Loyalty to the State
POSTED BY: canttakesky
UPDATED: Monday, March 31, 2008 03:34
VIEWED: 19263
PAGE 14 of 27
Hey, Sig. You still haven't answered my question. You know, the "WHY IS THAT" question. I asked it like 8 different ways, so it shouldn't be hard to scroll up and refresh your memory.
Or are you doing the Finn thing too? You know, give an answer I didn't ask for, or talk around it. Cause that's all I see so far.
Every example you have provided of routine monitoring is NOT legally required. Or you cite examples where there is evidence /suspicion of harm (which I do not dispute is necessary). Sure, sometimes monitoring piggy backs on the compulsory education opportunity--but the fact remains, none of the monitoring you described is, at the end of the day, LEGALLY REQUIRED.
You keep saying bullshit. Hey, I can be corrected. Just show me the statute where another aspect of child-rearing is LEGALLY REQUIRED to be routinely monitored. Chapter and section, please. And I'll stand corrected.
I'll just be right here sipping an Earl Grey, waiting for your answer. You know, to the question: WHY IS THAT?
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Quote:That’s the thing about asking questions, you can’t always expect me to give you the answer you want to hear. Sometimes the answer I give you is the one that ruins your whole argument, prompting you to storm out of discussion.
Originally posted by canttakesky:
Or are you doing the Finn thing too? You know, give an answer I didn't ask for, or talk around it. Cause that's all I see so far.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Quote:True. But NONE of those checks are legally required here in the States (the political context of this argument).
Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
There are actually lots of checks that go on with regard to child abuse and neglect
Quote:If you want to legislate testing to make sure children are educated, would you also want to legislate testing to make sure they are psychologically healthy too? Or allow educational testing to be voluntary, just like taking your kid to the doctor is voluntary. I am looking for consistency here.
perhaps testing children at several levels would be a useful way to prevent parents deciding that its their right to not educate a child at all.
Quote:Fine, capacity. How do you define capacity? What are your criteria? If I say I have the capacity to teach, how would you determine if I do or not?
I meant capacity. The capacity to teach your children to areasonable level.
Quote:Ah. Now we are getting somewhere in this discussion.
Teaching involves a whole range of skills and an incredibly broad range of knowledge, particularly if you plan to be 'it' with regards to your child's entire education....Teaching relies on expertise in any particular area, so it really all depends on your own level of skill and knowledge doesn't it? ... There may be *gasp* things that school teaches kids that you have no idea about,
skills that you don't possess.
You know, I am a homeschooler. My 7 year old daughter is learning about geology (middle-high school level). Now I have never taking a single geology class in my life. Whatever little bits of geology I might have learned as a child has been long forgotten. So how do I do it? How do I teach her something I don't know? What do you think? Any ideas?
When I first started to research homeschooling, I came across a study of several hundred homeschoolers. They correlated standardized test performance with a slew of variables. One of their findings is that there was NO correlation between student performance on standardized tests and the educational level of the parents. In other words, students with PhD homeschooling parents scored as well as students with high school drop out parents. That floored me. If this finding is indeed generalizable, why would it be that the teacher's educational level did not matter? I started asking myself the following questions. Let me ask them of you.
Of all the teachers you have ever known, which ones were the very best that helped you learn the most? Why were they your favorite? What about them helped you learn more than other teachers?
Here is another question. Imagine the smartest child in the world. Imagine a child, who by age 9, knows more about every subject than all his teachers combined. Now imagine he can't change schools and he can't get outside tutors. What should his teachers do? How can they teach him when they no longer know more than he does? Or is he doomed to twiddle his thumbs until such time he can leave those teachers?
It began to occur to me that perhaps the main determinant of success in education may not be the knowledge of the teacher, but how well a teacher can guide a student to the libraries of knowledge that is out there. We are so used to being lectured to by one teacher at a time that we think the knowledge of our teachers are "it."
The teaching model in school is that someone with more knowledge tells the child he needs to learn it, shares that knowledge with the child, has the child memorize it, and tests the child to see how well the memorization is. It is a teacher-centered model, with the teacher actively teaching and the child passively receiving.
Now we agree there is more than one way to skin a cat, right? Here is a child-centered model. I call it the learning model. The child actively chooses what he wants to learn, the teacher passively facilitates the learning by providing materials and opportunities, and the CHILD does ALL THE LEARNING. He then chooses what he wants to remember, and so forth
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Thanks for explaining how you homeschool and why you find it beneficial. I am not against homeschooling, and also, you may be surprised to learn, support child focused learning. You sound like you do a fine job and good on you.
My concerns around homeschooling is simply that there is some kind of check on whether kids are learning. That's not to say that if they fall behind in their reading, the state whips them back into school. But in some way, it can be determined that they are being educated to a reasonable standard. As to how and why that might happen, you know, I really don't know. I'm not planning to do it, and am not involved in education, so I'll leave that to interested parties.
I also haven't experienced the kind of mainstream schooling that you are talking about - being imparted knowledge by a teacher like slotting a disc into a computer, neither for myself nor for my son. There is a high degree of child focused learning that takes place in mainstream schools, and there are other forms of schooling where it is even more so. A lot of it depends on the school. There are choices for parents. In this country, you can also partially homeschool and opt in for specialist subjects at your local school. Sounds fine to me, I'm all for choice.
I also agree that you don't have to be a phd to home teach, and don't agree with parents being required to have teaching quals.
I get a little tired of the evangelical zeal with which homeschooling is held up to be a solution to all educational problems. I don't see it as an option for many parents, and frankly, I wouldn't really want it to be. I'd rather fix the problems that exist in mainstream education and pour more funding into that than worrying too much about something that is a marginal issue.
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I believe all doctors should learn through home-schooling. Or since it's for adults, maybe a self-study class and then learn by doing. You wouldn't mind if I've never taken out a human gall-bladder before, would you ? I did quite well on cats after only a few tries. And the directions in the book were almost complete. NEXT !
And engineers too - you certainly don't want anyone who's been drilled in stress analysis to design your airplane. You need to find the person who gets maximum fulfillment from it. BTW, I have the design for a plane I want to sell you. I did it all myself and it was a lot of fun doing it, I swear.
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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."
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Quote:I didn't answer that question because IT ISN'T. As you yourself have validated by your own diatribes about the evils of modern medicine and the evils of modern science and the evils of modern foods. See? EDUCATION ISN'T THE EXCEPTION! And since I've capitalized it I hope you'll notice my response this time!
Hey, Sig. You still haven't answered my question. You know, the "WHY IS THAT" question.
You're not being inspected by the Dept of Education as a homeschooler, as you are not inspected by the Dept of Health as a home cooker, nor the inspected by the Joint Commission for Hospital Accreditation whenever you hand out an aspririn (or in your case a homeopathy-ball), or by the police when you teach your child morals and ethics. But fuck up in a visible way and you WILL be. Education is NOT an exception.
So, what's your point?
Oh, that's right.... NONE.
Did you get it this time? Or are you still riding your hobby-horse?
Or are you REALLY bitching about having your children looked at by other members of society who might actually have the authority to intervene? You see, I find that's the ENTIRE point of your posts whether its about medicine, education, diet, religion, or anything else. I mean, god forbid that someone, ANYONE take a peak into CTS-world. At this moment, you're got a thing going about education which you propose is such a unique situation that you've forgotten all of you other bitches. Tomorrow, it'll be ANOTHER "unique" situation. Did you get my point this time? I've even capitalized helpful words.
Given your rather paranoid mindset, I think it's prolly the latter.
http://www.merck.com/mmhe/sec07/ch105/ch105a.html
After this, I'm sure we can gracefully segue from the evils of education to the evils of modern medicine.
Case closed.
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Let's party like it's 1929.
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Quote:I'm old. My memory's hazy. So... Eh? Did I really? I can't remember!
Good grief Signym. Remember when you used to contribute to the conversation?
Quote:Yeah, yeah. Whatever.
You like government getting into everybody's business, we don't
Quote:Seriously Sarge, haven't you seen families go off the rails? Seriously, dangerously, breathtakingly off the rails? In my book NOBODY gets a free pass. You want an automatic "pass" from me? Given the child-abuse I've witnessed and read about, the answer is: ain't gonna happen.
So how about I win automatically?
That isn't because I think "the State" is right. I can think of states that have ALSO gone seriously, breathtakingly off the rails. States where I would want to isolate my child forever if possible: Pretty much all of Africa, the Middle East, and south-central LA for example. I mean, when their cultures aren't being complete dicks about girls it's just plain UNSAFE.
Point is, it ISN'T possible. Sooner or later, child has to deal with the bigger world, whether it's crazy or not. Best time to introduce the concept of "everyone else is crazy" is when they're old enough to dissemble in a consistent fashion.
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Let's party like it's 1929.
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The infamous dbl.
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Frem: I find your post the most helpful. I don't think that is enough contact with the outside world. Kids need a valid choice. A colored, three-dimensional, immediate, fully-realized bolt-hole in order to have a sense of freedom. I don't think testing once in a while offers that freedom, altho it DOES answer the question about homeschooling satisfactorily.
Quite honestly, I have no idea how to offer that option. Right now, unless parents fuck up so badly that doctors, nurses, teachers, police and social workers are FORCED to responds most kids DON'T have a choice. (Not that I want to take away the several sets of eyes looking at the kid, but its' not enough.) Kids have to wait until they're old enough to enter society as adults, and those that can't wait wind up on the streets. And we know how THAT ends up.
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Let's party like it's 1929.
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Quote:But you want me to be. WHY IS THAT?
Originally posted by SignyM:
You're not being inspected by the Dept of Education as a homeschooler,
1. Education is the only aspect of child-rearing where the law legally compels routine action and monitoring. There is no compulsory feed-your-child law, or compulsory well-child visit law, or compulsory clothing law. There is however a compulsory schooling law. WHY IS THAT?
2. Most states, though not all, have statutes requiring that homeschooled children be monitored through testing and/or record keeping periodically by the Dept of Education. What is legally required varies from state to state. Look at the color distribution on this page to get an idea.
http://www.hslda.org/laws/default.asp
My question here though, is not so much that *I* am being inspected, but why everyone here WANTS all homeschoolers to be inspected. If you guys had your way, every state would require inspection by the Dept of Education. However YOU don't advocate the same type of inspection in other areas. So my question, of course, is WHY IS THAT?
Look, there are 3 possible ways to answer this.
1. All you have to do here is tell me that you don't advocate compulsory inspection by the DOEducation, and we're fine.
2. Or you can tell me you advocate compulsory compliance and inspection in ALL areas. Either #1 or #2 will have intellectual consistency to me.
3. Or you can explain that you are not consistent for a good reason. I'd like to know what that reason is.
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