OT: Home Schooling

I always thought they elected to leave Britain, don't recall anybody declaring they had to leave.

Melinda ! I try to stay out of this thread , only read ,, but you wrote in your early letters that you Don`t hesitate to make remarks to children and other people when they make a Mistake , this opens you to get remarks from people who think that you made a mistake.

Please don`t mix the issue of the headscarves of Muslim girls in France, with other issues , you spoke about. Although this is so called a matter of Religion / Civil law issue, It is in fact a matter of a New comer wanting tomake a power show intheir new adopted country.{it is a growing problem all over Europe]. The headscarves are only a Signal, A call for war. Demands begin with the headscarves , and once this is accepted, there are several places were the next demand is a Seprate Court based on Korraan ruling , for the Now European Citizens, who enjoy all the Commodities of the European welfare system. And ps the girls aren`t prohibited to wear headscarves all the time, only in school. France is a Secular Country by it`s constitution, If somebody wants a Religious education one can go to a private school. Europe is slowly changing it`s Profile. There have beeen many debates wether the New European Constitution should Include the words Christian, as some countries demanded.

Excuse me ??? please check your Historical facts. mirjam

Melinda !!! I wrote before that i respect your ideas regarding your own kids, but while you complain that people , tell you that you made a mistake , You don`t hesistate to say .....

How do you know that this people Don`t mind , or even chose to live there , Did you make a survey ???? And anyway since you are so generalizing , maybe Other people think about you the same thoughts. Maybe some of the other Nice kids` parents think that because YOU `chose` or `don`t mind` living there ,,,, your kids aren`t nice. mirjam

On Sun, 29 May 2005 18:51:53 -0600, "wintersiren" wrote:

"The Pilgrims were English Separatists who founded (1620) Plymouth Colony in New England. In the first years of the 17th century, small numbers of English Puritans broke away from the Church of England because they felt that it had not completed the work of the Reformation. They committed themselves to a life based on the Bible. Most of these Separatists were farmers, poorly educated and without social or political standing. One of the Separatist congregations was led by William Brewster and the Rev. Richard Clifton in the village of Scrooby in Nottinghamshire. The Scrooby group emigrated to Amsterdam in 1608 to escape harassment and religious persecution. The next year they moved to Leiden, where, enjoying full religious freedom, they remained for almost 12 years. In 1617, discouraged by economic difficulties, the pervasive Dutch influence on their children, and their inability to secure civil autonomy, the congregation voted to emigrate to America. Through the Brewster family's friendship with Sir Edwin Sandys, treasurer of the London Company, the congregation secured two patents authorizing them to settle in the northern part of the company's jurisdiction. Unable to finance the costs of the emigration with their own meager resources, they negotiated a financial agreement with Thomas Weston, a prominent London iron merchant. Fewer than half of the group's members elected to leave Leiden. A small ship, the Speedwell, carried them to Southampton, England, where they were to join another group of Separatists and pick up a second ship. After some delays and disputes, the voyagers regrouped at Plymouth aboard the 180-ton Mayflower."

The original Articles of Confederation and subsequent Declaration and our current U.S. Constitution weren't founded by Puritans. Far from it.

The Puritans may have been the first to land (and I believe I heard recently they weren't the first), but they didn't have anything to do with the U.S. founding. Dianne

The first of the British colonies to take hold in North America was Jamestown. On the basis of a charter which King James I granted to the Virginia (or London) Company, a group of about 100 men set out for the Chesapeake Bay in 1607. Seeking to avoid conflict with the Spanish, they chose a site about 60 kilometers up the James River from the bay. Made up of townsmen and adventurers more interested in finding gold than farming, the group was unequipped by temperament or ability to embark upon a completely new life in the wilderness. Among them, Captain John Smith emerged as the dominant figure. Despite quarrels, starvation and Indian attacks, his ability to enforce discipline held the little colony together through its first year.

In 1609 Smith returned to England, and in his absence, the colony descended into anarchy. During the winter of 1609-1610, the majority of the colonists succumbed to disease. Only 60 of the original 300 settlers were still alive by May 1610. That same year, the town of Henrico (now Richmond) was established farther up the James River.

In 1620, a group of Leyden Puritans secured a land patent from the Virginia Company, and a group of 101 men, women and children set out for Virginia on board the Mayflower. A storm sent them far north and they landed in New England on Cape Cod. Believing themselves outside the jurisdiction of any organized government, the men drafted a formal agreement to abide by "just and equal laws" drafted by leaders of their own choosing. This was the Mayflower Compact.

Ruby

The rigid orthodoxy of the Puritan rule was not to everyone's liking. One of the first to challenge the General Court openly was a young clergyman named Roger Williams, who objected to the colony's seizure of Indian lands and its relations with the Church of England.

Banished from Massachusetts Bay, he purchased land from the Narragansett Indians in what is now Providence, Rhode Island, in 1636. There he set up the first American colony where complete separation of church and state as well as freedom of religion was practiced.

Ruby

"In 1585 Raleigh established the first British colony in North America, on Roanoke Island off the coast of North Carolina. It was later abandoned, and a second effort two years later also proved a failure. It would be 20 years before the British would try again. This time -- at Jamestown in 1607 -- the colony would succeed, and North America would enter a new era. " Ruby

snipped-for-privacy@actcom.co.il (Mirjam Bruck-Cohen) wrote in news:429aa5af.10070095 @ar.news.verio.net:

Mirjam, I sometimes wonder if you are enjoying trying to take what I say and make it say something else. I never said anything about choice or anything. When my neighborhood is full of drug rings, child abuse/molestation rings, gangs, car theft rings, etc., (and pretty much anybody in the neighborhood can tell you which houses they all are at) that's just a fact of life. My children's behavior speaks for itself and nobody has ever said that they thought my children were not nice, although since you are making this statment, it made me ponder that perhaps the school district people are tarring me with the same brush as the general negative opinion of this neighborhood when they try to say that they know more how to raise children than I or some of the other people in this neighborhood do. Personally except for the bad houses (drug rings, etc.) I like living in a neighborhood that is ethnically diverse and in one where people aren't out to impress everybody else with how ostentatious they can be. That's just not my style.

I'm on the board of our neighborhood improvement association and we are working together with the city government in their Neighborhood Partnership Program to do what we can to eliminate the illegal things being done in the neighborhood for the sake of those of us who are trying to revitalize the neighborhood, so that property values will continue to go up instead of down and so that more people will want to live here.

As far as my friends, they all thought we should have moved out of the neighborhood 15 years ago when our children hit school age, and that's what most people were doing then. But we (my husband was still here then) didn't want to move and pay even more in house payments and stuff than we already did, so we stayed. Most of the families in this neighborhood who care about their children getting the best education possible do not send their children to the local neighborhood elementary school, because it is well documented that it is a year behind every other school in the school district except one (in a similar underperforming, underprivileged neighborhood).

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

We chose to not have network television at all, and you can't believe how many people think I'm crazy for doing so.

But I think the same underlying factors are causing the same thing -- sort of like, "I want to play with fire, but I don't want to get burnt." From your perspective in life, you teach the child how to play with fire but not how to get burnt. From my perspective in life, I say, "You can't play with fire without the likelihood of eventually getting burnt, so we just aren't going to play with fire, and that way we don't ever have to worry about getting burnt." I have Christian friends whose faith and practices I respect who also take tach A, but personally I prefer tach B. But I think it's because so many people *are* taking tach A that there are so many people getting burnt. THat is also a personal choice for each person and each family.

In this day and age, I agree.

I will ponder on this for a while, because perhaps you are right that I have the two intermixed.

If it were me with my convictions, I would leave the occupation and find another. Seriously.

Plus the fact that different people see things different ways.

I don't think so. Freedom of speech? No. Freedom of assembly? No. What else is there? I certainly don't want the government establishing a state religion. But since, as many people say, there are common threads that run through many faiths, I don't see it as creating a state religion to enact some type of legislation that supports religious beliefs. After all, even murder is basically prohibited in most faiths; should we stop making it illegal because it is a common prohibition to many faiths? (Maybe all, but I'm not sure.)

And since the same people who founded the country established a chaplain for the Senate and the same people who fought to make this country free put a quote from Deuteronomy on the Liberty Bell, I can hardly believe that those original founders intended to have a government totally devoid of any religious references.

But this is a big country that is big enough to hold many differences of opinion on such matters.

Not in this state. It's in the state labor code.

I think there are more factors to economic problems than just political or govermental ones. And personally I wonder if health care cost containment could be achieved by a health care plan where you agree not to accept extremely-high-tech and cutting-edge-technology medical solutions in exchange for more affordable health care overall.

I have a friend in that dilemma. But I know him well enough to know that part of it is his own fault -- not that this is the case for everybody, just that it is for him. But I don't see that as a governmental problem but rather a social one, and there are many factors causing it. But that is not something that has changed over time.

True. But when the pro-abortion people praise China for their aggressive one-child policy that systematically uses despicable and coercive tactics to achieve it, I worry about whether they are really standing up for reproductive freedom.

Okay.

And I had similar experiences with people local to me who tried their hardest to tell my children that how I was training them was wrong (respect to grownups, etc.) as well. What state do you live in? Maybe we could change states and you'd be happier here and I'd be happier there? I know if I was in Pennsylvania, where I grew up, or South Carolina, where my daughter attends college, I'd feel like less of a misfit than I do here in California. *chuckle*

I guess I just don't see those as rights that are legally protected by the constitution, not for them, not for anybody, and I don't believe that a socialist-based economy will prosper, so I wouldn't want to see this country turn into one. Certainly that is a large part of why California is on the verge of bankruptcy.

Once you wrote about Jamestown, I remembered! :-) Thanks for the history lessons/reminders!! I'm absolutely terrible about remembering dates, events. I just remember an "overview". Last winter I saw a remarkable documentary about Jamestown. I believe it was on the Discovery channel. Wish my mind would remember these things more vividly and exactly.

Dianne

Stitcher wrote:

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

Seeing as though most Muslim countries put women as definitely inferior, I am having a problem wrapping it around my brain how you can conclude that women are leading a call for war.

Their faith requires that once they reach menarche that their head is covered. So they are being told that they cannot practice their faith while in school. And that is the logical end of a country that wants any evidence of religious faith expunged from government. So if you think that all children should attend public school, then how can you say here that parents should just send their children to a religious school if they want them to have a religious education? Either you are misunderstanding me or I am misunderstanding you, or else something is rotten in Denmark.

I am saying that the blacks in this country never claimed discrimination on the basis that they were not allowed to marry and have families.

"Dawne Peterson" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com:

In some states, first cousins can walk into City Hall and be issued a marriage license. In other states, first cousins cannot walk into City Hall and be issued a marriage license.

There was one of those live reenactment type series ; where a group of people endeavor to live as people during past eras lived, that I think was based on the Jamestown settlement. Can't think of what it was called now. It was also on PBS. They have some very good programming on that channel, PBS. There is a series that started last week, "The empire in Colour??" showing old colour films of the British empire some going back to 1910. Just amazing. Lots of footage from India, before, during and after partition. The bombing of Darwin Australia just after the fall of Singapore during WW2. Ruby

"Melinda Meahan wrote

Gay first cousins marrying probably have more stuff to deal with than I can imagine!!!! But seriously, I asked about gays, not cousins. Dawne

"Dawne Peterson" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com:

Does it matter? Each state's laws are different, and it's not uniform nationwide as to who is eligible to marry in different states.

No, it doesn't matter--I was just curious. And I am not in the United States, which is partly why I was curious.. Dawne

"Dawne Peterson" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com:

Ahh. Well, it is legal in some states but not in others. Just like marrying first cousins is legal in some states but not in others, and in some states you can marry at age 16 without parental consent or 13 with and other states you can't marry until age 16 with parental consent or 18 without. Interestingly enough, I believe that in some states the age requirements on marriage are different for ladies/girls than for men/boys (girls/boys because it involves minors in most cases).

Good for you! And a pox on those who think you're crazy. It is tough to live up to ideals. It is just as tough being an atheist. A LOT of discrimination, loss of friendships. The list is endless. So, I do understand what you go through to live up to your belief systems.

But where is the rest of the conservative movement who screams so loudly about dastardly programming? It rings hollow to me. You, at least, are practising what you preach!

Because the abortion issue is so easy to conjure up feelings on both sides, I will again use it. What has my belief that I feel it is a personal right to obtain one if the need arises got to do with my dressing like a hooker? My grandmother had an abortion (while married) way back when it was a secret and SHE certainly didn't see a connection with that and a debasing of general lifestyles. I mean, my grandparents were definitely prudes.

I would much rather say that, due to parents being neglectful and lazy, younger and younger children are engaging in sexual activity and dressing the part of sleaze. One has nothing to do with the other. It's a general lassaiz faire attitude on society's part.

I think you are justifying your position, but it doesn't hold water for me. First you teach your children not to go in the road, then you teach them to look both ways before they cross it. There are times when one behavior is appropriate and times when another behavior is appropriate. Humans seem to get the difference. :-)

And that's your perogative as a parent. Just don't legislate "B". :-)

And they'll pay the price.

That's my feeling. However, States are making laws about this - some in favor of the pharmacist, some against their stance. Neo-conservatives believe the pharmacist has a right not to dispense birth control pills or "morning-after" pills if its against their conscience.

So, this is why I'm concerned about stomping on some people's rights for a religious belief system. And why I've been speaking up about your ability to believe as you wish as long as you don't legislate against my belief system.

And if you were a legislator, I would hope you would keep that in mind. :-)

Well, you want to silence those who make bad television (as an example). You have said you would legislate or vote your conscience. Just trying to understand here.

I certainly don't want the government establishing a

And what sort of legislation might that be? What do you envision? And where does that leave those of us that don't believe or believe in a different way? Whose religion is going to be favored? Wiccans? American Indians' beliefs? Hinduism?

And it's not legal anywhere, but I don't need a religious belief system to tell me murder is wrong. Or stealing.

Putting the Ten Commandments (which one, by the way - there are three that I remember) in classrooms across the country is not going to change anything. Saying a prayer every morning in school is not going to change anything. Until we get a grip on parenting and our social values, none of the rest is going to make a difference.

Well, there are no references in the U.S. Constitution, and only vague references in the Declaration. The words "under God" was added in the

I want to know what religious references you wish to see?

Which is why there are no big religious references in government so that each of us can live our lives with or without religion as we see fit. Jefferson, Madison, Adams, and Franklin were pretty adamant about that.

I tried looking it up and couldn't find it. But I'll take your word for it. However, Federal standards no longer require it.

Of course, but the Federal and State governments certainly set the tone in the policies they enact - or ignore.

And what would happen if you were in an accident and only high-tech medicine could save you? You would accept death? Or serious maiming? What do you classify as high-tech, cutting edge?

If this were an option, and you chose it, would the taxpayer then foot the bill?

Everyone can point their finger at someone they know who bore some of the blame. But that's not what has been happening around the country for a very long time, now.

The government is also our social machine. WE are the government. We are providing for one another. I don't want to have help from a religious organization. I pay taxes so that I'm insured against the worst, and I have no problem sharing those tax dollars with others who might be in a "fix".

I haven't heard of that, and I listen to an awful lot of public radio trying to keep informed on all sides of issues. That's a new one for me.

Well, I guess one thing we've figured out is that outsiders can't leave their opinions to themselves, no matter what side of the fence you sit.

I haven't been happy since I left the greater Chicago area. :-) I'm now living in Wisconsin. :-)

Well, a man and a woman has to currently, by law, be married in order to receive legal, social and governmental marriage benefits.

Why should that be denied gays?

What has that got to do with gay's getting married?

What's a socialist based economy? I don't think we're headed in that direction by a long shot. Quite the opposite. It's becoming a fiefdom.

I've been saying for over 30 years that our entire government - including most if not all States - are bankrupt. We've just kept shuffling things to make it appear all is well and good. I just wonder when it's going to crash down on all of us.

Dianne