I was not in favor of home schooling 20 years ago but since I have seen materials that friends use to teach their children. I think that if the child is active in church or community organizations like scouting and sports then they get the activity with others their own age. If parents have the patients then it is for the best in my opinion.

__________________
An informed voter scares the Goverment lackeys.

An American first and always a Conservative.

I would homeschool my daughter, but Grandma is picking up the tab for Private School. It's not realy that expensive, and I got the guilt for being of a protestant man marrying into a Catholic Family.

They sort of insisted on it.

Regardless, I looked at the curriculum of the School she will probably be attending. Not one aspect of Catholic indoctrination, just a simple prayer at Lunch. They also offer classes about various schools of Christian thought, so she will hopefully have the materials to make up her own mind on Religion when she is of age.

__________________
"It is the Right of the People to alter or abolish the Government"
Declaration of Independence
"Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself."
Thomas Jefferson
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand."
Milton Friedman

Cleary you do not love other's kids as much as you love your own.

Bastard!

Don't you know that every child who does not attend the local public school means x$ not going there either?! What about the kids who are not as RICH as your daughter!?

Huh!? HUUUUHHHHH!!!!???

Bastard!!!

Good for Grannie. Good for you. Catholic school tends to be even cheaper than other religious schools. Our Evangelical Christian school was only $5k/year for two up 'til the 10th grade, then it would be $7k. We took them out at 8-9th grade and tried the local public high school.

What a joke.

Now they are being home/online schooled.

Same here for the curriculum: a bit more prayer and they skip evoluton entirely. But my kids would come home from the PS laughing at how lousy their "teachers" were in English and even math and....(sitting down?)...science!

They said they were the only kids in thier 10th grade Honors bio class who knew what punctuated equilibrium was in evolutionary theory. Which they learned at the Evangelical private.

If I could afford to send them to our local Jesuit high school...that's where they would be.

Tokie

Yeah, to be honest. I do not care about other people's Children. I personally believe since my daughter will be attending private school, I should get every penny I pay in Income, and sales taxes that go to Public Schooling back.

I do not benefit from it, and I don't give one ounce of shit about other peoples children, to be honest.

I care about me and my own. Occasionally I show interest in my nephew...

__________________
"It is the Right of the People to alter or abolish the Government"
Declaration of Independence
"Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself."
Thomas Jefferson
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand."
Milton Friedman

Any parent can screw up homeschooling.

ALL public schooling screws kids up.

Look, PS are aimed at the lowest common denominator and that idiot Bush's NCLB Act has only worsened it. Now, if your kid has any smarts at all, he or she had better not be hoping to do anything bur drill in middle and high school on their way to college.

At that age, in a PS, the kid has to be prepared to engage in self-directed studies, 100%. The only thing the school provides is materials and facilities and equipment, because typically, the "teacher" knows less about the subject than a reasonbably bright kid coming out of a private or home/online school situation.

One of my daughters' friends from their old private who made Cs and Ds there, is pleased as punch at her new public school.

Guess what? She is lettering academically there!

Please don't believe all the tripe the PS system tries to sell you about "socialization." School, as my daughters both tell their mother and me, is for education, not dating and socializing. The schools have become especially good at terrorizing parents into believing their kid will be "the nerdy kid nobody liked when YOU were in school," and that's maginifed a thousandfold if that kid was...you! And they play on this, knowing how many parents are terrified that their kids won't be the belle of the ball or the quarterback.

For your kid's sake, it's time to grow up, dear. Happy Days never existed and nobody on the first day of your child's first day at a "real" job will care whether they had cool hair or shoes or whatever and whether they hung with the "cool" kids or nobody in 10th grade.

My kids are thrilled to be, starting this semester, doing online schooling which allows them to rocket through the material rather than sitting, staring and drooling into their laps in a PS classroom while their minds rot.

Best,
Tokie

BASTARD!!!

Good for you.

LOL. We stupidly had our kids in the local ele. for 1/2 year in 4-5, 5-6 (had to have them moved up a grade) and when I told the princi"pal" exactly that, I thought he'd faint.

I told him "you, all these teachers, the janitor, the building, the parking lot, the playground, the middle school, the high school, the entire district is here for one, and only one reason: to educate MY kids. I don't care what you do with the rest of them."

He had no idea how to respond to that.

It was a real Kodak moment, let me tell ya.

I care about other kids. I love kids. I used to teach and believe me, you learn to love these kids...some of them have such tough lives.

But in the end, you have to put your own first and foremost and remember that the American public schools long ago, purposely put aside the individualism that makes America great and have become socialist laboratories and training grounds.

Tokie

School's homeland security studies get noticed - USATODAY.com

To keep us from starting another thread about Public Schools.

The Department of Homeland Police State Implementation, is indoctrinating Children in Public Schools. Making them seek jobs in the growing Federal Police Force under President Bush.

Terrorism or not, I would like every Military Recruiter, Cop, and Government pig out of Schoolings.

Public Schools give government Control over children's perceptions on reality. Somehow, Libertarianism is getting through to a younger Generation, despite this bullshit indocrination to get us to accept Police State Policies.

__________________
"It is the Right of the People to alter or abolish the Government"
Declaration of Independence
"Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself."
Thomas Jefferson
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand."
Milton Friedman

Public schools are oriented to the lowest common denominator, politicized by school boards and dumbed down by the NEA whose function is to provide job security for those who drift into education because they can't be productive anywhere else.

Sending children today to public schools -- virtually anywhere -- in the United States, is guaranteeing them mediocrity at best and hopelessness at the worst.

There are some good and dedicated public school teachers. Most of them burn out in a few years and wind up being hired by corporations for twice what they were being paid as teachers.

I see the results of the public school systems because I get students in my classes who are graduates from all over the country. It is sad. Their penmanship is illegible so grading tests is an exercise in codebreaking. Their knowledge is abysmal on the most basic information. And they shocked to find out that they will be expected to actually read and study the material.

The problem has been building for at least a quarter of a century if not more. Solving it will not be confined to a political sound bite. But, throwing tons of money at it isn't going to solve it either.

It may even take the actual involvement of parents. (Horrors. That might get in the way of their golf games and cocktail parties.)

__________________
Since you are reading this ... thank a teacher. Since you are reading this in English ... thank a veteran.

Public Schooling does not work.

You can spend less money on Education with Privatization and the poor and Middle Class would still have "free" education.

Youll get a better quality as well.

__________________
"It is the Right of the People to alter or abolish the Government"
Declaration of Independence
"Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself."
Thomas Jefferson
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand."
Milton Friedman

It's heartening to find someone "in da bidness" who will echo what I've been saying (and seeing) for a decade or more.

I sub teach (for fun...it's not my "real" job...I do it for fun and I speicalize in middle school aged kid...yes, yes...middle school aged kids and "fun" do not often appear in the same sentence..).

The reality is that most of those who go into teaching in our public schools (Ed. degree) do so from the bottom quintile of all college graduates. In short, they are the bottom of the barrel and most go into teaching because after 3 years of hard partying at college and coming to the realization that majoring in mid 17th Century Latin American Poetry or Wymyn's Studies is not going to get them a job in corporate America, so they say to themselves...."I can always teach!"

And so they can.

Anecdote for your amusement/horror: I was taking an exit level Children's Lit class from the Edu. course catalog to fulfil a requirement in college. It was me, an engineering student of some kind an an a nursing student amongst maybe 35 (small city college, but biggest "teacher" college in my state) Edu. majors. We were asked to get into groups and discuss the theme of children's books assigned us by the prof., an award-winning fellow respected and renowned around the world for his work with children's reading. Turns out there were three people in this exit level lit class who even knew what a literary theme is.

Three guess who they were.

I asked the prof about it and he just shrugged and looked past me.

Most teachers go into the "profession" because in relative terms, for someone of their abilities, it's damn nice work if you can get it. Once tenured (three years steady work in most places) they cannot be fired for any reason short of murdering a kid in class. They work as little as 8 months a year in many places but are paid for 12. Where I live, often identified as a place that puts very little money into "education" the avg. teacher in 1990 made $50,000/yr. That was in 1990. Today it's around $60k, and many would say...not much of a raise!

This is WAGES alone. This does not take into account a bennies package that would make a AFL-CIO negotiator blush. Or the 8 month work year.

Also, don't let them kid you. This is pretty easy duty after those first 3 years. Just as with most types of work, you SHOULD get better and more efficient at it over time. Of course, there are those "teachers" who don't and they are immediately weeded out....would you like to buy some prime beachfront property in Omaha?

The worst part is, these "teachers" can't. Teach, that is to say.

But colleges and universities (admin, not you Cent) love this. Why? Because of all those remedial classes are cheap to run and cost just as much as a reg'lar class!

And kids entering college today tend to need them at something nearly the 80% rate.

We are not talking nickles and dimes here.

Tokie