Homeschoolers

[RobertMadewell]

Cardboard signs still don't come with spell checkers. All I can do is shake my head in disbelief.

[Dardedar]

I thought maybe they were extra smart and trying for something cute like: "homescholars." But alas, they missed that boat too.

[kwlyon]

She's also holding the sign the wrong way:)....I have a feeling this was done in paint....not even photoshop....they just drew the words in there:)

[Robert Madewell]

You might be right, kwlyon. However, I have held signs like that before and often we would write another message on the back. That way we would just turn the sign around to say something else. I thought that was prolly what was going on here.

[kwlyon]

Oh...yes you are correct...however It is VERY possible that she is, in fact, HOLDING THE SIGN BACKWARDS! I don't put anything past these folks. You know me, the bleeding heart liberal. I went to one of our fayetteville tea-bagger conventions and tried to talk to some of the people. I left very confused. These people don't know what they are there for...or at the very least the few that do unknowing disagree with one another. It kinda reminded me of a green peace meeting. They are everything from anti-government to anti-corporation--fine ideals to a limited extent. The only thing separating them from the green peace neo-hippies is they are all EXTREMELY PRO REPUBLICAN! Though they don't seem to know much of anything about what that entails nor the inherent contradiction therein. Just republican=Glen Beck=Good. Talking to them just makes my brain hurt....I need to stop believing that everyone driven to protest has a point. I REALLY need to stop thinking the best of everyone to the extent of extending them a hand of friendship while they proceed to piss on my face.

[Skudd]

We home schooled our daughter for a year because the public school system failed her. She had a pathetic algebra teacher in middle school that refused to do other than the bare minimum. So she took a year off from that fiasco and we (the wife and I) taught her at home between our jobs. After that year, she did much better and returned to the public school system.

[Dardedar]

We home schooled our daughter for a year because the public school system failed her.

DAR
We (read: my wife) did the same with our son for three years for partly that reason. Now he's at his first year at the U of A. I also did poorly around grade three (too many distractions, I was focused almost entirely on fart jokes) so my mum really focused on tutored reading at home (all religious crap). By the fifth grade I was reading adult novels (some of them really "adult" too!). Homeschooling can be great. With my job (piano tech., house to house) I get to see lots of it. In many cases it is a parent focusing on the children and getter really good results, that is, inquisitive, bright kids flourishing in a environment without all the peer pressure stress. I can tell by their interest and the questions they ask (maybe partly they are bored and I am the daily excitement). The only draw back is it doesn't simulate the real world out there which has a lot of peer pressure stress, so we thought it was best to have our son experience the best of both.
Now, the real problem with homeschooling is many parents use it for the purpose of shielding the kiddies from real science instruction and as a tool to BRAINWASH the LIVING DAYLIGHTS out of them with the most hardcore fundamentalist nonsense. As the Bible says, 'bring up a child in the way that they should go, and he will not depart from it.' I am testament to the failure of that claim but this doesn't keep the fundies from trying their best.

[Robert Madewell]

Now, the real problem with homeschooling is many parents use it for the purpose of shielding the kiddies from real science instruction and as a tool to BRAINWASH the LIVING DAYLIGHTS out of them with the most hardcore fundamentalist nonsense.

I agree. I was not intending to lump all homeschoolers together. I know that there are lots of parents that choose to homeschool because they <b>can</b> do a better job than the public schools. However, the homeschoolers I am familiar with are the ones that want to teach the kids creationism instead of science. Make no mistakes, when taught by creationist homeschoolers, there's none of this intelligent design BS. They teach it right out of Genesis.

I'm sorry if I was painting with a broad brush. That was not my intention.

[Doug]

However, the homeschoolers I am familiar with are the ones that want to teach the kids creationism instead of science.

DOUG
I wanted to homeschool my kids because I thought I could do a better job than public school teachers who have 25 or so kids at a time and too little time for it. But we ended up doing no homeschooling at all. My wife and I both worked, and it was just impractical from a logistical standpoint.

Here in Arkansas I knew a family who had taught a couple of teenage kids, who were not their own kids, to read and write. The parents of these kids kept them out of school to homeschool them, but ended up being too busy to do anything with them. So at 15 and 16 the kids were illiterate. They learned to read and write and grew up to make craft items to sell here and there.

Make no mistakes, when taught by creationist homeschoolers, there's none of this intelligent design BS. They teach it right out of Genesis.

DOUG
In Texas, near my hometown, a family was in the newspaper because they homeschooled their kids for religious reasons. Before they could study something, the parents would make sure that the thing was mentioned in the Bible. Before they could study the eye, the parents would read a Bible passage that mentioned the eye. Before learning about metal, they would read aloud a passage mentioning metal. And so on.

No joke.

[JamesH]

When I was a recruiter for the USMC we would get some kids once in a while that had been home schooled and not one of them could pass the ASVAB to get in the military. What was really bad was most of these kids and their parents thought the diploma they received where as good as one from a public school or a private school with acredidation. It was sad to see these people come to the realization that their kids where dumb as a box of rocks and the diploma they had was not worth the paper it was written on. A GED is more accepted. I found the same thing with the religious school with the exception of the Catholic school. We did not waste much time talking to the kids in the religious schools. If you found a kid in a religious school that could pass the test it was because they had spent most of their time in public school before going to a religious school. Then you had to worry why they had suddenly started going to a religious school and it usually ended up they had been kicked out of public school for some reason that was never their fault.

[kwlyon]

My ex was "homeskuuuled" and she could not divide....like...with numbers....She is incredibly intelligent however she spend her time babysitting.