Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Although we're not doing anything special here to celebrate it. Was talking to someone the other day that grew up on the east side of Cleveland. She said St. Patrick's Day was not a big deal until she moved the west side. Interesting. We have a parade downtown every year; of course the year I took the girls, it was bitterly cold and that's probably all they remember. The ups and downs of homeschooling. That was also the year St. Patrick's Day was on a Friday, and the leader of the Cleveland Catholic diocese gave a special dispensation to partake of corned beef. :)

Common Core Is Rotten

I'm sure you've already heard a bunch of other people express frustration with how poor the Common Core curriculum is at actually teaching kids. I knew Common Core was not a good educational system, but was hoping that since my daughter was a sophomore in high school this year, she wouldn't be affected much by the issues. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to be showing up in her math, science or AP US History classes. She is having to read some worthless non-fiction books for English. Their reading assignment over the summer was The Talent Code. Is that truly useful for the majority of 15-year-olds? What made this book stand out among the sea of self-help books out there, that an English teacher picked it out for my child? Now she has to go through a list of other books of this type, and pick out another one that she would be interested in reading. Fortunately, they are also reading the traditional fictional literature that has been used in English courses. I'm still displeased with what I feel is a waste of my daughter's learning time.

She also informed me tonight that her Spanish class is being changed by this stupid system also. They're not actually concentrating on learning vocabulary or grammar in class anymore, the Dancer says. They're supposed to be magically learning that at home, then spending class time applying it. What? My daughter is luckier than most, in that I studied Spanish for seven years, and my eldest daughter took three years of Spanish as well. We can help her if she runs into difficulties because she's not getting what she needs in class. But I want my daughter to be studying grammar and vocabulary in class! I shouldn't feel like I have to help her, or supplement her education, at home.

At certain blogs, in this era where educational standards are falling victim to political meddling, I've read that not homeschooling your child amounts to child abuse. I resent that bitterly, because I know my daughter better than anyone else. Homeschooling would not be best for her at this time, because of personal reasons that are none of anyone else's business. I'm going to start by talking to some of the other mothers that I know, and see if anyone else is unhappy with the way this school year is starting out. Depending on whether I get a positive or negative response, Mr. BTEG and I will have to think about things from there.

Should I have tried to fight Common Core when our school district first talked about implementing it? Perhaps. To be honest, I don't have any friends that are fellow moms here in my town. I thought about joining the local PTA long ago, but decided not to when I started getting spammed with email from the national PTA, telling me to vote for things I would never have any intention of supporting. Even the PTA is all politics, all the time, and that disgusted me and put me off the entire PTA idea. So I definitely didn't feel like trying to lead what seemed to me at the time a single-handed crusade against our school board and superintendent, who described Common Core in gushing terms. If I can find some parents that are unhappy about how this is working out in practice, instead of theory, maybe we can band together to get something done. Or as I said above, Mr. BTEG and I will have to take a serious look at the rest of the Dancer's high school years.

Homeschooling in Ohio

So Ohio SB 248 has come and gone. It was going to be a bill that would have brought in Children's Services to decide whether or not homeschooling would be "in the best interests of the child." Right from the start, Children's Services would have been involved with you, and your children, deciding whether you had the right to homeschool. A complete invasion of privacy, and a strong blow to homeschooling rights.

Unfortunately, the withdrawal of the bill still leaves me dissatisfied. In the statement to withdraw the bill by Ohio Senator Cafaro, she states, "the true intent of the bill to curtail child abuse has been eclipsed by the issue of homeschooling." What did she think was going to happen? Of course homeschooling parents were going to be up in arms by the idea of letting the State decide what was in the best interests of their own children. This bill was all about... regulating homeschooling! I'm not an idiot, and I'm not going to be put off by political double-speak. This is simply another case where the laws were not administered, so politicians want to write more laws. In this case, I believe this senator saw a nice opportunity to gain State control over homeschooling families. Too bad for her that many people are aware and appreciative of all of the educational opportunities available, even if they aren't availing themselves of a given choice at a certain time. Too bad also that people are getting fed up with overreach by the State, and are pushing back, at least from the State's point of view. I think that the next bill that Cafaro comes up with, "for the children," also deserves some close scrutiny.

Bad Signs for a Future

For a city, one of whose best attributes at times is that at least we are not Detroit, the news of Detroit's bankruptcy should leave the city of Cleveland wondering if we are next. I say should, because there may still be a chance to pull this city back. I'm not sure that's likely to happen, given how many people refused to acknowledge that Detroit was in such grave trouble, but at the very least we may gain some sort of timetable as to how soon Cleveland will also slide off of the cliff. It's discouraging to see Detroit's abysmal literacy rate ranked with areas of Cleveland, for sure. It's sad to see that children with Down's Syndrome have a higher literacy percentage, at least according to this site. Surely almost half of Detroit's population is not severely learning disabled, is it?

I'm not really an expert on Cleveland city schools, but I do know that the superintendent of said schools pulls in around six figures, which seems rather criminal, given the job results. I also know from personal experience that teaching a child to read does not need a teaching degree or fancy materials. In my case, I was willing to take a lot of time, had the ability to take as much time as was needed without the stigma of my daughter falling behind peers, had the advantage of one-on-one time, and had a child who was generally obedient about doing her work, and knew she was expected to learn. I'm sure all of these things are lacking to a certain extent in the Cleveland public school system, especially the one-on-one time. What would be useful would be being able to address a problem individually in the case of a child from a negative environment, or in a classroom in the case of a poor teacher. The parents blame the teachers, and the teachers blame the parents, but ultimately I think the responsibility should lie with the parents. The mayor is in direct control of the schools, and the mayor, in my mind, ought to be under the direct control of his constituents. But maybe I'm biased, because in our own case, faced with a parochial school which wasn't challenging our daughter, and a public school district in academic emergency, we decided to do it ourselves. It often seems to be the way to go if you want something done right.

h/t to Bookworm Room.

Butterflies

Since we've been talking about learning, I've been wanting for a while to talk about our real-life lesson in butterflies, and this post gave me the impetus to do it. Once again, this author is one of those completely down on public schooling; this line, particularly, "fill the void left in the child's heart after the state forcibly curtails the intellectual adventurousness of the wandering bug-studier, stargazer, or bookworm," made me think of our family's short adventure with Mona the Monarch.

It was early October of 2005. We were at one of the local outdoor malls on one of those days when winter is drawing closer to its appearance; it was cold and rainy. While we were walking, we saw a monarch butterfly on the sidewalk looking completely bedraggled. We found a cup in our car, and once the butterfly got into the dryness and warmth of our car, she immediately came back to life, fluttering around wildly. We decided we didn't want to turn her back out into the cold and damp, so we took her home and temporarily let her free in our bathroom, where she had room to fly. We had stopped on the way for a better temporary carrier for her, and some hummingbird food, the best thing we thought we could provide to nourish her. We did some research to discover that Mona was indeed a girl monarch, and that butterflies drink with their long tongues, and taste with their feet. Here you see Mona checking out the hummingbird food.

I contacted via email a group involved in tracking the yearly migration of the monarch butterfly, and was told that Mona could still make it to Mexico if she was released. So we simply waited a few days until the weather was sunny, and warm enough, and set her free, after a few pictures to remember her by.

She flew right up into the sky until she was over our house, and then headed almost due south. We like to think that she did indeed make it to Mexico, and that her descendants are still flying around somewhere.

What really brought her to mind was a comment that the Dancer made about a month ago. She is excelling in her math and science classes, and is taking Honors Geometry and Honors Biology in high school, next year, so we're not ruling out a STEM career of some sort in her future. She mentioned that she might want to have a job studying butterflies, because of her experience with Mona. That surprised me, because of how long ago our butterfly adventure took place, but it made me happy that it had left such an impression on her.

Tying it in to the article above, however, the author asserts that public school will kill the enthusiasm of the "wandering bug-studier." Granted, we were homeschooling when this all took place, but it was completely extra-curricular and spur of the moment. We could have done all of the above even if the girls were attending a public school, especially since we discovered Mona over a weekend. And the kids that my girls were friends with before we started homeschooling would at the very least not have shot down their interest. They might have thought it was interesting themselves, even if they would not have enjoyed the experience so much. The Dancer had even done a very simple "lesson" on butterflies in her preschool class.

I hate to see myself becoming an advocate for public schools, but the continuous stream of articles describing public school as nothing ever but a soul-sucking waste, make my contrarian nature want to respond that while public school is not perfect, it is in no way one hundred percent the same for everyone, everywhere. I'll probably respond more to this article in future posts, but this one was mostly to use as a jumping off point for another adventure in learning that I wanted to share.

Tales of Learning

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to the Musician about her high school classes, and she mentioned that she was only one of two people in her physics class who knew what the definition of "work" was. I thought about it for a few seconds, then gave the definition. Then I laughed, and said the only way I knew the definition was because I remembered it from teaching the Musician science back when I was homeschooling. The Musician said that's how she knew it too, because she remembered our talking about it. A lot of homeschoolers dislike the style of teaching that I was using at the time, which was the usual public schooling method; I was using books that covered a lot of science topics (physics, biology, earth science) that became more complex in presentation each new school year. But obviously, some of it stuck with both her and me!

On the other hand, I tried Exploring Creation with Botany with the Dancer when she was in third grade or so. She didn't strictly remember a lot of what I read to her, but when she studied plant development in the fifth grade in public school, some of what we had talked about came back to her, and helped her digest what she was learning in fifth grade, better.

I used to read the education blog, D-Ed Reckoning, when it was still active, and many of my experiences as a mom of two students taught in various ways over the years reflect what he says in his last post. The kids who are easy to educate will learn. Find what works for you and go with it. In my case, my daughters have learned from a more traditional homeschooling style, from a more Charlotte Mason style, and from the regular public school approach. In fact, although my eldest daughter fought against the "school-at-home" method I tentatively started with as a new homeschooling mom, she told me only last week that she prefers the more rigid style of public school now.

Some of what I taught them didn't "take." They don't remember much from our course on Ancient Egypt besides learning to write their own names in hieroglyphics. I doubt they remember anything from our study of Ancient Israel besides making a model of an ancient Israeli house. Are you sensing a theme here? They also will never forget the carnation and food coloring experiment, and feel sorry for kids who never did that in school. On the other hand, I doubt they remember much of anything from the museums in Chicago to which I, as a dutiful mom, took them when Mr. BTEG was living there as a consultant. But they did learn things, and I think both of them are poised to do whatever they want with their futures.

Confession Time

I am finally giving in to responding to this article. I really didn't want to, because I'm not going to get anywhere, or change anyone's mind, but I've been turning it over in my mind for awhile, so I'm writing it down here and moving on.

My name is Barb the Evil Genius, and I am a terrible parent. I homeschooled one daughter for five years, and the other for four years. The reason why the Musician was only homeschooled for four years was because she was fighting my attempts to homeschool her, and we put her into an online school for a year, rather than put her in a school district that we were planning on leaving in a year.

Now both daughters are in public school, happy and doing well. This obviously means that I am a poor parent, since even after many years of homeschooling, my daughters prefer being smothered and subjugated in a public school. They enjoy being around, and learning with, large groups of their peers, even though many of the peers are sometimes unkind, selfish, lying, thieving, have emotional issues, do drugs and sleep around. To be honest, my girls can be thoughtless, tactless, selfish, and lose their tempers. My youngest occasionally resists the urge to inflict bodily harm on her classmates when she finds their stupidity frustrating (what can I say, she's my little girl,) and yet she prefers public school to homeschooling. This makes me a terrible parent. They should prefer being at home with just the other sister, and having the one-on-one interaction with me as their teacher.

When my daughters were homeschooled, they were not intrigued to find out how birds built their nests, nor interested in becoming Mozart-like composers, learning open-heart surgery, or welding a scale-model Eiffel Tower in the garage. If given the opportunity, my daughters would spend a great deal of their time surfing My Little Pony memes on the internet and playing Super Paper Mario. This obviously makes me a poor parent.

My youngest daughter takes medication for her ADHD. This is to help her concentrate on her work, sit still and be quiet. Definitely I am in the poor mom category here. ADD and ADHD are just made up labels to force brainwashed children to mindlessly behave in a stifling system. My daughter would learn so much more if she was homeschooled. Talking non-stop and doing cartwheels through the backyard to work off her energy would serve her so much better. At least she could concentrate while she was playing Super Paper Mario.

So when you hear, "You can homeschool your kids too! Public school is always the worst choice!", just remember, that is only true if you are a good mom. My name is Barb the Evil Genius, and I am not a good mom.

Dear Andrea Mitchell

I've done a lot of thinking about this, and you know what? I don't even know why you would presume that you could speak for me as a suburban mom, or even as a woman. I'm everything that you hate. I'm very white, and I'm not ashamed of the color of my skin. I'm not strictly evangelical, but you wouldn't know the differences in Christian doctrine if someone made a coloring book about it for you. I'm a stay-at-home mom. I've homeschooled my children. I've never had an abortion. I want a return to our Constitution and the founding principles of this country. It doesn't matter if you are who you are, a woman who married a wealthy old man and wouldn't be caught dead living the life of any of the suburban moms that I know, or if you were a dirt poor woman living in a ghetto. YOU DON'T SPEAK FOR ME.

Is This Real?

First thing, let me admit that I am a fan of some of the dolls produced by Robert Tonner. As Mr. BTEG can tell you, I do have quite a few dolls, and a good proportion of those are Tonner dolls. He has recently branched out into Tonner Toys, dolls which are more for children than for adult collectors, although collectors are also displaying an interest. And while I wish the company success, I hope you can also see the humor (and some dismay) in two of the company's first offerings.

The first is Maudlynne McCobb. Say that name out loud. Yes, Tonner is continuing his interest in the dark, the gloomy, even the supernatural side of life. As long as that supernatural is ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night. Maudlynne was inspired by characters such as Wednesday Addams, and she does have a mournful attractiveness, but what struck me was the end of her online bio. "Maudlynne was home-schooled for most of her life until her parents noticed her peculiar nature and decided it was time for her to socialize a bit more with regular kids." Do you see a bit of stereotyping there? I do. Believe me, there are "irregular" kids everywhere. And will Maudlynne become more "normal" by socializing with "regular" kids? Homeschoolers, what do you think?

One of their other lines is well-meaning, but in this present culture, I find it more humorous than anything else. This line of dolls is the City Girls. "Freshly matriculated from college, these fresh, young and energetic ladies are all ready to take on the world and follow their dreams. Whether at work, a networking function or just out for a night on the town, they’re ready to dazzle and shine!" They may have decided to follow Nancy Pelosi's advice about choosing a career to follow their dreams, but the way things are nowadays, I think the next dolls in the series should be the OWS dolls, freshly matriculated from college with a mountain of debt. Accessories could include a dish of paté (pesky homeless person not included) and a bag of feces. Deposit it on a police car or just leave it lying around the tent city you can create for your OWS dolls! At least Mummy and Daddy can cover your health insurance until you're 26, in case you pick up an STD during a furtive fumble in that cute guy's tent.

Seriously, shouldn't we be getting over the idolization of the "Career Woman"? I do think it's fine for women to work, but I'm tired of the "Glamor Job" being held up as some sort of ideal. How many men do you know that have a job, or even a career, that holds any sort of glamor? Sitting in a cube farm, riding around in a truck all day delivering mail, cutting lumber at the home improvement store, stocking groceries -- none of these are glamorous, and I doubt anyone dreamed about someday performing these tasks, but as Thomas Sowell points out, what academia considers "menial" work is also necessary work, and "Some people take justifiable pride in working to take care of their families, whether or not the work itself is great." I think being making enough money to support oneself, and being able to support your children, may not being as exciting as taking on the world and following your dreams, but in the long run it's probably much more realistic.

School Rules

I was glad to see Mitt Romney come out with a strong position on school choice. He's not my dream candidate, but he's not a socialist, and I think he could definitely improve the economy, which honestly is my biggest concern right now. If we have to worry about food and clothes and medicine, I don't have much energy for much else. As far as school choice, I am in favor of parents being able to spend whatever school monies they are entitled to, on the school of their choice. Or be able to keep it themselves if they homeschool. Of course, I think this shouldn't come with any sort of government strings. You takes your money and you chooses your school. I can also understand a desire for school accountability, when we have kids graduating from schools, who can't read or do basic math. I think our current system of trying to make sure all the kids in school actually learn, is probably fatally flawed. But then I think it should be more locally accountable, and not federally. But the subject is too complex and I don't have enough experience to go into it more deeply than that.

Trending

Last night at one of my daughter's dance classes, I discovered that two out of the five girls that attend the class are "homeschooled," that is, they attend an online school. However, neither choice had anything to do with quality of education. One attends because she had some sort of problems with other students at her school. Her older sister is still at the same high school that she was attending.

The other girl does online school, I am fairly certain, because her parents are very strict Jehovah's Witnesses. This girl was not allowed to dance to "Monster Mash" at the dance school during the Halloween season, so I imagine that going to public school might have been awkward for her.

I wonder if the biggest growth in learning at home is going to be these online schools. I know many people who are intensely committed to teaching their children at home, themselves, but many of the parents I see would never have the interest in doing this. And to be honest, of the many people I know who homeschool, many have children who have some sort of learning difficulty or disability. Sometimes I wonder if too many people change "homeschool is great for my kid" into "homeschool is great for every kid" far too easily.

Of course, one of the things that makes me wonder about learning at home is the level of brokenness I have seen now that my daughters are attending public school and they know so many kids. Going way beyond things like divorce, too many parents are dealing with problems in their own lives, sometimes in unhelpful ways. I was blessed enough to be able to work around my own issues, for the most part, when my kids were little, but it's not always possible. At least charter schools and online schools are getting parents to think outside of the public school box. Options are always good.

Nostalgia For What Wasn't

I am going through some of our homeschooling books that didn't get a lot of use, so I can sell them. I remember all the plans I made and looking forward to using the books with the girls. I am sorry that my plans never really worked out. Oh, the girls did learn somehow, since they were able to transition into public school. But most of the plans I had didn't work out. The girls and I did have some nostalgic moments, however, going through some of their old work, especially the art work. Which is funny in a way because they don't do much creative art work on their own, but they did seem to enjoy what was assigned to them. So I'm thankful for what we did have, but still feeling a bit of nostalgia for what never was.

Hanging On to a LIttle

So. I got a lot of stuff about school out there yesterday. It seems kind of strange and disjointed, perhaps. All I can say is, the feelings homeschool moms have when they are told they are ruining their children or doing something wrong or whatnot? I have those feelings too, but in this case it is about my kids being indoctrinated and not getting to explore their own interests and not getting enough depth, and on and on. Mr. BTEG and I know that we are doing what is best for our family, so I don't exactly feel guilt. I just want to say that there is room, and use, for the basic public school idea. There are a lot of things that could be changed about schools, and I think the addition of charter schools and more freedom for homeschool would be great. But the large school really fits our needs at the moment. It doesn't have to stay "public;" it doesn't have to be the only game in town. But I'd like to see something similar stay around.

Here We Go

I may be passive-aggressive posting this here, instead of dealing with things head on. On the other hand, I have tried expressing my ideas when issues come up, and have gotten nowhere. Once, when I said straight out that I was hurt and offended, I got "You don't need to be offended" as a reply. Well, thanks! I guess that fixes everything! Right now I just feel the need to spout off about what I see as a problem I don't know how to change.

Here's my biggest issue right now. I'm tired of seeing people say to my face, on the one hand, that if public school works for your family, hey, great. This comes after I say something if someone says, oh, you really must love your kids since you homeschool them. So I guess I must hate my kids? Well, they aren't going to say that. Then they put up some article that talks about how the public school system was created to dumb kids down, and the education establishment is just out to get your kids and make them stupid. So what does that mean? Public school as an entire entity is a mind control factory determined to turn your children into mindless cogs of the state. But hey, whatever works best for your family, you know?

I think part of the problem is that because of a few people that I am friends with, I have fallen into a larger group with whom I have next to nothing in common. I'm starting to see the group as a homogenous entity, and feeling out of place because I don't buy into what they say. Often I feel like chucking the entire thing out the window. At this point, I don't know how to cut ties with many without cutting ties with everyone. Oh bother.

Might As Well

Since I haven't posted in quite a while, I might as well do a proud mom brag here as well as on Facebook. The Dancer's teacher called today to tell us how far the Dancer has come in school and that she is an excellent student. They also took a practice Ohio Achievement Test today and the Dancer did the best in the class. Of course, I'm also proud as her former teacher for five years too! I would like to do an "in your face" to my parents who didn't think I could homeschool. Since I can't do it in person, I'll just do it here, lol. And I didn't even accomplish as much as I wanted as a homeschool mom, since the girls really didn't enjoy it, not nearly as much as they like public school. I've said stuff like this before, but it's still wonderful to me how well they are doing fresh out of homeschool. In a few years, I'll probably just be bragging about them as students and not throw me into the mix as much. :)

It Worked Out

I was nervous last week about the very first parent-teacher conference I'd gone to in years. This one was for the Dancer, and as her only teacher for so long, it would truly be a reflection on me. Her teacher did say that the Dancer had a little bit of trouble in the early days, with math facts and with keeping up while writing answers in class. I'd tried to drill the Dancer as much as possible in her multiplication facts, but I had a hard time memorizing them as a child also. So while I felt a little guilty about that issue, I *had* worked with her on them. As a matter of fact, she's still working on them at home. As far as the notes, the Dancer's handwriting has never been copperplate, but I suppose the biggest issue is just that she had never learned to write things down as quickly as you need to in a classroom setting.

The good news is that her teacher says she is a good student and a hard worker, and that she is now completely integrated into the classroom. She also told me that I did a good job. That's great news for me. I didn't ruin her by all the years of homeschooling! I'm very proud of her and glad we had our time together.

Environment

The girls are really getting settled into their new schools. Not only in regards to making friends, but also as far as their studies. They're rather like me in regards to their schoolwork; there are some classes they are breezing through and others that they have difficulty with. I'm not sure about Mr. Evil Genius' career as a student except that he will not do his best for you if you bore him. Perhaps he will chime in here. :) The Dancer made an interesting comment. Basically, she does her best school work at school because it feels like school. Despite the fact that she had been homeschooled for five years, apparently she still felt like an institutional school setting was "real" school. Or something like that. All the kids she knew at church were homeschooled, but she saw the kids in our neighborhood(s) far more often, and they all attended some sort of formal school. Perhaps that influenced her thinking.

The girls are also quickly becoming bonded to our new locale. School probably has a lot to do with it, but I am amazed at how quickly they have come to feel this is home. The Equestrienne likes going to high school football games, and although most of that is likely related to opportunities to socialize, she does seem to be turning into a loyal backer of her future high school. The Dancer likes to spot all the signs in people's front yards that indicate that a local sports player lives there. She also wants a shirt featuring the school colors, like most of the kids at her school have.

I also am settling well into our new home. A bigger kitchen makes it much easier to do real cooking as opposed to just throwing something frozen into the oven. Not being crowded in makes it much easier to mop and vacuum. Our much bigger laundry room makes it easier to sort laundry piles. We really did try to take care of our previous abode, not wanting to perpetuate the negative stereotype of renters, but it did become very difficult due to lack of space. Of course, my husband will tell you I can feel guilty about just about anything, but I do wonder if I could have tried harder at our old place. But it's in the past, where it should stay. :)

ETA: In fairness to myself, I should also note that halfway through our time at our old place is when I was hospitalized because my bipolar got out of control. This didn't help anything!

School Days, School Days

Having the girls going to public school is weird, although oddly enough, having the Dancer attend is weirder than the Equestrienne. The Equestrienne went to a parochial school for kindergarten through second grade, so there seems to be a certain familiarity with the concept. The Dancer attended only a year of preschool and a year of Pre-K at the same parochial school, something I'm glad we did. It was only half a day, and not all five weekdays, so it was mostly just a time to have fun and have books read to her and eat snacks and be around other little ones. She, of course, thought she was all that, with her shiny backpack, but that was part of the fun. Anyway, I've been so used to homeschooling the Dancer that this is feeling a little strange.

There are some good things about her attending public school. She will be receiving group violin lessons; the only cost to us will be renting the instrument, and what we pay can all go towards an eventual purchase if she decides to continue music. She is also making friends, and riding the bus has helped her meet kids that live in our neighborhood.

Despite the local tax support, there are fundraisers. That's one of the downsides. Turning in boxtops is not very hard, but magazine sales are another story. Who knows what else will take place later this school year? The cost of publicly educating children continues to astound me.

Mr. BTEG and I are also still rather involved in the Dancer's education. There are some subjects she needs help in, although she hates to admit it, and in the end it is our responsibility to see she learns what she needs. One thing I am seeing with the Dancer is that, although she can read quite well and with comprehension, she is not picking up much from reading in regards to grammar or spelling. I am going to supplement her education here at home to keep her at or get her up to grade level. I don't like the social studies the Dancer gets instead of history, but I will concede that she is learning useful things about maps and climates and so forth. I would have rolled it into history studies, but I'm not teaching now. It's been a little hard for me to deal with! The Equestrienne is assigned projects on the computer, which her father helps her with, and he also helps with math.

Knowing so many other homeschoolers now makes me feel awkward and out of place. I have no doubt that outside schooling is best for the Equestrienne, and I can see advantages for the Dancer, but I still have stirrings of guilt. Perhaps with good reason, I think there is still defensiveness on the part of homeschoolers, but it disturbs me slightly to see all the "Homeschooling Is So Great!" posts. It comes down to what is best for our family at this point in time, and it will help me to remember that.

I Grade It an F

Since I emailed my state representative about online charter school funding being cut, I guess I am now on her mailing list. I got an email from her a couple of days ago which is long on style but short on substance. Maybe representatives don't want to go into detail in an email, but this email did not thrill me.

"It is vitally important for our children to have the best education possible. I believe that preparing every student for the 21st century is the only way we can improve our current economic situation." If people really wanted children to have the best education possible, they would go with the methods that have actually been proven to work, instead of whatever is new and shiny. And I can think of many other good ways to improve our current economic situation.
1. Don't spend our money like a drunken sailor and do work on cutting the deficit.
2. Cut taxes so businesses will want to be in your area. (See Cleveland, Ohio for what not to do)
3. Quit trying to hurt small businesses with things like high taxes and inflated minimum wage. Also, don't hurt cottage industries with ridiculous restrictions like CPSIA.
What exactly does "preparing every student for the 21st century" really mean? I can't even say it sounds good any more as I am immune to catchphrases and buzzwords.

"While this is a significant reformation, a transition phase of ten years will make sure school districts have adequate time to adjust to all aspects of the new education plan." Okay, *what kind* of significant reformation are we talking about? That was not made clear at all. And ten years is long enough for schools to weasel out of changes for as long as possible and hope something new gets passed later. What on earth is so difficult to implement anyway that it will take ten years to do so?

All-day kindergarten will eventually be required. That's good. You are already doing a poor job in education, so let's require the students to receive this poor education for longer periods. Haven't they read that "advantages" like Head Start eventually are lost a few years down the road? How exactly will extra school hours for little ones, who should still have more free hours, help?

"We must continue to discuss Ohio's diverse education needs." Again as a good Lutheran I must ask, say it with me, "What does this mean?" All kids need to learn, and to retain at least some of what they learned. I say at least retain some of, because I certainly have not retained a great deal of what I was taught in school over the course of years. This is evidenced by my inability to help the Equestrienne with all of her grade school math, at least off the top of my own head. How much real "diversity" is required?

In the email there is a link to the governor's Conversation on Education. Sadly, my alarm bells are being set off here. For example: "A modern education must be directly linked to economic prosperity. Ohio cannot thrive without understanding that world class schools will produce a talented workforce, and a talented workforce will attract and create jobs." Ding, ding, ding! Yes, let's get that little proletariat started young. I don't think people are fleeing Ohio in droves because they don't have work skills. I think they are leaving because Ohio is doing its best to kill local jobs. (see above)

"We cannot address our education challenges without strengthening our commitment to public education. As a practical matter, the vast majority of Ohio children are and always will be educated in the public school system." Always will be? Goodness, I hope not. There are wonderful options such as homeschooling, charter schools, parochial schools and private schools. Let's think outside the box, people! Okay, charter schools are technically public, but they have a much better track record *overall* than your average public school.

"We must strive to develop a specific, personalized education program that identifies how each individual student learns and use the teaching methods appropriate to that student's needs and abilities." You're joking, right? A homeschool mom can do that, although not so much out of an inherent superiority (giving dues to public school teachers) as the fact that she has fewer students, and she knows them very well. The parochial school my daughter was in years ago offered personalized education. They didn't follow through.

"Our schools must excel internationally in our ability to foster creativity and innovation. Our educators must teach students to think past the limits of what's been done, and imagine what could be done." How about we just give them an education with a solid foundation, and they can grow and imagine from there? D-Ed Reckoning is a good place to go to find out how poorly trying to "foster creativity" works out in actual use. You can also read lots of discussions, as well as collected data, on what kinds of education work and what doesn't.

"We must educate the whole student. Education must be viewed as a joint responsibility of families, educators and communities." I'm all for a family being invested in its own children's education, although many teachers and schools really don't appreciate parental input. However, what are communities to do to help educate "the whole student"? I'm afraid "provide money" is largely the idea here. Maybe not.

Lastly, "we will reduce the property tax burden on local taxpayers by increasing the state share of school funding to 61 percent when the reform plan is fully phased-in." So, you're reducing local taxes only to increase state taxes. This helps me how?? Not to mention creating another layer of unneeded bureaucracy.

Children get the best education right now because parents either have enough knowledge in a subject to help their child out, or because parents are wealthy enough to afford tutors. For story after story on this subject, check out Kitchen Table Math. Is this fair? No. Should we depend on bureaucrats to fix everything? Definitely not. Honestly, I don't know for sure whether parental investment is necessary in a child's education. If so, there will always be children who just have parents who aren't willing to put in the effort. Yes, some parents did not get a good education themselves, and obviously most families can not afford to hire tutors. But there will always be some parents who just don't care. For those who do care about the education of children, I think I would tell them to look to the example of homeschoolers. Many parents teaching their children at home are doing so on a shoestring, without a fancy curriculum or lots of field trips. There is such a wealth of free information available to all, that those who want to learn can do so. And this goes along with my whole philosophy of not depending on the government. Why trust a suit in the capital building to take care of you? Nobody is as invested in your child, and what is best for them, as you!

Thoughts on Higher Education

A friend sent me this article on how student loan debts for higher education often end up weighing down those who took them on, and the possibility for increased wages with a degree often do not offset the debt load adequately. The entire higher education system in this country seems, like so many other things, to be a big, overgrown mess.

As always, I look for non-government solutions. The big Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debacle illustrates to me all too clearly that the government should not be in the business of loaning money. I also don't think a higher education is so necessary that the government should simply be financing it. A university education does not make you smarter or more productive or a better citizen. I don't want to get into this too much, since then we could tear apart the whole public school system, but I just want to cover what might seem the "obvious" answer to some.

If enough people try to find alternate solutions to college, perhaps colleges and universities will drop their prices to attract more customers. Government loans have definitely not helped the situation here. The more people who get loan-savvy, the more schools of higher education will have to make their prices more affordable. Also, potential students need to be more discerning about their chances of doing well in college. The article mentions universities who deliberately inflate their diversity numbers without revealing that most of these minority students will never finish their degree. Here's another tip: if you have to take a lot of remedial courses perhaps the university is not for you. Or, perhaps you could find less expensive ways to cover your educational gaps. The homeschooler in me says, search out ways to improve your education yourself! At least to get yourself to the point where you don't have to spend big bucks at the university level taking remedial courses.

In our own family, I'm glad Mr. BTEG went to college. In computer work, anecdotal evidence says there are ways to get a start in the business without a degree, but I think the broad computer science courses gave my husband a better foundation and helped him get ahead faster. Myself, I didn't know what I wanted to do when I went to college; I only went because of familial pressure and because that's what smart people did. I can't complain too much because I met my husband there!, and two of the jobs I had before getting married were ones where a degree was required. Knowing myself better now, I likely would have studied other things in college, but then I would have attended a different school and probably never met DH, so it's all for the best.

The Equestrienne is presently considering a course in Equine Studies; big surprise there! If she still wants to be a vet, this could be a pre-vet course, or she could just take it with an eye to having her own stable in the future. If she could get a real job with someone who has their own working stable, like the people she rides with now, college could perhaps be skipped entirely. College would cover things, though, that her stable doesn't do. And her riding coach is talking up the college that she recently graduated from, so we'll see. I don't know enough about owning horses and giving lessons to know whether a degree would be helpful enough.

The Dancer wants to be...a dance teacher. So predictable! Her own teacher took education and dance courses in college. Again, I don't know enough about the dance world to know whether a degree is a necessity or not. I suppose it would sound better if the Dancer were trying to begin her own studio. A lot of research needed before we send the girls off for more education!

Boy, this is long, isn't it? :)