the origins, history, evolution and idiosyncrasies of the English language worldwide. New words and words in the news are regularly featured.

Lots of articles and information on words and phrases, and a section of reviews of books about words including dictionaries.

Sample articles include:

Beam me up, Scotty!: The linguistic legacy of Star Trek
Misplaced Modifiers: Sloppy writing that evokes odd images.
Eating crow: And other indigestibles

Five Reasons to Skip College

BevK April 27th, 2006

http://money.aol.com/forb…426111509990001

An interesting article that gives reasons to oppose the common wisdom that college graduates do better in life than non-college graduates.

The article lists five reasons not to go to college. Reason number four is one most homeschoolers will agree with:

4. You don’t need to be in a classroom in order to learn something.

The Bricktestament

BevK April 20th, 2006

http://www.thebricktestament.com/index.html

Now for the lighter side of life.

An illustrated Bible presented by The Rev. Brendan Powell Smith - The Bricktestament.

Warning: this does involve Lego People having sex, as in Genesis 4:1 “Adam lay with his wife Eve” NIV. But there’s a rating system that will let you know when to expect such.

Hat Tip Jonah Goldberg at The Corner.

Homeschooling and Child Training - My Take on the Controversy

BevK April 20th, 2006

This is ghastly.

Dead child’s mom sought discipline tips

The woman beat her children with pvc pipe in accordance with the Pearl’s advice to use plumbing supply lines. Google Images gives an idea on what people consider to be plumbing supply lines.

This child actually died from suffocation after being wrapped too tightly in a blanket and not from being hit with pipe. The pipe beating was just part and parcel of this child’s regular abuse.

The Pearl’s believe that children will be trained to stop doing disobedient acts by learning to associate pain with those acts. They set up training sessions when children are very young to teach them that when you say no and they disobey they will feel physical pain.

On their website they state this about how to discipline:

As a rule, do not use your hand. Hands are for loving and helping. If an adult swings his or her hand fast enough to cause pain to the surface of the skin, there is a danger of damaging bones and joints. The most painful nerves are just under the surface of the skin. A swift swat with a light, flexible instrument will sting without bruising or causing internal damage. Many people are using a section of ¼ inch plumber’s supply line as a spanking instrument. It will fit in your purse or hang around you neck. You can buy them for under $1.00 at Home Depot or any hardware store. They come cheaper by the dozen and can be widely distributed in every room and vehicle. Just the high profile of their accessibility keeps the kids in line.

I don’t have time to express my opinions on the matter. We’re still in the business of sorting and boxing all our worldly goods. But I found something that comes really close. Please read this, because it says so much of what I would want to say.

Gentle Discipline: Grace and Righteousness Together

To be fair, many good things have come from the Pearls influence in my life (mainly through their NGJ newsletters). They have encouraged me as a mother to be “all there,” to relax and enjoy my children, to be best friends with them. But when I hear stories about people spanking their little babies (for doing things like crying) because they think the Pearls have told them too, a person realizes that either the Pearls do support such things, or that gross miscommunication is taking place. I prefer to think it’s the latter, but regardless, attempting to correct the miscommunication is vital. I used to think it was only a few “nuts” who would take the Pearls out of context. Now I am hearing a lot of perfectly normal momma’s share how they followed the Pearls, or what they thought was the Pearls (and their writings are admittedly confusing, if you try to take them like a textbook), and how heartache was the result. Something, somewhere, is drastically wrong.

Black parents urge boycott after school board action

BevK April 20th, 2006

http://www.news-gazette.c…ol_board_action

Armed police officers in Champaign, Illinois schools leading some to homeschool.

Causley and her sister, Natalie Freeman, say they will take their children out of the Champaign school district in protest of the decision to put armed police officers in the schools. They are asking other parents to do the same.

Parents taking back control:

Freeman is concerned about unequal treatment for black children because the Champaign school district is under a consent decree in which the educational achievement and discipline of black children is being monitored, and because a study released last year showed minorities are more likely to be pulled over for traffic stops by Champaign police.

“We already know the children who are going to be targeted (by the officers) are African-American,” she said.

She said many black parents don’t support police in the schools, but she is calling on all parents who have concerns about the program to boycott the district.

“All my customers who have come in today are parents who have children in the Unit 4 school district,” said Freeman, who owns the Anointed Hands Beauty Salon. “Every last one of them is going to fill out the home school application and pull their children out of the schools.”

She and Causley have contacted churches to donate space for the children, and they are trying to line up tutors through a University of Illinois graduate student in education. They also are passing out home school applications to other parents in the black community.

“We’re not asking people to pull their kids out of the schools and have no other resources for them,” Freeman said.

“If the statistics are showing that our kids aren’t learning anyway, what is it going to hurt to pull your kids out? They are still going to be taught, and let’s see if they can do a better job than the district does,” she said.

I love that last quote. She’s absolutely right. What is it going to hurt?

The educrats response:

He also said the school district can offer more to students than home schooling, including a more enriching social experience, more course offerings, advanced placement classes and support services for students with special needs.

Looks like it’s a long term struggle:

But school officials say keeping children out of school for the rest of this academic year won’t have an impact. The Title 1 aid is based on the number of children enrolled in the free and reduced-price lunch program at the beginning of the academic year. And state aid is based on the best three months of attendance, which are usually in the fall.

Behind wheel on road to maturity

BevK April 20th, 2006

http://washingtontimes.co…10137-4637r.htm

Homeschool mom Kate Tsubata discusses teaching your kids to drive.

Teaching your child to drive is an important way of supporting his or her growth into responsible adulthood. In our family, learning to drive has been something of a group activity. Everyone supports the person learning, so he or she gets not one, but several teachers.

A baker’s dozen

BevK April 20th, 2006

http://www.gmtoday.com/co…06/March/78.asp

Nice article about a large homeschool family. The Diel family believes in working, playing and praying together.

The Diels felt their children would learn better socialization skills at home, rather than in the classroom. “Age integration is how they will really develop socially,” says Diane.

Interesting Tidbit from HSLDA

BevK April 20th, 2006

http://www.hslda.org/docs/news/2006004180.asp

One-Third of U.S. Adults Know Someone Who Homeschools

A recent Harris poll gives statistics on people who have homeschooled and perceptions of homeschoolers.

Homeschooling Gifted Kids

BevK April 20th, 2006

http://www.wzzm13.com/new…x?storyid=52947

Parents of gifted students are turning to homeschooling.

FROM GIFTED TO AT RISK: Money for Michigan’s brightest students dwindles

State money for gifted programs has dropped to nearly nothing in recent years, from $5 million in 1997 to $285,000 today. Across metro Detroit, as school districts pinched by tight budgets make hard choices about which programs to keep, gifted programs have fallen by the wayside.

“You’ve got to put the funds where they will do the most good for the most kids,” said Gayle Green, assistant superintendent in the Macomb Intermediate School District.

Parents such as Lynn Hawkins of Novi worry that without extra attention, their children could become underachievers.

That’s why she and husband John Hawkins decided to homeschool their gifted sons, Matthew, 9, and Andrew, 8. The public school Matthew had attended for two years and Andrew for one year - Village Oaks in Novi - was good, and the teachers were excellent, they said, but the parents feared they wouldn’t be able to do enough.

School’s Out Forever

BevK April 10th, 2006

http://www.time.com/time/…1181679,00.html

Time, South Pacific has an article posted about homeschooling in New Zealand and Australia. School’s Out Forever.

As usual a mixed bag of nice things to say and experts skeptical opinions. Here’s a bit of the negative.

So how do homeschooled kids turn out? Pretty well, it seems. They’re ineligible to sit for exams such as the N.S.W. Higher School Certificate or New Zealand’s 7th Form Bursary, which would indicate how they stack up academically against their traditionally schooled peers. However, numerous studies, mainly American, have given homeschooled children a glowing report card: better abstract thinking and language skills, above average in all the main subjects. While much of this research was commissioned by homeschooling organizations, few experts argue against the practice on academic grounds. “Homeschooling can often produce very smart kids,” says psychologist Bob Murray - largely because learning becomes a way to please their parents.

Universities have a discretionary power to accept applicants without entry scores, so homeschooling isn’t necessarily an impediment to tertiary study. Indeed, a high proportion of the homeschooled just keep on studying, often well into their 20s. Why? Perhaps their childhood experience fires a profound love of learning. Or does their sheltered upbringing cause them to delay the leap into a scary world? The most persistent objection to home education is that it denies its charges the socializing experience of school. “Living in the community, being with other children . . . these are vital parts of a normal life for a child,” says Sharryn Brownlee, immediate past president of the N.S.W. Federation of Parents and Citizens Associations. Schools aren’t perfect, she adds. But nor is life. “You have to give the child the opportunity to learn and grow.”

The article concludes:

It’s hard for outsiders to accept home education, which challenges so many fixed ideas. Teachers teach and parents raise. School is a societal glue. Brothers and sisters singing together is a little too twee. If society’s aim with children is to help them become decent, happy and employable, there’s little concrete evidence to suggest that homeschooling is a more flawed way of trying to achieve it than packing them off to school when they hit age five. And yet the unease persists. One day, you pass a primary school where a bunch of 10-year-olds of all colors and shapes are having a physical education class in the autumn sunshine. Within the space of a few minutes you watch them encourage and console one another, succeed and fail, concentrate like demons and muck about amid noise and mirth. And you have to wonder, whatever the arguments to the contrary: Is this a snapshot of something - school life - that children could really be better off without?

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