Home Spun Juggling: Carnival of Homeschooling: The Juggling Workshop

Home Spun Juggling: Carnival of Homeschooling: The Juggling Workshop

LOLCATS

The Carnival of Homeschooling is being hosted at HomeschoolBuzz go by and check out the LOLCATS Edition.

*Graphic Courtesy of Zoolatry

Game Day

Visit About Homeschooling for this weeks Carnival of Homeschooling.

Another messy divorce case

This is so NOT a homeschooling issue.

Loving Summer

The Loving Summer edition of The Carnival of Homeschooling is up.

As Time Goes By ~ CoH

Check out the Carnival of Homeschooling hosted at Homeschool CPA

Homeschoolings advantages far outweigh any preconceived shortcomings

My response to Homeschooling is a bad idea by Sylvia Biu. It's really annoying when these ignorant self opinionated people make all these idiotic statements about a subject they obviously know nothing about.

Biu says

There are notable drawbacks to homeschooling children.

Actually I am not aware of any drawbacks to homeschooling. I found homeschooling to be a very positive experience for both my children and myself. And don't you just love people like Sylvia who state their opinions as FACT.

First, unless a parent is himself a previous honor student or a genius who mastered more than just the three R’s, a child may not receive quality home education.

Well I did graduate with honors, but the majority of public school teachers were just average students who didn't graduate with honors and very few public school teachers are geniuses. Are we suppose to believe their students aren't receiving a quality education due to this? If not why would it be a drawback for homeschoolers?

Now, it (homeschooling) is mostly frowned upon for all but severely disabled children or those otherwise unable to attend school for whatever reason.

Really?????? Exactly who is frowning upon homeschooling? Don't you just love it when homeschool critics like Sylvia Biu start making stuff up.

1.1 Million Homeschooled Students in the United States in 2003 - July 2004, U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, NCES study - From 1999 to 2003, the number of homeschooled students in the United States increased, as did the homeschooling rate. The increase in the homeschooling rate (from 1.7 percent to 2.2 percent) represents about 0.5 percent of the 2002–03 school-age population and a 29 percent relative increase over the 4-year period.

All the current data indicates that homeschooling is on the rise.

Besides the issue of academics, there is another glaring downside for children: the socialization factor. Socialization per se is training of sorts. Children must learn to interact and get along with others beyond their immediate family members, preferably outside the home. In certain respects, homeschooling is tantamount to retarding a child by isolating him from the outside world. Social alienation may be as important a basis for opposing homeschooling as its other limits. Phobias and disorders in social settings are often salient results of homeschooling, and become most evident once a homeschooled person attempts to interact in the broader society.

OMG, another idiot that thinks homeschoolers sit home all day. News flash homeschoolers interact with the people in their community on a regular basis.

Home Schooling:From the Extreme to the Mainstream - by Patrick Basham, Cato Institute, Public Policy Sources. This paper has established that home schooling is a thriving educational movement both in Canada and the United States. It has also empirically demonstrated that the academic and socialization outcomes for the average home schooled child are superior to those experienced by the average public school student.

In addition, schools can be excellent monitors and whistleblowers for abused and neglected children. In most if not all schools in the United States, attendance records that are maintained draw attention to truants, children whose poor attendance can indicate their predicament. No such oversight occurs for homeschooled children in peril.

There are already laws that protect children from abuse and neglect. The same laws and agencies that protect preschoolers are also there for homeschooled children.

First and foremost, homeschooling and child abuse are separate issues. Attempts to link the two lack any basis in fact. While there may be homeschooling parents who abuse their children, children are not abused because they are homeschooled. There is no de facto connection between child abuse and homeschooling.

Any regulation specifically focusing on preventing child abuse among homeschoolers would ignore the fact that child abuse occurs in the general population, not just in the homeschooling population. Parents of school children and preschoolers are not singled out for special observation. Background checks, home visits, and other invasions of privacy have been suggested as forms of regulation. Singling out a subset of parents for special observation on the basis of suspicion of abuse would be discriminatory. Mere suspicion does not constitute justification for increasing regulation across the board.
From Homeschooling and Child Abuse: A Response to Recent Media Reports

Homeschooling's advantages far outweigh any preconceived shortcomings by Sylvia Biu and other homeschool critics.

My thanks to Consent Of The Governed for the links, more links and information can be found at her blog so be sure to read the post Homeschooling Statistical Studies.

Mississippi Gulf Coast:: Proposed highway route threatens homes

Mississippi Gulf Coast:: Proposed highway route threatens homes

Carnival of Homeschooling

#185

Why Homeschool: The Carnival of Homeschooling - the Founding Fathers edition

Why Homeschool is hosting this weeks CoH. Check out - the Founding Fathers edition

Not the worst reasons to homeschool

My response to Heather's post Worst reasons to homeschool.

I appreciate that she isn't trying to bash homeschooling but really why are we debating homeschooling? Do we debate public schooling? private schooling?

Heather does admit that there are good reasons to homeschool, she then goes on to state two reasons she considers the worst reasons to homeschool.

First teasing (aka bullying), according to Heather violence is the answer

When my own four-eyed and very sensitive second grade son came to me with playground woes, I told him the most politically incorrect thing you can tell a child. I said, "I can't make other kids respect you, and your teacher can't make other kids respect you; only you can." That's right, I said, "go for the nose!" Problem solved.

I can't believe a public school teacher is advocating violence, and I can't help wonder what school district she lives in because in my school district the "go for the nose"advice would get you expelled. The few parents I know who choose to homeschool because of bullying tried other options first. They talked with the teacher, the principal and the school board. When no help was forthcoming they removed the child from school for their physical safety. And if the teacher is "THE BULLY" (St. Lucie teacher has students vote on whether 5-year-old can stay in class) there is no way for the child to successfully deal with the bully.

I also think that one of the problems with the public schools is their refusal to take bullying seriously. All to often they excuse bullying as "just kids being kids" and the abuse is ignored by teachers as well as the victims fellow classmates. See 4 teens charged as adults in locker room sexual assault case. In the real world if someone is verbally threatening you or physically assaulting you, you can go to the police and get a restraining order to keep your attacker away from you. In school if you go to the teachers or principal you are labeled a tattletale, told to get over it and ignored until the situation gets so out of hand the police are involved.

The next reason she cites is religion. While I don't think religion should be ones main reason for homeschooling I do think wanting your children to learn your values is a valid reason for homeschooling. It's funny she cites religion as one of the worst reasons to homeschool when there are numerous religious private schools that no one finds fault with. Here on the coast where I live there are numerous Catholic Schools, and no one feels the need to question the parents right to send their children to these religious schools, so why should religion be consider one of the worst reasons to homeschool?

Mississippi Gulf Coast: Keep Highway 15 Out of Jackson County

Mississippi Gulf Coast: Keep Highway 15 Out of Jackson County

The Lazy Days of Summer

Carnival of Homeschooling

Carnival of Homeschooling

This week we have Summer Transition.

You can visit last weeks Summer Party here.

Public School Teacher Entices Girl to Send Sexy Photos

A former (public) school teacher is accused of enticing a 14-year-old girl to send him sexually explicit pictures of herself, police said.

Long Beach police arrested Joseph Eugene Council, 32, on multiple charges from a complaint of alleged misconduct in June with a girl who had been one of his students, said Assistant Police Chief Don Bass.

Council was the band and choir director at Pass Christian High and Pass Christian Middle schools.

Disgraceful

Why Homeschool: Update on teacher who had students vote a boy out of class

Tragedy at Holocaust Museum used to take a potshot at homeschoolers.

Apparently some people have to take a potshot at homeschooling no matter what the subject is.

One of the many reasons parents use as a reason for homeschooling is that it protects their children from the violence in public schools. In this particular situation, homeschooling would not have protected these children. This could have been a home school group instead of a group of people with common ties to a local public middle school.

Well at least Lynda Altman realizes homeschoolers do get out of the house.

Carnival of Homeschooling

Drop by Principled Discovery to check out the Field Guide Edition.

What you can learn in a homeschool

Frog Guts, Jell-o and Character by Laura Snyder is her attempt to explain what lessons she thinks your kids will not learn if they are homeschooled and why her kids are still enrolled in public schools that she finds lacking.

I’ve found that the public school system can provide certain benefits that homeschooling could not. These are not necessarily academic benefits, but they are things that all children should know.

For example, my 7th grader dissected a frog in school recently. This is something that I couldn’t do at home. Maybe some parents could, but my stomach is not equipped for gore. My son, however, had no problem describing it in detail at the dinner table. He even told me that one child was sent to the principal’s office because he was playing with his frog and making it dance. A disemboweled dancing frog was apparently too much for the teacher.

Well first off there is nothing gory about dissecting a frog. We not only dissected a frog we dissected a starfish, crayfish, fish, clam and an earthworm (dissection kit). And while no one made the frog dance, we did learn a lot. The son who would have probably happily made the frog as well as the earthworm dance was allergic to the preservative. We worked around his allergy by allowing him to watch through the glass on the garage door.

My daughter was grossed out because frog guts reminded her of the spaghetti that was served in the cafeteria for lunch that day.

Also, she said, the roll was hard, the lettuce was limp, the tomato was rotten, the chocolate milk was warm and her straw had a hole in it, which is why she had a chocolate stain on her new shirt.

Not eating her lunch was probably the reason she ate all of her dinner before my son got to his frog story. Another benefit to public school: Nothing builds character like cafeteria food.

One of the benefits of homeschooling is being able to serve healthy nutritious meals to your children. You can also teach them how to prepare healthy nutritious meals for themselves, create a shopping list and select the best priced item at the grocery store. Real life skills they will need when they are on their own.

“Sucking Jell-o through a straw is okay, but your teacher gets mad if you blow it out!”

Well, that is something I never knew. He certainly wouldn’t have learned that while homeschooling, that’s for sure.

Well my kids managed to learn that while being homeschooled, although it was Mom who got mad when they blew it out. They also learned about mixing a lot of beverages together to make unique drinks and other "kid things".

Those Safe Public Schools?

Hillsborough County prosecutors allege the four boys raped the 13-year-old victim multiple times over two months with a broomstick and hockey stick.

The prosecutor said the victim's screams could be heard outside the boys' locker room at Walker Middle School, in southern Tampa, where the allegedly assaults took place.

Multiple people witnessed the attacks, but no one reported the incidents, including the victim, Hindman said.

HT: HERP&ES