HS Comments on the Fly

In light of Judy Aron’s older entry (and another) from May where she indicates that Connecticut homeschoolers are under fire, would it be wise to answer the request made by a Connecticut newspaper to contact them if you homeschool?

And also, Judy writes, “There is documented proof that the CT Department of Education is encouraging school superintendents to report families [to DCF] who have decided to withdraw their children from government school to homeschool them.”

Here’s the notice in The Weston Forum:

Parents have a variety of reasons for homeschooling, ranging from concerns about public school environment, safety, drugs, or peer pressure, to a desire to provide religious instruction to children, to a belief that homeschooled children often fare better academically.

The Forum would like to explore these and other issues that surround the idea and the practice of educating one’s children at home.

Westonites interested in sharing their stories and experiences may contact [us … because The Weston Forum wants to hear about it].

Are they providing the red paint?

Or maybe it’s a great way to educate folks in CT about the positive aspects of homeschooling?

On another note, Brett Dennan and Tim Tebow, both homeschooled as kids, are still making news.

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).

Well, there’s talk at the national level about a new grant that would help low-income students afford college. Here’s a snippet from an online magazine:

Academic Competitiveness Grant program to part-time students. This program is geared to low-income, Pell Grant-eligible students who had taken a “rigorous” curriculum while in high school.

Under the program, students could obtain $750 for the first year of college and up to $1,300 for the second year if they maintain a high GPA.

So, I’m sort of curious about how they are going to define “rigorous curriculum” and whether there are provisions for homeschoolers. I read part of the info in the Federal Register, and it doesn’t appear that they have defined a “rigorous curriculum” yet. And somewhat surprisingly, homeschoolers are not ignored. They’re included in the program, but it doesn’t mention how a high school homeschooling program will be able to receive recognition of rigor. So, I guess we’ll have to wait and see how things unfold.

Oh, yeah, and also What We’re Reading is part of the Subject Line, too.

So have you been keeping up with Bree, the homeschooler, in her online show LonelyGirl15? Yea, me neither.

I did watch it way back before everyone found out that she wasn’t actually a homeschooler, but rather just an actress. Our family was trying to figure out the mystery. We weren’t too fanatical about it, but we were intrigued. It was kind of fun to read all the crazy notions people had about the show.

For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s a simplistic and partially ignorant recap. A small group of acting types got together early last year and made a few videos about a homeschooled girl and her friend Daniel. Somehow, the video diary became very popular on YouTube.com. The main character, Bree, actually wrote back to people who emailed her, but as Bree, a character the actress was playing. No one knew that Bree was actually the actress/student Jessica Lee Rose. Everyone wondered where Bree and Daniel were located. Viewers analyzed everything in her room and everything she said, looking for clues. Even their camera choice is discussed. Finally it was discovered that Bree was an acting student and stuff … I can’t remember the whole story.

Anyway, one thing that made me wonder if she was really a homeschooler was that Bree knew of the physicist Richard Feynman. I thought it was really strange because I think we’re average homeschoolers and we had only just discovered Richard Feynman by looking for science biographies. Maybe I’m way off base (quite possibly), but I don’t think that many average homeschooling moms/students have even heard of Richard Feynman. So, I found it suspicious that Bree, the homeschooler, had heard of him and was even mentioning the book, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! That book just isn’t on homeschooling booklists. I smelled a rat.

Which brings me to What We’re Reading. My daughter’s reading Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! right now, and she’s enjoying it. Feynman could weave a good yarn. It’s part of her science class for this year (remember, she’s a teen). My son and husband read it last spring, right before we found LonelyGirl15 on YouTube.com. I’ve not read the book yet, but my son and husband shared some good bits with me. I’ll read it one of these days.

Warning: Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! isn’t a book that everyone will want to just hand to their high school student without pre-reading. I can’t remember what exactly, but there’s something in it that would offend some folks.

I just finished The Second Mrs. Gioconda. I liked it in some respects and didn’t like it in others. But that’s for another entry. One quick comment, though: Way wrong way to title the book.

So the LonelyGirl15 season finale occurs today in 12 separate installments.

What does Michael Jackson have to do with homeschooling?

Obviously a whole lot!

He’s a homeschooling father himself apparently.

This comes straight off of Fox News in an article by Roger Friedman:

Jackson, by the way, doesn’t seem to know whether he is living in Virginia or Vegas. And what’s not being addressed is the home schooling of his three children.

“If he keeps moving around, he probably thinks no one can touch him on that,” one insider said.

But the truth is that 10-year-old Prince, 9-year-old Paris and 5-year-old Prince II, aka Blanket, have probably not received any formal education at all.

I can’t keep up. Which country is Michael Jackson a citizen of? Wouldn’t he just have to obey the education laws of that country when it comes to homeschooling? If he’s a US citizen, he just obeys the laws of one of the states that he claims to be a resident of (based on residency laws, I guess). Isn’t that the way it works? Couldn’t he also just hire a tutor and call it good?

I think it’s pretty Off the Wall that Roger Friedman feels he needs to say, “… [they’ve] probably not received any formal education at all.”

Michael Jackson is perfectly capable of teaching his own children. How could we ever forget the famous lyrics:

A B C
It’s easy as, 1 2 3
As simple as, do re mi

And if anyone should ever doubt Jackson’s ability to teach his own children, all he has to Say Say Say to them is, “Just Beat It.”

Author and Austen fan, David Lassman, submitted three of Jane’s novels (including Pride and Prejudice under the title of First Impressions with the characters’ names changed) and the classic novels were rejected over and over again by big-name publishers like Penguin, Random House, Harper Collins, and Simon & Schuster.

Was it because of plagiarism? No, only once was Austen’s work recognized.

Read the article yourself. It’s startling.

But it’s only startling for a second because once you think about it, Pride and Prejudice, while being a good story, is not written in the language of today. It’s a classic because of its popularity in the early 1800s not because it’s easy reading for today.

Language changes. Chaucer would get rejected today also.

But wait … would you recognize the novels Lassman submitted? They were Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion. I wouldn’t have recognized Northanger Abbey.

Yes, “… the funeral pyre for thought in America today….”

That’s what the bookstore owner said as began torching his pile of unwanted books.

He’s got a pile of 20,000 books that he can’t sell and can’t give away to the library or thrift stores. Tom Wayne, bookstore owner in Kansas City, Missouri, is lamenting the demise of “The Reader.”

The humorous twist to this story is that the pyro-biblio-maniac didn’t get a burning permit, and the fire department came and doused his bonfire before it was even an hour old. Tom Wayne, though, plans another book burning next month. Read the story here.

You know that book Fahrenheit 451? You know, the one with all the book burning. It was authored by Ray Bradbury who gave us this quote:

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

I think that’s where we’re at that point these days. Of course, there are exceptions; homeschoolers come to mind as one exception because many of us tend to read a lot. It’s rather a sad commentary, but I don’t think one can hold back the tide. Maybe homeschoolers are the little Dutch boy at the dike. One thing’s for sure, our culture is definitely changing when it comes to reading.

Do I recommend Fahrenheit 451 as a good read? Sure. Why not? I read it aloud to my two students when they were in their teens. It made for some good discussions. But we slogged through parts of it, so it wasn’t completely gripping. We used a Cliff Notes guide as we went through it. It was as good as any other “message” novel, I suppose, you know, the ones that have a message and are labeled literature and get put on reading lists compiled by academics. It was a bit of a cautionary tale warning folks about the misuse of television, I believe. I don’t think that Bradbury envisioned WoW and other video games, which also seem to pull people away from books.

Gary listed me on HomeschoolBuzz, and I listed him over on the left.

Another administrative bit of news: I’m going to leave comments on for a short period of time … like a few days. Comment s-p-a-m is troublesome and leaving comments open for too long encourages it.

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.

I mentioned back on January 3 of this year that Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, and his wife, are homeschooling their daughter.

Because of Wikipedia’s bias, a group of homeschoolers headed by Andy Schlafly started Conservapedia last November.

… creating a conservative-minded online encyclopedia for students was Schlafly’s prime motivation for launching Conservapedia. He started the site in late November 2006 in conjunction with 58 high-school-level, home-schooled students from the New Jersey area.

So homeschoolers are involved in both *-pedias — just a bit of trivia for you.

But to continue on a bit … Schlafly (Phyllis’s son) critiques Wikipedia harshly. He almost sounds biased himself.

… [Wikipedia] is rife with so much gossip, vulgarity and long-winded writing that it has become unusable as an educational resource.

What? I heartily disagree! While I would say that Wikipedia shouldn’t be your last stop on the road to knowledge, I do think that it’s a reasonable first stop.

Do go read the article. The article contains a few of Conservapedia’s entries and mentions that it’s become a target for those who enjoy mockery.

Kiplinger’s provides some information on the financial side of homeschooling.

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