Loyalty to the State

POSTED BY: canttakesky
UPDATED: Monday, March 31, 2008 03:34
VIEWED: 19263
PAGE 15 of 27

PREV PAGE 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 NEXT PAGE

CANTTAKESKY

Friday, March 14, 2008 2:32 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
My concerns around homeschooling is simply that there is some kind of check on whether kids are learning. ... As to how and why that might happen, you know, I really don't know.

Fair enough.

Quote:
A lot of it depends on the school. There are choices for parents.

Did you say you were in Australia? Maybe the educational system there is better than here. All I can speak on is the educational system in the States. Here, teachers aren't experts in science, math, history, or whatever subject they are teaching. That is not what they studied in college. To get a bachelor's in education, you take mostly classes in practice and theory of education--they spend most of their time learning procedures and processes of how to teach, not what to teach. That is the substance of their credential.

I believe any educational reform has got to change this type of credentialing. It tends to attract people who are too incompetent to major in anything else. They even have special classes for education majors, like "Math for education majors" or "Science for education majors"--cause the real classes are too hard. If it were up to me, teachers would be the elite of our educational system (not the dregs), and compensated accordingly in both salary and social status.

Quote:
I get a little tired of the evangelical zeal with which homeschooling is held up to be a solution to all educational problems.

No, homeschooling is definitely not for every parent or every child. Many homeschooling families offer both choices to their children. I know I do. My kids know they can ask to go to school any time they want. A number of homeschooled children homeschool for younger grades, and go to school for high school--mostly so they have more options for dating. Hah, gotta love puberty. : )

--------------------------
For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth -- to know the worst and to provide for it.
--Patrick Henry - March 23, 1775

CANTTAKESKY

Friday, March 14, 2008 2:49 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
I mean, god forbid that someone, ANYONE take a peak into CTS-world.

What? I'm giving YOU a peek, aren't I? Voluntarily I might add. I've established that I don't lock my kids in a closet, that they have plentiful and regular interactions with society and in public, and that I seek medical attention when necessary. Overall, they are happy, healthy, well-fed and well-clothed. One of my sons has a chronic health problem, but he is making continuous progress, and that is all that can be expected. So what are you talking about?

Or are you still under the impression that I am in Peru because I am "hiding" from the authorities, and that eats at you? What is your problem with me anyway? I don't see you accusing Frem and Sarge so much as you do me. And they are anti-govt oversight as well. What about me pisses you off so much? I am really curious.

BTW, which personality disorder do you think I have? And why? And why do you like attacking me personally?

Quote:
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.

I have no idea what unique situation you are talking about. You gotta admit, this sentence is a bit incoherent. Do you mind restating?

SIGNYM

Friday, March 14, 2008 3:26 PM

Sarge - I think the reason you and I get into it is because you're thinking about YOUR family and YOUR son. Your situation works well for the both of you, and you quite understandably don't want inteference. But I'm thinking about children in general, and that includes cases where parents have abused children so horrifically that someone SHOULD have stepped in.

I recall a story about a boy who was kept out of school, routinely punished by beng beaten and stuffed in a cubbyhole with pillows. The entire extended family knew about it: aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, cousins all accepted that was the way things should be. One time he was stuffed into a cubbyhole, and after begging for two days to be let out because he couldn't breathe, he died.

I recall another story about a bully who not only terrorized his sons and younger daughter, he terrorized his dad, the teachers, sheriffs, and neighbors with his fists and his guns. The entire small village was scared to death to intervene. It took his oldest son with one of his own guns to end the reign or terror. (That's why I find the image of a parents at the door with a shotgun so unappealing.)

And yet another story about a retarded 16-year old, also kept out of school, who was used like Cinderella during the day and like a whore at night.

I'm not hearing any solutions about this.

---------------------------------
Let's party like it's 1929.

SERGEANTX

Friday, March 14, 2008 3:49 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
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.

I'm assuming that's sarcasm, but you're still banging away on the same strawman. Homeschooling isn't about isolation. Honestly, I'm not just saying this to be contrary, but it's the skewed, institutional environment of public schools that's the real isolation. Fortunately, the real world is nothing like that.

Homeschooled kids are more likely to have a realistic picture of how the world operates because they live in it. As opposed to being sequestered away in the weird-assed "Lord of the Flies" subculture propagated by the public school model. The homeschooled kids I've known, had a broader range of experiences with real-world interaction than I ever did in public school.

You've never really addressed this issue, so I'm not sure if you take it seriously or not, but it's a real phenomenon. Public schools take hundreds of kids, insecure adolescents at the most vulnerable point in their lives, and throw them together with minimal supervision. Even if you can imagine an overall positive outcome from such an experiment, it's nothing like the real world.

In the real world you deal with people of all different ages, all different experience levels. They all have different goals and different interests, different fears and different values.

By contrast, public schools go out of their way to partition kids in homogeneous groups. It's an unavoidable requirement of managing so many with so few. In such an environment, everyone is essentially competing for the same thing. All of the insecurities of adolescents are amplified and exaggerated.

I've never really got how we can get kids in public schools to take us seriously when we try to convince them that they should resist peer-pressure. Especially when we force them into an environment where peer-pressure is everything. How can it not be? In that environment a child spends 8-10 hours a day, almost exclusively with their peers. Nearly all of their interaction will be with this group of kids. Status in relation to this group becomes the single most important measuring stick in the child's world. Being ostracized or ridiculed in such a setting is a crushing blow, one that they'll have to deal with daily, perhaps for years. Is it any wonder kids go to insane extremes to avoid such a fate?

Then we have then nerve to tell kids that they should resist this fact, that to give in to it is a sign of weakness. Talk about a catch-22.

Homeschooled kids learn social skills and take their cues on behavior from many different types of people in many different settings. They get to see people interacting as mature adults rather than insecure teenagers. They learn that someone else's opinion of you is just that, an opinion. It won't rule your life and there's no need to let it override your own preferences or judgments.

Homeschooling experiences will be as varied as families are, and I suspect that is at the heart of your discomfort with the concept. But homeschooling isn't by nature about isolation. You seem to be making most of your judgments of homeschooling in relation to the stereotype of homeschoolers as religious zealots looking to raise brainwashed misfits. Those folks have become the poster-families for homeschooling detractors, but even in the families that are homeschooling for religious reasons, most of them aren't the anti-social freaks you're so worried about.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

SERGEANTX

Friday, March 14, 2008 3:56 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
... I'm thinking about children in general, and that includes cases where parents have abused children so horrifically that someone SHOULD have stepped in.

Sure, I get that. And I hope I've been clear that I don't think we should stand by and watch that happen. We should, as family, as friends, as neighbors, as community, and finally as government, act to protect kids, or anyone for that matter, caught up in such a nightmare. But I don't think that goal is served by insisting that parents have permission from the government to educate their kids the way they see fit. And I don't think that institutional settings are better on the whole as educational environments, even when the cases of abuse are taken into account. It's not like there's no abuse in government sponsored environments. A quick scan of foster-parent programs and government run shelters puts the lie to that assumption.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

RUE

Friday, March 14, 2008 4:02 PM

I think SignyM is responding to CTS's notions that 'the man' is intruding in the sanctity of the right to home-school - however the parent sees fit.

***************************************************************
"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."

SIGNYM

Friday, March 14, 2008 4:25 PM

(CBS) It is estimated that 850,000 children in this country are home-schooled -- the overwhelming majority by parents who have only the best interests of their children at heart.

But homeschooling is largely unregulated. A CBS News investigation reports how some children have suffered abuse -- and much worse -- while no one was watching.

Neil and Christy Edgar will be sentenced next month in Kansas for abusing and murdering their 9-year-old son. He suffocated after his head was wrapped in duct tape as a punishment for taking food without permission.

It's a shocking case, but as CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports, not an isolated one. A CBS News investigation found dozens of cases of parents convicted or accused of murder or child abuse who were teaching their children at home, out of the public eye.

"A lot of reports for suspected abuse or neglect are made by the schools when they observe children coming in that may be bruised or not well fed," says Marcia Herman-Giddens, of the North Carolina Child Advocacy Institute.

In Iowa, a father is serving life, and a mother goes on trial later this month, for killing their 10-year-old adopted son and burying him at their house. Because they were home schooling, no one noticed he was missing for more than a year.

There are two notorious Texas cases.

Andrea Yates gained national attention when she drowned her five children in a bathtub. Deanna Laney, told investigators she beat her three sons with rocks, killing two of them. Both mothers taught their children at home.

"The genuine home schoolers are doing a great job with their children, but there is a subgroup of people that are keeping them in isolation, keeping them from public view because the children often do have visible injuries," says Herman-Giddens.

Even a very public home school success story can hide a private dark side. Marjorie Lavery says her father beat her before the National Spelling Bee then threatened to kill her after she came in second. He pleaded guilty to child endangerment after she testified about years of cruelty.

Hal Young and other home school advocates vigorously defend the right to teach their children at home without government intrusion.

"The cases that you've mentioned are very, very rare - extremely rare," says Young. "There's not a pattern there, there's not a trend," says Young. "It's not something you can point your finger at and say there's this vast undercurrent, because there's not."

But it's hard to know how widespread abuse might be because the government doesn't keep track. It doesn't even know how many children are taught at home in this country.

In eight states, parents don't have to tell anyone they're home schooling. Unlike teachers, in 38 states and the District of Columbia, parents need virtually no qualifications to home school. Not one state requires criminal background checks to see if parents have abuse convictions.

The Edgars now face life in prison. The dilemma raised by their case and others: how to protect parents' rights to raise their children and still protect children from parents who abuse them.

www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/14/eveningnews/main578007.shtml

---------------------------------
Let's party like it's 1929.

SIGNYM

Friday, March 14, 2008 4:28 PM

Abuse case prompts rethink of homeschool laws
Governor speaks out on 14-year-old girl confined to room

After the arrest of a man accused of abusing a daughter who had not been in school in five years, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano said she plans to examine the state's laws on homeschooling.
The Tucson man, who's name has been withheld to protect the daughter's identity, was arrested Tuesday and accused of sexually abusing his 14-year-old daughter while holding her captive in his home for more than a year.

www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42822

---------------------------------
Let's party like it's 1929.

SIGNYM

Friday, March 14, 2008 5:03 PM

Huh. I'm surprised nobody argued the flip side: That kids who attend public school are abused at home, and that some kids who attend public school are abused by teachers (Schools are a natural attractant to pedophiles.)

So, I'm not trying to say that homeschooling is wrong and that homeschoolers are hiding abuse. But a system of checks and balances provides for greater options.

---------------------------------
Let's party like it's 1929.

FREMDFIRMA

Friday, March 14, 2008 5:14 PM

Imma just address one point, and I think I'm done here - since the folk so against homeschooling have resorted in the same "dishonest debate tactics" they claim to dislike, but only when facing them, I guess.

Quote:
I find that school attendance is a useful way to keep kids in regular contact with people outside the family.

I thought about this a while, and I realize that I am probably a rarity in this, but I wonder...

Did it ever occur to anyone some kids might not WANT regular contact with people outside their family ?

That maybe they just don't like people that much, and prefer to be left the heck alone ?

Hell, even in my current profession, if I am not feelin particularly up to social interaction, I'll sign out old #34 - it's got one of them thick, nasty armor plates in between me and the fare, all scratched and smeared with a turnstile in it, and effectively discourages any communication, since I already know their destination when I pick em up, and the meter has a second display on their side of the armorplate.

I don't really know how common that degree of leave-me-alone is, but I do know that forcing social interaction on someone who doesn't want it can have no good result.

And that's as much as imma offer on the topic, now that folks have gone over the top and are looking for a fight instead of a problem solving debate.

-Frem
EDIT: I did address that, the whole environment can only be effectively compared to the penal system, and is abusive by it's very nature.
As for the other, that's a whole different can of worms and whole different topic, and if you wanna address it, this thread is not the place.

PREV PAGE 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 NEXT PAGE