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BevK November 29th, 2006

Over at Spunky Homeschool, Spunky is concerned. “Call me paranoid, but there seems to be an unschooling conspiracy taking place in the media; all with the intention of creating a little negative buzz about unschooling (and by inference homeschooling) as a legitimate educational choice for parents.”
http://spunkyhomeschool.blogspot.com/2006/11/unschooling-conspiracy.html

I think part of the answer lies in this article by the woman who pretended to unschool her kids for a day.

It’s enough to make me want to keep the kids at home for good, but then I’d have to home school them. And everyone knows home schooling families are weird. Flowered-dress-wearing, backyard-grown food-eating, snake-handling weird. Just ask my 16-year-old.
“What comes to mind when I say ‘home schooler’?” I asked her on the way home from school yesterday.
“Nerd,” she replied without hesitation.

Good to know that all that promotion of diversity in the public schools is turning out such open minded kids. Or is this just a case of the bigotry being taught from home. …I digress.

Homeschoolers are now the smart kids that other kids don’t like because smart kids are nerds. Jeanne, Spunky’s commenter, hits the nail on the head when she says that coming after unschoolers is just a means of coming after all homeschoolers. Educrats and their political bedfellows have learned it’s hard to question homeschooling when homeschoolers do so well on standardized tests and many colleges find them great candidates for admission. They can’t use the homeschooling turns out uneducated adults mantra.

Even within the homeschooling community, the pros and cons of unschooling are discussed in often loud and derogatory terms. It’s easy to think that unschooling is a bad idea if you’re stuck in the rut of thinking in only schoolish terms about education. Certainly, those outside the homeschool movement are more inclined to schoolishness than your typical homeschooler. Regulating to keep unschoolers from ruining their children’s lives is an easy sidestep around the homeschoolers-do-fine-as-adults reality. Which only means that unschoolers and other homeschoolers need to start sharing more about the success stories of unschoolers who have gone on to secure adult lives. It’s also true that unschoolers won’t get much help from many homeschoolers who themselves believe that unschooling is a problem for homeschooling. Whatever you think about HSLDA, they’ve done a good job of batting down the homeschooling must be evil attacks that used to be standard in the press. Maybe it’s time for someone at NHEN to start submitting editorials to the New York Times. They do a wonderful job if supplying answers to reporters that come to them. If they’re not already doing so, maybe it’s time to be more proactive.

Meanwhile, all those who think unschooling leads to uneducated adults might try reading up a bit on the subject.

Suggested Reading

Guerrilla Learning: How to Give Your Kids a Real Education With or Without School
The Unschooling Handbook: How to Use the Whole World As Your Child’s Classroom
Homeschooling for Excellence

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BevK November 29th, 2006

http://www.usnews.com/usn…unschooling.htm

Maybe you’ve read Bonnie Erbe’s column, “Unspooling ‘Unschooling’” in which she declares her inability to believe that unschooling will allow children to become productive members of structured society.

My hunch, however, is that very few parents are practically equipped with the teaching skills necessary or the stores of information required to help a child build a strong foundation in grammar, history, physics, biology, languages, physical education, math, etc. For that, it seems one must attach some sort of structure to intrinsically unstructured unschooled learning. It’s an entirely larger question whether “unschooled” kids can enter the real and highly structured (or schooled) world and succeed without the requisite navigational skills.

Most adults don’t believe it’s possible for children to teach themselves a variety of subjects, math being one of the chief most on their list. With very little assistance, Abraham Lincoln was able to educate himself. In his own words, “My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age; and he grew up, literally [sic] without education. He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in my eighth year. We reached our new home about the time the State came into the Union. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals, still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools, so called; but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond “readin, writin, and cipherin” to the Rule of Three. If a straggler supposed to understand latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizzard [sic]. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the Rule of Three; but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity.”

I’m not an unschooler, but I have seen unschooled adults who were making their way in structured society. No, I take that back. They were excelling in structured society. It’s the difference between believing that you can learn only when taught by someone else and realizing that learning is not dependent on anyone but the person who needs to learn. All the teaching in the world will do no good with a reluctant learner. It’s the old in one ear out the other, retain it for the test and dump, learning mentality that plagues the kids in our government schools. They don’t see their education as something worthwhile to them. The ones that do, or who haven’t had the love of learning drummed out of them, do well in school.

Hat tip: Homeschool Buzz

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BevK November 28th, 2006

http://crechemania.com

If you’ve ever seen a fold out paper creche, you’ll love the resources and images of antique creches you’ll find at CrecheMania. There’s even a Creche Guild Online Community for paper creche enthusiasts. These creches would make great Christmas gifts for older children to make for their grandparents.

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BevK November 28th, 2006

Amazon is offering a $5 bonus certificate when you subscribe through them to any of 500 different magazines. This includes children’s magazine subscriptions like Zoobooks, Nature Friend, National Geographic World, and Preschool Playroom. Also Southern Living, Bon Appetit, and Time.

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BevK November 23rd, 2006

http://www.billygraham.or…p?ArticleID=748

This year as we observe our season of thanksgiving, let us be grateful not only in word but also in deed. Let our gratitude find expression in a resolve to live a life more unselfish and more consecrated to Jesus Christ.

When we sit around our tables laden with sumptuous delicacies, let us not forget that nearly a billion people around the world will go to bed hungry. As we enjoy the comforts of our cozy homes, let us not forget that great numbers have no homes to go to. When we step into our modern cars, let us not forget that many people in the world cannot afford even a bicycle.

As we go to our churches to thank God for material and spiritual blessings, let us remember that millions have never heard the Gospel of salvation. Let us remember the servants of God in many parts of the world who deprive themselves in order to take the Gospel to the multitudes who have not yet been reached with the message of Christ.

Read it all on the Billy Graham website.

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BevK November 22nd, 2006

http://www.newscientist.c…ldren-well.html

Well, that’s the inference you get when reading “Home-schooling special: Preach your children well”, an article at New Scientist. Hat Tip: Homeschool Buzz

We learn that

New Scientist investigated how home-schooling, with its considerable legal support, is quietly transforming the landscape of science education in the US, subverting and possibly threatening the public school system that has fought hard against imposing a Christian viewpoint on science teaching.

and

This bothers Brian Alters of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who studies the changing face of science education in the US. He is appalled by some home-schooling textbooks, especially those on biology that claim they have scientific reasons for rejecting evolution. “They have gross scientific inaccuracies in them,” he says. “They would not be allowed in any public school in the US, and yet these are the books primarily featured in home-schooling bookstores.”

One such textbook is Science of the Physical Creation from A Beka Book, a leading retailer of home-schooling books based in Pensacola, Florida. It argues: “Evolution is a concept that attempts to free man from God and his responsibility to his Creator.” Alters worries for the students who learn from such texts (see “Book learnin’”). “If they go on to secular university, home-schoolers are in for some major surprises when they get into an introductory biology class.”

The face of this giant bogeyman of creationist brainwashing is of course HSLDA, Patrick Henry University, and Exodus Mandate—Organizations which most homeschooler have nothing to do with.

These are the folks that get their knickers in such a twist over Intelligent Design that they regularly demonstrate their bias against other scientists.

Anti-ID Bias in Journal of the History of Biology

The Branding of a Heretic: Are religious scientists unwelcome at the Smithsonian?

The scientist is Richard Sternberg, a research associate at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington. The holder of two Ph.D.s in biology, Mr. Sternberg was until recently the managing editor of a nominally independent journal published at the museum, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, where he exercised final editorial authority. The August issue included typical articles on taxonomical topics–e.g., on a new species of hermit crab. It also included an atypical article, “The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories.” Here was trouble.

The piece happened to be the first peer-reviewed article to appear in a technical biology journal laying out the evidential case for Intelligent Design. According to ID theory, certain features of living organisms–such as the miniature machines and complex circuits within cells–are better explained by an unspecified designing intelligence than by an undirected natural process like random mutation and natural selection.

Mr. Sternberg’s editorship has since expired, as it was scheduled to anyway, but his future as a researcher is in jeopardy–and that he had not planned on at all. He has been penalized by the museum’s Department of Zoology, his religious and political beliefs questioned. He now rests his hope for vindication on his complaint filed with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) that he was subjected to discrimination on the basis of perceived religious beliefs. A museum spokesman confirms that the OSC is investigating. Says Mr. Sternberg: “I’m spending my time trying to figure out how to salvage a scientific career.”

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BevK November 22nd, 2006

http://eclectichomeschool…hanksgiving.htm

The Eclectic Homeschool Online has a Thanksgiving Play Space for kids of all ages. Games include online checkers and some slide puzzles with a Thanksgiving theme.

You’ll find other Thanksgiving oriented stuff in the resources section of the Thanksgiving Unit Study.

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BevK November 22nd, 2006

I just ordered two card games as FunAgain.com and got another game I had been considering for more than 50% off.

I ordered the Munchkins in Space and Star Munchkins games and got Monsters Menace America for $15.

I discovered these games by reading about them at Board Game Geek.

There are game descriptions and ratings. For example the top rated kids games are Loopin’ Louie, Kupferkessel Co., Gulo Gulo, Chicken Cha Cha Cha, and Eiertanz.

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BevK November 20th, 2006

http://www.clarionledger….7/NEWS/61117030

We know this happens, and homeschoolers would do well to consider how this problem should be dealt with so that we can maintain our homeschooling freedoms.

Mississippi’s school chief said he wants homeschooling organizations to help craft ways to ensure homeschooled students are truly being educated.

State Superintendent of Education Hank Bounds called some situations “child abuse.”

“We want you to enjoy the freedom you have for homeschooling,” he said.

“But you must realize we all have this moral and ethical responsibility to deal with those situations where clearly it’s nothing more than a child abuse situation when parents pull their children out of school, say they’re being homeschooled just because parents … don’t want to be involved in the education of their children,” he said.

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BevK November 20th, 2006

http://www.courierpress.c…winners-listed/

First Place - Cyberbots of homeschool. Karen Blankenberger, adviser; team member, Michael Blankenberger, Nicholas Blankenberger, Nathaniel Gerlach and Nathan DeMasie.

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