OT: Home Schooling

Drug awareness is a good idea to learn early on, kids should know not to take a drink when offered by a stranger, who knows what it could be laced with. Kids should know not to take the pills that are in Mom and Dad's medicine cabinet. I remember an RCMP officer coming to a Parent Meeting and showing the bottle of pills they found on a child at an elementary school giving his friends. The kid had gone into the parent's medicine cabinet and emptied all their pill bottles and made a smorgasbord of pills. He handed them out like candy. Can you imagine having your child come home, acting weird, and having no idea what the child may have taken? Frightening...

From what I hear it sounds like 5th grade is a little late in teaching about STD's and pregnancy prevention. Again, at a parent meeting we had a school nurse come and speak. She told us what she was happening in the school district. It was very disturbing. I was recently told by a parent that she happened to pick up the phone one day to hear a friend of her Gr. 6 son's telling him she was going to give him a b*** job for his birthday. Good grief!!!! The Mother was furious to say the least.

I totally agree with your last sentence, and that's where we come in as parents and teach our kids about morals. They also need to know about the responsibility of bringing a child into the world.

...Linda

Thank you Elizabeth! For once you have taken the words, out of my mouth. The Image USA has now all over the Globus , is of a Country with very Christian values , thus I asked her the same ? is she really a minority and what part of her belief is squashed as she wrote ??? mirjam

Same here Ruby ! i am facinated by the many ideas people have and how people interpret everything. may you have many years of curiousity !!!! mirjam

Good morning Melinda

It is productive that we understand that we are from Tottaly different cultures.

I thnk that here we enjoy that our culture is more a tribal culture. Even new comers who Immigrate here, do so because they Want to be part of the Group culture, and couldn`t be a full member of the countries were they lived.

I respect your opposition , but i think it is a bit like Fighting Wind Mills , if you feel that you really are oposed to your children getting ANY other social values, than yours` , you should leave the place you live in and live in a community that has your values. Living within another Community willing or not , some social values are going to sip into your and your kids` lives. Public schools are about Public They tach your child that there are different kinds of people ...

The same debates go on here, Israel has a Public regular education , and a public Relgious Education. People who want more fundamenatal education have a third education system, [ mostly state funded as well] And than there are Specilaized schools. The solution parents find here is send the children to State schools and add Special course in the afternoon. My children took advanced Music and sciences Courses in the afternoon. I was against enclosing them into the So called `superior schools`. One should let children explore , have loads of free time to think, dream, read , or do what ever they feel like doing. So that when they find their way, they will feel they found what they wanted not what i wanted them to have.

If you indeed believe that , and at the same time you write again and again , that you don`t hesitate to point out to others when they make a mistake ... WHY don`t you Lobby your government to make a change in their attidtude, in the laws , and in waht they provide to all ...enclosing yourself at home and providing your Good system only to your kids , seems not consistent, with the above , but very much consistent with the terminology you used in describing OTHER kids as vermin or hooligans. Your Enclosing your children in the house and believing that the government can`t or won`t provide Superior education , sounds to me that you think Your method is Superior To other Systems. How do you know that ??? Yoyr System is one of many other systems, yours is different not superior. And what about the unlucky kids whose parents can`t for no fault of their own to provide their kids with what you provide yours??? Are they to be condemed ???

And WHO promises me that Your Homeschooling is TOP Quality ???are you richer than the goverment ????Because you keep claiming that it is a matter of money ,,??? and the government doesn't have the money to pay for top-

What is your problem here ?? what exactly are you opposed to in other kids ?? Religion ? Race ? gender ??? please elaborate on that ??

This is a very Biblical Jewish conception !!! Hence the boys` Bar Mitzwa.

Alas modern thought shows us that This is just Starting the danger course life time ....

Well count your blessing, and be aware that `Yes , you gave them all you could, still , kids are like baking cakes ,,, you put in all the Good ingridients, mix well and put inthe oven ,,,,, Still some cakes don`t come out well , not your fault ,,,,Just Luck.

So they parents are disgusted and children , dress up one way when leaving the house , and change somewhere between house and Street/school ,,,,, i think it is better to let them dress up as they please , and not fight it too much .

If there is room for everyone, and if you consider everyone has a right to their own opinions [ but not your kids !!!] There should be a common system , to make them feel comfortable and acknowleged about the common points. When i realized that Fiberart wasn`t considered art ,in the eyes of painters sculpturers , i understood that , sitting and complaining about it with other fiberartists won`t change anything . Thus i joined a group of painters /sculpturers and by working side by side they learned and later accepted my art as equal to their`s with different materials and techniques !!!!!

?????????????????????? You sure amaze me , i have quoted this to nummeral people here , some who know Usa only from the Media , some who like me only Lived several years in USA , some born and educated there ,, EVERYBODY was perplexed by this statement ,,,, Europeans think Usa is a very Christian motivated country Even though your constitution seprates state and Religion !!!!!

What Part of your belief aren`t you allowed to practice ?????? mirjam

I think Melinda that you believe that you are tolerant ,, But tolerance to me is Accepting others and sit with them ,, not enclose in your own corner , hold a [virtual ] hand before your kids` eyes and take aaway their seeing others as equal human beings, I see itolerance in your assumption that your interpretation of the Bible, is better than others` interpretation ,,,, i even see itolerance in your assumption that YOU know and think that you can provide Superior education,,,,, it shows complete Itolerance to people or humans who believe different than you , whose culture or background is different than yours`!!!!

snipped-for-privacy@actcom.co.il (Mirjam Bruck-Cohen) wrote in news:42955a1d.8710116 @ar.news.verio.net:

I don't consider it intolerant to let my children spend a lot of time with those who are a bad influence on them. Those children are all welcome to play at our house and as long as they are reasonably civil, but I don't let my children "hang out" with them just walking around the streets with nothing to do, because I have seen that this type of behavior with those types of children can be a precursor to getting into mischief. And seeing as though the local police, who know the troublemakers in the neighborhood a lot better than you do, think my children should stay away from them, I think it's funny that you think my children should spend more time with them.

I never said that. I just said that it is the way I see it and the way it works for me, and that I don't feel I am responsible for how anybody else sees it.

Any one-on-one mastery-learning system will be better than a one-size- fits-all spiral learning system. If you call that intolerance, well, I just call it a fact of life. Individually customized anything is always better than something tailored to the masses.

My oldest was learning-disabled and I didn't want him stuck in special education when I knew that he was capable of learning, just that he was slower than most. So rather than stick him in a classroom where he would feel inferior and get poor grades, I made the decision to teach him at home and take as long as it needed to for him to master the things he needed to learn. So in his case I will confidently say that he got a better education than the public schools would give him. He has perfect penmanship, excellent spelling skills, good grammar, and made it through first-semester college algebra (intermediate algebra) and passed that college class on the first pass with no help from me (of course, if he ha listened to me about how to study to pass tests on the first pass he would have gotten a better grade, but he still passed it with a C, and it took his dad three times to pass the same class when his dad was in the same school.).

For the rest of them, I will say that they got as good of an education as they would get in public schools, and in the sense of mastering skills I think they learned more at home because they had to master concepts. That is not to say that a parent couldn't work with their child outside of public school to do the same thing. That is just to say that since I had one child who was home schooling, I chose to do the same with all of them.

snipped-for-privacy@actcom.co.il (Mirjam Bruck-Cohen) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@ar.news.verio.net:

Well, there is no one group culture in the US. We are an amazingly diverse country.

I know of no totally-unified community in this country.

My children are already abundantly aware that there are different kinds of people.

That is one valid option among many.

And to my mind, HSing gives my children an opportunity to do that as well.

Why should I? I don't believe it is primarily the government's job to make sure that every child has the best education possible. California is already on the verge of bankruptcy in part due to massive spending on social programs, and the special interest groups just want more and more. Anyway, I have seen that when parents are not involved with their child's education, no matter how good of a school the child is going to, the child will not get as good of an education as when the parents are involved. So the problems in my neighborhood will not be solved by throwing more money at it.

I never said it was altogether superior. I think that a custom-tailored education is superior than a mass-produced education.

No. It is their parent's choice to place different priorities on their children's lives.

There are underprivileged families who make sure that their children study hard and do well in their schoolwork so they have more options open to them as an adult. There are also well-off families who don't care to get personally involved with their children's education and those children founder as well.

I feel sorry for the children whose parents don't get involved with their children's lives. But I strongly feel that my first responsibility is to my own children, and if I put all my energies on other people's children to help them succeed and my own fail, I have made a colossal mistake.

In the words of the poet, "Richer than I you cannot be -- I had a mother who read to me."

NOthing. I have no idea where you come up with that. I am starting to wonder if whether you are totally missing the mark here or whether you are misunderstanding what I say on purpose or what, which is why I am trying to wind things down.

It's also true. LOL

Well, maybe. My children have not had any rebellion problems and relate well to anybody.

I think that how a child turns out is in large part due to how they were raised -- maybe 80% due to the way they were raised and 20% due to other forces. And if the parents don't do their whole job, that leaves them immensely open to outside forces that would go into the 80% because the parents abdicated their responsibility.

My children have the right to their own opinions. They just have to live by my house rules as long as I am paying their bills.

I disagree. I don't think that any one education system is going to be best for everybody, and I support freedom of choice in education.

There is Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Judaism. Similarly, there is fundamentalist, evangelical, and liberal Christianity. Your rabbis in Israel do not consider a convert to Reform Judaism as a Jew for purposes of immigration or citizenship -- I forget which it is -- isn't that so? So why not? It's all Judaism, or is it? Obviously not everybody thinks so, and obviously the Reform Jews think the Orthodox are wrong or they would be practicing Orthodox Judaism. In the same way, Christians of varying "flavors" believe and practice differently. But to me Christianity is not about religious practice as much as it is about a relationship, and everybody's relationship can be different and still valid -- the point is whether or not there is a relationship there.

Hopefully we will be exchanging ideas and opinions for many years to come Mirjam. ruby

I see that you stated this is your belief system. Unfortunately, many Christian bodies do not see it that way, and are becoming more fanatical about their dogma, insisting that "theirs" is the only way.

Thank you for a very civil discussion. You have kept your cool under some heavy pressure. :-)

My neighbor just graduated college with a degree in education. She majored in history. I bent her ear a bit about our conversation, even though government isn't her strong suit, it is fresh in her mind. I talked to her about the phenomenon happening in the U.S. with so many believing that our country was founded on Christian principles. She is a very strong believer in the Christian faith. I would guess a fundamentalist based on conversations we've had over the past year.

Her reply was: There's nothing in the U.S. Constitution having anything remotely related to Christian or religious thought. Some of its founding had to do with the principals of the 7-member American Indian Nation headed by the Iroquois. Many of the founding fathers had no Christian belief system. Much of the Declaration of Independence was based on the theories and writings of John Locke (I looked him up on the net . . . very interesting). Definitely not a Christian theologian. :-)

It is a disservice to our democracy/republic for so many Christian Americans to insist otherwise. And where this notion is coming from is anyone's guess. It's a modern myth. And one easily dispelled by just a little education. Dianne

Is, and has been for some time. While I was still in school, a friend of the family, who was a school nurse, stopped by after work to vent -- she'd found a couple of fourth-graders Doing It. She seemed to recall that when she, and her stepdaughter roughly my age, were in fourth grade, boys had cooties. Apparently no more.

My ex-boss' wife was an OB nurse. They regularly delivered 9 and 10 year olds. Some girls these days are beginning puberty in 2d or 3d grade -- the right time to talk pregnancy prevention is when the first girl in the class is able to get pregnant. And repeat it every year.

Last year, I was on the trolley and overheard a conversation between a couple of youngish teens, in which one protested that she knew Whazzizname liked her better than the girl he was flirting with because "he loved me enough to give me a baby". Clearly, our pregnancy prevention classes have also got to address that theory, and straighten them out that you get a baby because you're fool enough to drop your drawers, not because of how much he loves you.

Dianne Lewandowski wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@individual.net:

Well, I disagree with that as much as you probably would.

Well, there are a lot of revisionists in the history field these days -- those who would deny that the Pilgrims came here for religious liberty and instead would say that they were economic opportunists, that the Pilgrim's Thanksgiving celebration was to thank the Indians for helping them and not to thank God for the blessings they had been given inthe midst of such awful hardships as they had to face, those who would deny that the Holocaust ever took place, etc. -- so I would have to go back and read the original sources and not some textbook, especially one written in the last 20-30 years or less (I'm not sure when the change happened.)

But while I would never say that America was founded as a Christian nation, I still think the majority of the people who labored to give her birth had Christian or sympathetic-to-Christian religious principles in mind. But that's about as far as I would take it. I think it would be a major mistake to turn this country into any kind of a theocracy, but I know many people, and especially a lot of Christian home schoolers, who would disagree with me on that.

Yet they take advantage of all the resources of the "village" -- museums, zoological gardens, concert halls, libraries, etc. Where does "home schooling" end and the "village" begin? And have you

That's complete and utter nonsense. Darla Sacred cows make great hamburgers. Picture Trail Gallery:

Thank you Melinda for all your long elaborate answers , We can part knowing we have different opinions . Thank you mirjam

Some of us are homeschooling with the village idea as a goal. Judy

Like all things, there is probably a bit of both in the equation. :-) My ancestors were Huguenots who fled persecution. But it was more than wanting to practise their religion . . . it was also economic freedom and the freedom to build ships (their livelihood). Persecution does more than deny you the freedom to practise your religion. That type of bigotry also means you can't work. It's a LOT more than religious freedom.

Again, probably a little of both. One doesn't preclude the other.

Yes, there are those idiots. There are also those idiots who think we never went to the moon. These are fringe elements, not mainstream thought.

-- so I would have to go back

I think it would depend upon the author and his credentials. I don't dismiss out of hand current books.

And who might these be? Certainly not the majority of the founders who signed and/or wrote the Declaration of Independence. While some were Christian, many were not. And the U.S. Constitution has nothing whatsoever to do with religious thought. Yet, you stated it did. What has me thinking so hard is that you - believing this - have passed that notion onto your children. And it's a false notion. One only need read the dry thing to understand it has to do with a system of government. A system that very carefully maneuvered itself away from a theocracy.

And that's what has a great many of us frightened to death at what they see happening with the stranglehold that the fringe, Christian right currently has on our body politic in D.C. Dianne

Darla wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

I agree that it is, but that doesn't eliminate the fact that this is the opinion of the local school district.

snipped-for-privacy@actcom.co.il (Mirjam Bruck-Cohen) wrote in news:4296980f.4565688 @ar.news.verio.net:

Hey, if everybody felt the same it would be a pretty boring world. And if everybody in an entire country was exactly the same, the country's economy would be in dismal shape.

Dianne Lewandowski wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@individual.net:

I doubt they have a stronger hold on D.C. than do the gay rights activists, the teacher's unions, etc. Certainly they have an equal right to have their voice heard as well?