HS Comments on the Fly

A new book, Chasing Windmills, includes a homeschooled character who has a fairy godmother who introduces him to the wonders of pizza. (source)

Is that a stretch or what?

Sebastian has never eaten pizza and his controlling homeschool dad takes sleeping pills at night which allow Sebastian to sneak out at night to ride the subway, meet married chicks, and eat pizza.

What 17-year-old homeschooler in the US/Canada has never had pizza? Well .. for any reason other than health issues?

How do authors come up with this stuff? Has this author ever even met just one homeschooling family?

Talk about negative stereotypes based on thin air.

Interesting tidbit for authors who want to write about real homeschoolers: One of my homeschooled students ate pizza crust as their first solid food. Exclusive breastfeeding followed by a long-term weaning which begins with Domino’s Pizza — yeah, that’s how we roll.

I always love to hear how homeschoolers are perceived. We are all so different, yet so many folks lump us together and call us “the same.”

From an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

The last hurdle in the admissions process for home-schooled students is persuading colleges that they have the social smarts to get along with their traditionally educated peers.

“There is an assumption that kids who are home-schooled are strange, that their idea of having a good time is sitting in a tree,” says Mr. Reider, the college counselor. (source)

I’m confused. Again.

Read this:

At this point, though, one can only wonder what [Michael] Jackson’s kids are being taught, since their home schooling has taken them off the grid of any normalcy whatsoever.

For example: Even though Tom Cruise’s kids are home schooled (in Scientology, etc,) we at least see them at soccer games. (source)

Can we figure out what that first sentence is trying to convey?

The journalist thinks that “homeschooling has taken Jackson’s kids off the grid.” The grid they’ve been taken off of is the “normalcy grid.”

I really think that’s what that sentence says … looking at it grammatically. Wouldn’t you agree?

It sounds like the author of the article thinks that homeschoolers are off the grid of normalcy unless the homeschooled kids are seen at soccer games, as in Tom Cruise’s kids. I’m not sure I’ve got that right, though, because I still think that excerpt above is poorly written or maybe an exuberant editor got ahold of it.

One thing’s for sure, the author is taking a swipe at homeschooling. Too bad it’s not clearer.

Additionally, I think that if Michael Jackson’s kids are indeed off the normalcy grid, it’s not because of homeschooling.

The speed limit was just lowered to 20 mph from 40 mph along a stretch of road in Ohio. It’s because about 40 students walk to school right along the road. Obviously, that section should have been labeled a School Zone a long time ago.

Some state officials didn’t want to lower the speed limit because of … who? You guessed it. Homeschoolers.

… Amish schools are not considered parochial schools under Ohio law, because they function independently from most state regulations. He said some state officials hesitated about including Amish schools in the definition of “school” because they were worried that parents who home-school their children would also request a school zone distinction. (source News-Herald.com)

Yeah, that’s the first thing I’d do when I noticed that the local Amish school got School Zone signs … I’d call requesting School Zone signs be put up on the highway out front of our house. Yes, that’s sarcasm from the incredulous. Truly, it would never occur to me.

However, this does raise the question: Why are the officials worried about that? Could it be because they can’t legally deny a homeschooler who requests a School Zone distinction? Why worry if you can deny the request?

See also: News Video

The title of Hanna Rosin’s 304-page book is God’s Harvard. It’s hot off the press, and it’s about Patrick Henry College — you know, Michael Farris’s project. Most of the students there were homeschooled and will most likely homeschool their own children.

Articles: Newsweek and AlterNet (with comments).

A little bit of news.

From an article about alienated gifted students in the public schools:

According to the U.S. Department of Education, home-schooling rose 29 percent across the country between 1999 and 2003.

In a separate article which discusses how U.S. universities are easing policies for homeschoolers, Ana Beatriz Cholo (AP) writes:

Last fall, however, Riverside [the Riverside campus of the University of California] joined a growing number of colleges around the country that are revamping application policies to accommodate homeschooled students….

UC Riverside is actively recruiting homeschoolers, said Merlyn Campos, interim director of undergraduate admissions.

“There are a lot of students out there that are very prepared for a college level education,” she said. “They are kind of being forced into going into a community college.”

Frank Vahid, a UC Riverside computer science professor, was among those who lobbied for the change, contending the school could gain a competitive advantage because homeschoolers have a lot to offer.

Vahid’s own children are taught at home. His 15-year-old son also takes community college classes and will likely try to transfer into to a public university.

That is good news because the University of California system of schools were not overly welcoming to homeschoolers over the past couple of years because of their special rules that affected homeschoolers adversely — even the article uses the term “lost cause.”

Jessica Marks writes about a homeschooled visual artist named Brittney Diamond who airbrushes with a mixture of liquid lead, charcoal and pencil:

Art that she creates upstairs in her home has been valued at thousands of dollars, and people can’t get enough of her work….

Brittney only learned about airbrushing six months ago.

What gives her the edge is that she’s home schooled, [mother] Teri said.

“The one thing with home schooling has helped children find their passion,” she added.

For Brittney, that was art - and specifically, airbrushing….

Though art is a passion for Brittney, she only spends about an hour a day in her studio working on it.

If you’d like to see what Brittney Diamond’s work looks like, I found two paintings at the Liquid Lead Art Studio which is selling prints — “Jack Sparrow” and “a horse.” The pirate painting is startling in its intensity; it seems to capture what Captain Jack is all about.

From Salem, Oregon, we get a fun story about homeschooler Jordan Berrier. He plays basketball for the local public school and his nickname is “Homeschool.”

“He’s one of the more popular kids at school, and he doesn’t even go to school here. People all over the place know him and chant Homeschool for him when he’s announced.”

Berrier, a senior by eligibility standards, has tried going to public school a few times, but it never has stuck.

There was a three-day stint at an elementary school — he doesn’t remember which — and a semester of taking electives at Adam Stephens Middle School.

He has taken a few weight-training classes at McKay, but he has done better academically in the home-school environment.

Bill Poehler takes the obligatory prejudicial swipe at other homeschoolers with:

Unlike a lot the [sic] typical home-schooled students, Berrier (pronounced like Perrier) is well-adjusted and blends in enough with his McKay teammates that outsiders can’t tell the difference.

I believe Poehler is actually saying that a lot of typical home-schooled students are not well-adjusted and don’t blend in. I wonder if he’s basing that opinion on anecdotal evidence or something actually substantial.

Okay, I think that’s enough news for now. It’s enough for me for sure.

This is what I’m seeing as today’s homeschool news.

(Format: Article title, followed by short excerpt with some homeschooling info included.)

Libraries slated to close in Oregon
Applegate resident Chris Shockey, who homeschools his family, said he checked out 1,176 items from the library last year. He estimated that without libraries, it would cost $7,000 to homeschool a family.

Christian Fascism: The Jesus Gestapo of St. Orwell (book review)
Millions of children in America are being home-schooled, and 75% of them are children from fundamentalist Christian homes. Home-schooling can offer an extraordinary alternative to attending public school, but for fundamentalist Christians, it serves, among other things, to shield their children not only from grappling with such issues as evolution and global warming, but learning the scientific method itself and the basic principles of critical thinking and logical analysis.

Dozier: American history subject of DAR’s essay contest
The contestant winners are … Nathaniel Stine of DeWitt, homeschool, 10th grade.

Authorities ask help in finding missing boy
A 9-year-old Longview [Washington] boy has been missing since before 8 a.m. Wednesday…. Michael D. Dalgardno was reported as a runaway by his parents around noon on Wednesday after they checked places where they thought he might go. He is homeschooled.

In all fairness, we have never been pure unschoolers. And it’s probably about time that unschooling get a new definition because too few want to research out its meaning. They just think, “Un means not,” and head off from there.

You know, some might say that they’d never want an unschooler to work beside them on a project at their place of employment because unschoolers have been taught to think that life is all about doing whatever you want whenever you want.

But work and learning are different.

Work is one thing. Learning is another.

My children have been given a number of educational choices. They don’t ever have to learn about the Battle of the Boyne as far as I’m concerned. I don’t think we ever touched upon Edith Wharton, Sappho, Eugene O’Neill, Nasser, or Huey Long. I don’t think either of them will take a high school biology class. C’mon, how often do you use info from your high school biology class? You need to know physics and chemistry much more to get along in the world, imo. And no I don’t feel like debating that. I took Honors Biology in high school, and it was a complete and utter waste of my time, just like it’s a waste of most other kids’ lives. My students made many of their own educational choices.

But when it came to certain types of things that needed to be done, we all pitched in. I’m talking about things usually considered work — namely washing dishes, mowing the lawn, care and feeding the animals, vacuuming, taking out the trash, washing down the cupboards, etc., changing the oil in the car/truck, dusting, laundry, chopping wood, etc. That’s work. It must be done.

Why would anyone try to equate work with learning? One is fun and one is … well, work … sometimes fun … but still work.

Additionally, being employed and being paid for work is different from learning (unschooling). An employer is paying you to do your job; you’re earning money which is a benefit. If you’re learning in a classroom environment in grades 1-12, you are “earning” your grades (A, B, C, D, F). Not quite the same inducement to get your school work done, but that’s your reward at a school. Tough luck.

If you are unschooled, you are rewarded with learning. You get to find out something. You enjoy your time spent learning, usually. You experience the joy in learning because it’s not being forced on you. Unschooling isn’t about teaching your children to be little immature brats for the rest of their lives, never knowing what responsibility is all about. To call it that shows a distinct lack of understanding. Sure parents can raise selfish little brats who only want to do “their own thing,” but that’s a whole other issue.

Gail Kerr says:

It seems to me, on these cold winter mornings when the wind blows sharp and Jack Frost bites that the logical next step of the “unschooling” trend should be “unworking.”

Logical? I don’t think logic has anything to do with it — whether it be formal, informal, or symbolic. Let’s just hope Gail’s just a big kidder because her complete article has a bit of a sting to it.

Shirley Upton’s column online at The Times and Democrat states:

Most people love babies and children, but lately it appears that we have created a child-obsessed and child worshipping society.

But help me out. Is this woman contradicting herself?

For my part, if I never again hear about Brad and Angelina, Britney Spears, Brooke Shields and Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes and their babies, it would please me no end. These “idols” are poor excuses for parents, and employ loads of hired help to do diaper changes and clean up spit-ups. Where are the little darlings when their parents are out in evening clothes posing for the camera? At home with their nannies, naturally.

When most of us were coming up, child rearing was quite simple for our parents…. Every child went to his or her neighborhood public school, period. No one I know was home schooled because parents couldn’t wait to be child-free, at least for a few hours a day, and they freely admitted it. When the last of my three children entered school, a group of mothers went out to breakfast to celebrate our freedom. It was so adult to sit and eat without the little ones….

On one hand, parents are “poor excuses for parents” because they use hired help so they can go out sans kids. But on the other, wanting to be child-free for a few hours every day is A-OK. What? This is contradictory, right? Or at least close to it, right?

Read the complete article for yourself. She doesn’t make her point very clearly — at least not for folks like me — but I think she’s actually saying that homeschooling parents are obsessive child worshipers because many of us actually enjoy the company of our children and are delighted to spend time with them watching them learn.

Oh, the humanity! (Seinfeld reference)

Leeann Moore, staff writer, states in her article entitled, “Group Activities Help Homeschoolers Learn to Socialize.” The article appears in the Coshocton Tribune.

Most commonly, when parents who homeschool are asked what the biggest disadvantage to homeschooling is, they’ll respond with “socialization.”

I promised I wouldn’t say anything else about socialization in this journal. I’m keeping my word. But I’m making the biggest eyeroll in history.