Home Schooling

[Seth]

I've always wanted to ask - how does one escape from a straight-jacket?

Why would anyone want to tell you that? If you're in a straight jacket, perhaps it's your own fault and you're best left there.

[Seth]

Sorry - only did a fly-by of this thread, so I may be repeating other peoples issues.

All the home-school parents I've met have been fundy Xtians who want to protect their kids from the big bad world (i.e. the truth about evilution, which is compulsory in school here). I have for some time now strongly believed that home-schooling is a good option for kids outside of a major centre (i.e, who have to travel like 50 kms one way to school), but should be forbidden to the rest of us. But I guess that's only if you have a good education provided by the state... Still, I do pity the home-schooled kids in Newcastle, because they end up in a 'network' of hard-core Xtians who think that even the Anglican churh is too lax!

+1

The only people ive met who are home schooled are hardcore fundies or in a isolated case this lady who had obvious mental health issue to do with paranoia.

I personally think that far too many have the wrong motivations for home schooling for it to be considered on the whole a good thing.

Commies hate it when people manage to extract their children from the Marxist indoctrination of the public school system because the Commies want to eliminate the influences of the parents on the children as early as possible so they can be raised as good little obedient proletarian slaves.

[Jesus_of_Nazareth]

I don't think most of the adults I meet have the education or talent to teach children in the wide spectrum of subjects they need to learn

My bet is that Sex Ed is covered fairly thoroughly.........in the cellar there is no one to tell.

Nah, that's what the atheists do, fuck their children in the basement, because they have no morals, no beliefs, no constraints on behavior and no concern for anything but immediate pleasure because they don't believe there is anything to account for at the end of their lives, so hedonistic excess is the typical atheist behavior pattern, and they look at their children as mere sexual property to be used however they wish because after all, in the socialist world most atheists live in, it's okay to force children into sexual slavery because adults have a "need" they must fulfill, and the kids can easily provide sexual satisfaction according to their "ability." After all, to atheists, a fuck-hole is a fuck-hole, and it matters nothing that it's attached to a child, even their child, because all children are just useless energy-sucking cogs in the great socialist machine and therefore ought to be compelled to produce SOMETHING worthwhile instead of taking without laboring. If adult atheist sexual pleasure is all they can produce, well, that'll do.

How's it feel to be group-insulted and reviled unfairly?

Insulted? For me that is a fairly accurate description. YMMV.

My lack of any morals (or conscience) is not because I am an atheist - it's because I was born lucky ......I would have made a good Priest.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I've always wanted to ask - how does one escape from a straight-jacket?

Houdini was double-jointed and always had a lock-pick in his mouth when he did his escapes.

I just bite my way out of them.

[amused]

Marxists and Commies!

[Seth]

I've always wanted to ask - how does one escape from a straight-jacket?

Houdini was double-jointed and always had a lock-pick in his mouth when he did his escapes.

I just bite my way out of them.

We'll have to remember to knock your teeth out with a hammer next time...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I've always wanted to ask - how does one escape from a straight-jacket?

Houdini was double-jointed and always had a lock-pick in his mouth when he did his escapes.

I just bite my way out of them.

We'll have to remember to knock your teeth out with a hammer next time...

I'll spit them out so you can get a good swing at them.

[Coito ergo sum]

I don't think most of the adults I meet have the education or talent to teach children in the wide spectrum of subjects they need to learn

My bet is that Sex Ed is covered fairly thoroughly.........in the cellar there is no one to tell.

Nah, that's what the atheists do, fuck their children in the basement, because they have no morals, no beliefs, no constraints on behavior and no concern for anything but immediate pleasure because they don't believe there is anything to account for at the end of their lives, so hedonistic excess is the typical atheist behavior pattern, and they look at their children as mere sexual property to be used however they wish because after all, in the socialist world most atheists live in, it's okay to force children into sexual slavery because adults have a "need" they must fulfill, and the kids can easily provide sexual satisfaction according to their "ability." After all, to atheists, a fuck-hole is a fuck-hole, and it matters nothing that it's attached to a child, even their child, because all children are just useless energy-sucking cogs in the great socialist machine and therefore ought to be compelled to produce SOMETHING worthwhile instead of taking without laboring. If adult atheist sexual pleasure is all they can produce, well, that'll do.

How's it feel to be group-insulted and reviled unfairly?

Most atheists are socialists? Cite? Link? Evidence? Some socialists are atheists, but there are atheist libertarians and one of the main pillars of Objectivism is atheism. Classical liberalism in the Jeffersonian sense is at most deistic, and after the Darwinian revolution such thinkers became atheistic in the R.G. Ingersoll way. You declare that most atheists are socialists, and you provide no basis for the assertion at all.

Also, I recall you saying somewhere that you were an "atheist Tolerist." Did I get that wrong? Do you believe in a god?

As for accounting for things at the end of their lives, what can be said for born again Christians and protestant fundamentalists is that they take the accountability out of the equation. They say that if you accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior, your sins are forgiven, and you will NOT be accountable for your actions in the next life. You could have been a rapist and murderer for 50 years, and if on your death bed you truly convert, then you have no responsibility or accountability to a higher power. Someone else took that responsibility for them. Someone else paid their debt. If one owes a debt, and someone else pays it, that is the absolute pinnacle of a lack of responsibility or accountability.

Atheists, of course, do generally believe in responsibility and accountability, but like most Jews and Catholics, people must take responsibility in this life. Jews generally don't have a concept of hell - some do, but most don't - and even those that have a concept of Hell seem to think that it's not permanent, and it is more purgatorial, to punish you for sins and then eventually you will be pure and go to heaven. But, for the most part, Jews think you need to atone for your sins in this life. And, Catholics too - belief in Jesus is not enough - you have to be forgiven personally for your sins - the price is not paid by someone else without the individual having to atone, give penance and repent. Most atheists believe that redemption can only come in this life, and that forgiveness comes only from a person who is wronged, and cannot be given vicariously, and that punishment comes from family and friends, the law, and other sources in this life.

This idea that atheists think it's a free for all because there is no threat of hell is nonsense. Most humans don't believe in any hell, and they behave no worse than Christians, that's for sure. Buddhists, Jains, Jews, Atheists, Agnostics, Spiritual but not Religious folks, etc. - generally no hell there.

[Coito ergo sum]

Commies hate it when people manage to extract their children from the Marxist indoctrination of the public school system because the Commies want to eliminate the influences of the parents on the children as early as possible so they can be raised as good little obedient proletarian slaves.

Not just commies, but people with a brain too. I'm all for parents being allowed to home school if they want to. I just think it's not the best thing for the children, due to a general incompetence among adults to educate children on a broad spectrum of subjects. I don't think teachers in school are all that great at it either, but they are at least trained and practiced in the skills of teaching, and they are paid to get up and slog it out on a daily basis. To think that a parent is going to knock out 6 hours of class time each day, 5 days a week minimum, for 183 days out of 365, on top of taking care of a household and bringing home the bacon, well, that to me sounds very difficult.

Heck, many folks say that cleaning the house, paying the bills, and caring for a child is itself a full time job. Add to that teaching them a grammar school, middle school and high school curriculum? I doubt they can do it effectively.

If they can -- and I leave room to be proven that home schooled kids are at college level when they are college age - I do leave room to be proven wrong here -- if they can do it, then I think that is a real indictment on the education system in general. If some dopey parent can educate a kid at home just as well as the public school system, then our school system is a serious waste of money.

[Tero]

Seth, religion was first. It did the same thing, brainwashing young kids.

[Seth]

Commies hate it when people manage to extract their children from the Marxist indoctrination of the public school system because the Commies want to eliminate the influences of the parents on the children as early as possible so they can be raised as good little obedient proletarian slaves.

Not just commies, but people with a brain too. I'm all for parents being allowed to home school if they want to. I just think it's not the best thing for the children, due to a general incompetence among adults to educate children on a broad spectrum of subjects.

Strange then isn't it how home-schooled students routinely whip the asses of public school taught children during standardized testing. How do you account for that?

I don't think teachers in school are all that great at it either, but they are at least trained and practiced in the skills of teaching, and they are paid to get up and slog it out on a daily basis.

And their motivation is to do the least possible amount of work that will not result in their being fired for incompetence, and to pay their union dues so that even if they are clearly incompetent they cannot be fired. Public school teachers don't have nearly the motivation that a parent does to make sure their children get a good education.

To think that a parent is going to knock out 6 hours of class time each day, 5 days a week minimum, for 183 days out of 365, on top of taking care of a household and bringing home the bacon, well, that to me sounds very difficult.

It is difficult, but the motivation to make sure your children excel and can therefore prosper in their lives when they grow up, and to keep them from suffering at the hands of incompetent, overloaded, uncaring public employee teachers who have absolutely no motive to do more than teach to the tests their students have to pass so that they don't get fired, is substantial. Which is why, as I said, public school students routinely play second-fiddle to home-schooled kids on standardized testing.

Teaching isn't rocket science. You don't really have to know much of anything to be able to read from a syllabus or a book, which is why lots of college classes are taught by TA's rather than the professors we pay to teach class. For primary education, the curriculum is laid out in detail and all anyone, teacher or parent has to do is present the materials in the order given and get students to study and learn it. Most of it can be done much more effectively by a computer than by a public school union teacher.

Heck, many folks say that cleaning the house, paying the bills, and caring for a child is itself a full time job. Add to that teaching them a grammar school, middle school and high school curriculum? I doubt they can do it effectively.

And yet they do, consistently.

Here's an excerpt from a MENSA article on the subject:

Three empirical studies, specifically focused on the first-year academic performance of the home school college student (Galloway 1995, Gray 1998, Jenkins 1998), attempted to remedy higher education and policy makers’ lack of knowledge. Galloway (1995) found home school graduates outperformed their conventional private school peers on the ACT English subtest. Jenkins (1998) found that full- and part-time community college home school students’ average first-year grade point averages were higher than non-home school graduates. Jenkins also found that the home school students outperformed their peers in reading and mathematics on the Texas Academic Skills Program. Finally, Gray (1998) found no significant differences between home school and traditional students at three institutions in Georgia (including a public university, a private university and a private college) on the SAT scores, English grades or cumulative grade point averages.

If they can -- and I leave room to be proven that home schooled kids are at college level when they are college age - I do leave room to be proven wrong here -- if they can do it, then I think that is a real indictment on the education system in general. If some dopey parent can educate a kid at home just as well as the public school system, then our school system is a serious waste of money.

And that's indeed what people are discovering, which is why voucher programs are so in demand, so that kids can be either home schooled or sent to private schools where the educational staff is accountable to the parents and can be hired and fired at will if they aren't doing a good job.

As a side note, Marion County Superior Court Judge Michael Keele upheld Indiana's school voucher law last week, stating precisely the argument I used in our other discussion that it's lawful because the vouchers go to the parents not directly to a parochial school. The choice of the parents as to where to spend that voucher money disconnects it from the government so that the government is not directly supporting religious schools.

[Seth]

Seth, religion was first. It did the same thing, brainwashing young kids.

Perhaps, but that's at the choice of the parents, not the state.

[MrJonno]

Commies hate it when people manage to extract their children from the Marxist indoctrination of the public school system because the Commies want to eliminate the influences of the parents on the children as early as possible so they can be raised as good little obedient proletarian slaves.

Because being your own person really goes down well in the work place, 'fitting in' is probably about most vital thing anyone can ever learn. You can be the most intelligent hard working person on the planet but if you manage to piss of every person you ever meet you aren't going to get very far.

[Seth]

Commies hate it when people manage to extract their children from the Marxist indoctrination of the public school system because the Commies want to eliminate the influences of the parents on the children as early as possible so they can be raised as good little obedient proletarian slaves.

Because being your own person really goes down well in the work place, 'fitting in' is probably about most vital thing anyone can ever learn. You can be the most intelligent hard working person on the planet but if you manage to piss of every person you ever meet you aren't going to get very far.

That you fail to understand the distinction between voluntary cooperation based in rational self-interest and proletarian slavery is unsurprising.

[Bella Fortuna]

Interesting article on the perils of homeschooling when it stems from religious belief: http://www.salon.com/2012/03/15/homesch ... lliterate/