"Leave No Teacher Standing"

[NousDefionsDoc]

Originally posted by Psywar1-0
My only exposure to Home schooling was having a young man work for me at the museum who was Ultra Christian white supremisist home schooled. Im sure his parents were just 10%ers. But some of the things he said were quite scary:

Black hair and dark eyes are the mark of the devil: (Pretty ballsy statement as he was surrounded by Indians)

Heven will be all the folks from our church and a few other churches, everyone else is going to hell. Non whites who convert to our version of the truth will work for us in heven.

ect ect ect

By no means do I think this is the normal HS result, but kids like that are out there.

That's Home Indoctrination. Different thing.

[Bill Harsey]

Doc T, Well said and I agree. We home school because failure is not an option and we have the tools to handle it. (please NEVER tell Reaper that I've taught at University level...it would soil my outback inbred redneck image) No "agenda" here, just rock soild foundation work. Thanks!

[CRad]

I'm all for home schooling since I figure nobody knows my child better than I do and I know what he needs and how to get the best from him. The soldier at this house, on the other hand, is dead set against it. His reasons are teachers are trained to teach. You don't doctor the kids so you don't teach the kids. (you do to a certain extent in both cases but I understand what he means) There are bad teachers but there is bad in everything you come up against and you might as well learn how to deal with it and still get what you need out of the program. Dealing with idiots teaches you how to deal with adversity. Being in a classroom full of students makes you compete which you would not do if you were one on one at home. There's a regimentation to school that is sometimes lacking at home. There's a separation between school and home that teaches you about behaving differently in different situations. You learn social skills and adaptive behavior that you might not get at home or if you are only participating in team sports.

Mind you those are his reasons not mine. Personally, I think the Army and its way of doing things has a lot to do with the way he sees things.

This is where we agree - He figures you get out of the public school system what you put into it and that the more intimately involved you are the more you get. We did get a bad to the core teacher last year and nothing I did made any difference. The only thing I could do was work with our son at home, bitch at the other half about home school, and hope for better teacher in the fall. Thank God we got a real gem for second grade.

[Bill Harsey]

I would imagine in your community that if a teacher has anti military left leaning views that they either are quiet or may have the oppurtunity to seek employment elsewhere. Out here in what is becoming the "Peoples Republic of Oregon" this thinking is both openly encouraged and rewarded via the public schools. Witness time off from school for students to participate in anti-war rallies up in Portland as part of a social studies class. I'm finding that I cannot agree with what or how the public schools both teach and are administered. They want to take responsibility for WHAT your children think, not teaching how to think for themselves. There is a well defined social agenda in our public schools, it's not hidden. This is not what I think schools are for. Home schooling, in this house, is very regimented, seperate school room, time and work schedule. Our state requires us to pay to have our children tested to make sure they are meeting minimum state mandated educational requirements. These scores are compared against the state averages from the public schools. Our children are testing in the 99th percantile. There is no 100, that's as high as they can score. About the socialization, not even an issue. Thanks, Bill

[Solid]

Mr Harsey,
While I agree that an anti-military education is unhealthy for society and that education should be taught without bias (if possible), I think that allowing students and teachers to participate in rallies of ANY kind might have a positive effect by exposing students to their rights as a citizen of this great country.
To a certain degree, I feel that anti-WAR rallies are not all-in-all a bad thing (I can explain this if necessary), but it would not make sense for the school to support only anti-war rallies and not other kinds- like those in support of our men and women fighting overseas.

I otherwise completely agree with you.

They want to take responsibility for WHAT your children think, not teaching how to think for themselves.

The above, I feel, is especially dangerous. That such indoctrination is a hallmark of totalitarian governments (USSR, to name one) is an indication of the severe ramifications this approach can have.

My .02,

Solid

[CRad]

Originally posted by Bill Harsey
About the socialization, not even an issue. Thanks, Bill

Not socialization but social and adaptive skills. He sees that as two different things. I'm not sure how he'd feel about an anti-military bias; although, there is some of that at his parents house. We talked about private school rather than public school when it got really bad last year. His folks are educators, two of his siblings are as well. Being in SF he's a natural at teaching.

I agree with you on the home school concept.

[Sacamuelas]

Originally posted by Solid
I think that allowing students and teachers to participate in rallies of ANY kind might have a positive effect by exposing students to their rights as a citizen of this great country.
... it would not make sense for the school to support only anti-war rallies and not other kinds- like those in support of our men and women fighting overseas.
My .02,
Solid

I think I would like to "make change" with that $.02 of yours Solid.

Please expound on your thoughts a little Sir. I am interested to hear your perspective.
Thanks

[Solid]

Sacamuelas,
First, I would like to deferentiate between ATTENDING a rally, and PARTICIPATING in a rally. I made a mistake in my previous post- I think that it is important for students to experience rallies first-hand through attendance, but NOT be forced into participating in the rally proper. While attending a rally- being physically present among the body of protesters- could be seen as implicit support of the rally, I believe that participating takes more- such as being a sign holder, taking part in defamatory cheers, etcetera. While schools should attempt to expose students to rallys by allowing them to attend (or going on class trips), it would be wrong to make them participate in the rally. This is similar to the differentiation Mr. Harsey made- schools should not teach them WHAT to think (participation in rally) but instead HOW to think (attendance, observation, examination).

So, why expose students to rallys? Rallies are a potent and direct form of representation in an enlightened democracy. As in the Vietnam War, rallies can effect policy with minimal interference from intermediary bureaucracy, which often has the effect of perverting or co-opting the message. The unalienable right of Free Speech is upheld through protest and rally, and these two devices could be seen as mechanisms to prevent tyranny or governmental behaviour which is felt to be unrepresentative of popular opinion. Therefore, excluding individual messages, rallies are a good thing.

However, in terms of implementing this idea, the waters muddy somewhat. Certain rallies- Anti-WTO, for example- are violent and often extremely poor examples of what rallies should be. I will not advocate placing students in harm's way, or, worse, exposing them to forms of protest which are illegal or misguided (not in their intent or message, but in their techniques). As such, I feel that students should be given, quite literally, an 'introduction' to protest, a field trip of some kind. Teachers should make an effort to present both sides of the coin when dealing with controversial matters, such as the military, thereby minimalising bias. If the matter is handled appropriately, the valuable skill of protest will become part of education.

Of course, some people think students shouldn't have a voice at all...
That's my $.02, make change if you wish

Solid

[NousDefionsDoc]

And away we go!

[Solid]

... If only I knew how to establish a perimeter, dial in the arty and get some air cover...

I don't think I'll be surviving this argument!

Solid

[NousDefionsDoc]

Originally posted by Solid
... If only I knew how to establish a perimeter, dial in the arty and get some air cover...

I don't think I'll be surviving this argument!

Solid

Shouldn't have kicked the trip wire.

[Solid]

A very good point... I'm not seeing any incoming fire right now, though.. Just praying for that air support, or I'll have to exfiltrate on my lonesome if the fire gets to heavy.

[D9 (RIP)]

Originally posted by Bill Harsey
About the socialization, not even an issue.

Agreed on all points. I'd like to bring up one other thing about "socialization," which is a favorite topic of those who bash home-schoolers. What do people even mean by it? I can never get a straight answer out of anyone.

Most people speak as if by that they mean that not sending a child to public school dooms the child to the life of a withdrawn, socially dysfunctional, misfit. This is baseless hyperbole.

Asked to define what they mean by socialization, most refer vaguely to qualities like the ability to compromise or function well as part of a group. But these are qualities that weren't lacking in Americans before the public school era, when many children were raised at home. Furthermore, homeschooling cannot be equated with complete isolation from peers (as its detractors usually insinuate). Most home-schooled children have plenty of friends and siblings, and I am not aware of any study that convincingly argues that public school kids have a decisive social advantage.

I think the "socialization" argument associated with public schools owes to John Dewey, the famous pragmatist and education philosopher, who saw a public school system as a way for America to engineer a society that could compete with what he was sure was going to be a great utopian engineering project in the USSR. Dewey held explicitly that choice had to be taken away from children about their futures, and that they had to be directed in a course that was best for society. If society needs carpenters, then schools train carpenters. If society needs electricians, then schools must be able to respond to this. It was the beginning on the de-emphasis of the individual in education, and the emphasis on the social value (i.e. the value that would redound to "society" from the child's education). At the time, it was argued that kids needed to learn "social" skills so they would be compliant with this social engineering scheme. The term "socialization," as it was born in that era in education, meant the indoctrination of children to dogmatically take the good of society as expressed by school administrators over their own dreams in their education. These are the "social" values that were originally supposed to emerge in public schools.

But that was during America's Red Decades, and the folly in the subjugation of the individual to the collective has been made clear in the death camps of the Nazis and Soviets. So, today, "socialization" is a term that in my opinion has no real meaning. It has disassociated itself from its Marxist roots, but is left with nothing to refer to. IMO, it is an abstraction without a connection to reality. Those who refer to it, do so not in reference to an actual deficiency in social skills that can be observed in non-public school children (be they home or private schooled), but mean it to invoke images of socially incompetent misfits. The fact is, I don't think there is any reason to give credence to such a connection. Of the home and private school kids I know, they are without exception well adjusted.

As for the kids with the neo-Nazi parents, I doubt public schools could do much for kids like that anyway.

Not trying to offend, just my 0.02.

BTW, my source on the Dewey info is Left Back, by Diane Ravitch. She is a Columbia Teacher's College professor, and author.

[Roguish Lawyer]

Originally posted by Solid
A very good point... I'm not seeing any incoming fire right now, though.. Just praying for that air support, or I'll have to exfiltrate on my lonesome if the fire gets to heavy.

Why do you think you'll see it coming before it's too late?

[Solid]

Another good point... I'm being beaten by analogy
If I didn't spot the tripwire, I probably won't spot the attack itself until it's too late..