Saturday, August 26, 2006

These People are Really Scary Follow Up

This is a follow up to These People are Really Scary. According to Katherine Harris

the separation of church and state is a "lie we have been told" to keep religious people out of politics. In reality, she said, "we have to have the faithful in government" because that is God's will. Separating religion and politics is "so wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers."



Sorry Ms. Harris, but the separation of church and state isn't a lie, it was well thought out by the Founding Fathers to keep one religious group from forcing their beliefs on the rest of us.
American History Resource -
Leading Facts of American History


Scott Powell, the creator of The Remote History Program for Children ,has passed on this helpful link to D.H. Montgomery's "Leading Facts of American History". Which is on the web as an e-book, including pictures! This is a valuable tool for homeschoolers teaching American History. Thank you, Scott.

Related Tags: , , , , ,

Also posted at The Homeschool Cafe

Friday, August 25, 2006

A Homeschool Meme

1) ONE HOMESCHOOLING BOOK YOU HAVE ENJOYED?
Ok, I have a confession to make here, I have never actually read a homeschooling book. We started off doing school at home and then I eventually found my way to home based education after talking with some long term homeschool Mom's. I don't think any ONE method will work with all kids. I homeschooled my two sons in totally different ways, as their learning styles and interest are different.


2) ONE RESOURCE YOU WOULDN'T BE WITHOUT?
The library. Who can afford to buy all the books? And the St. Martin Public Library is very homeschool friendly.

3) ONE RESOURCE YOU WISH YOU HAD NEVER BOUGHT?
So far I haven't bought anything I regretted, but I usually do tons of research before making a purchase.

4) ONE RESOURCE YOU ENJOYED LAST YEAR?
EMC's Literature and the Language Arts the British Tradition.
Note I will not be using their American Tradition it's totally biased against the South. Their Unit on the Civil War doesn't have ONE white Southern writer in the entire unit, and leads one to believe the only cause of the Civil War was slavery (They did stick a small portion of a speech by Robert E. Lee in their extra reading section). Over all most of the writers I studied in school are missing from the book, and are replaced with people I have never heard of and have no interest in reading after reading the excerpts from the book. No wonder kids today don't like to read, if this is the literature that is forced on them. I am so thankful I had the chance to review the book before buying it. Next year I will be buying books, instead of any one American Literature Book. We are doing World Literature this year which I am enjoying.

5) ONE RESOURCE YOU WILL BE USING NEXT YEAR?
Power Glide Spanish Ultimate Year II we are doing Year I this year

6) ONE RESOURCE YOU WOULD LIKE TO BUY?
That's really hard, there are so many I want. I have a whole wish list of books I want to use next year at Amazon.com. I'll be buying History of a Free Nation for sure though. While it's not perfect, it has tons of resource material and it at least attempts to explain the complex reasons behind events.

7) ONE RESOURCE YOU WISH EXISTED?
A clone (why stop at one, clones?) of ME, so I could do housework, teach and blog at the same time.

8) ONE HOMESCHOOLING CATALOGUE YOU ENJOY READING?
Another deep dark secret, I don't use homeschooling catalogue's. I usually use the internet to find the materials I want.


9) ONE HOMESCHOOLING WEBSITE YOU USE ?
National Geographic Homework Help and we use the magazine in class.

10) TAG 5 PEOPLE
Natalie, Lioness, Nancy, Sheila, & Robin

These People Are Really Scary

Read about the Dominionist who wish to force Biblical law upon the U.S.

They support a Constitutional interpretation that extends the rights of the government to interfere where it has no business.

If they get their way the U.S. will be a Christian version of Iran. As always PolitiCalypso's blog entry The Purpose of the Constitution is informative.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Economics

Economist Milton Friedman is known for his work on macroeconomics, microeconomics, economic history, statistics, and for his advocacy of laissez-faire capitalism. In 1976 he won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. His TV show Free To Choose is available on Google Video for free.

If you are studying economics as we are, I strongly encourage you to check it out.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

The Forecast Looks Grim

Michael Skube in Writing Off Reading claims that many public school graduates lack the vocabulary and grammar skills that make successful college students.

Jay Mathews points out that "According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a national achievement test, reading and math scores for 17-year-olds have been stagnant the last 30 years" in his post Too Few Overachievers.

Which brings me to a post by Andew Young and Walter Block, Enterprising Education: Doing Away with the Public School System found at Ludwig von Mises Institute.

All the arguments in favor of a public provision of primary education prove to be unfounded and/or incorrect. The failure of the state to provide a high quality service to all (its explicit goal) has rendered public primary education illegitimate; and the immeasurable waste of resources and rejection of consumer desires has left public education borderline immoral. As well, if an educated citizenry is to be considered necessary for the operation of the republican government, then it is an inexcusable conflict of interest when elected officials are the ones in charge of providing that education. Furthermore, the argument of externalities and nonexcludability fails to buttress the case for socialist education. The only ethical, reasonable system for the provision of primary education is the free market.

Considering that public schools aren't doing a very good job of educating students one has to ask, why are they still around? Do you know any private business that could fail to deliver "the goods" for 30 years and not go bankrupt? The forecast for public schools as well as their students looks grim.

According to Ayn Rand

Of all the government undertakings, none has failed so disastrously as public education. The scope, the depth, and the evidence of this failure are observable all around us. To name three of its obvious symptoms: drug addiction among the young (which is an attempt to escape the unbearable state of a mind unable to cope with existence)--functional illiteracy (the inability of the average high-school or college graduate to speak English, i.e., to speak or write coherently)--student violence (which means that students have not learned what savages know to some minimal extent: the impracticality and immorality of resorting to physical force).In the face of such evidence, one would expect the government's performance in the field of education to be questioned, at the least, [but] the growing failures of the educational establishment are followed by the appropriation of larger and larger sums. There is, however, a practical alternative: tax credits for education.

To read more about her idea click Tax Credits for Education.

Of course as most of my readers know there is one solution to the educational woes in America, home~schooling. For homeschoolers the forecast is sunny!



Related Tags: , , , ,