Homeschooling

Joel Skousen's Discussion Forums: Research Archives: Homeschooling
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Shawnee

Saturday, March 01, 2003 - 03:46 pm Click here to edit this post
Frequently Asked Questions About Homeschooling
http://www.homeschoolchristian.com/FAQ/index.html

The Why Of Homeschool
http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=1167

Homeschool World
http://www.home-school.com/

Homeschool Central
http://homeschoolcentral.com/

Eclectic Homeschool Online
http://www.eho.org/default.asp

The Homeschool Zone
http://www.homeschoolzone.com/

Crosswalk.com
http://www.crosswalk.com/family/home_school/

Christian Homeschool Forum On CIN
http://www.gocin.com/homeschool/

Home School Legal Defense Assocation
http://www.hslda.org/

Finding Homeschool Support On The Internet
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8259/

Homeschool Fun Online Magazine
http://www.homeschoolfun.com/

American Homeschool Assocation
http://www.americanhomeschoolassociation.org/

Homeschool Helper
http://www.mathgoodies.com/homeschool/

Homeschool Internet Yellow Pages
http://www.homeschoolyellowpages.com/

The HomeSchoolMom.com
http://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/

Home Sweet Home School
http://home-educate.com/

HomeSchoolArts.com—Free art lessons
http://www.homeschoolarts.com/

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Eden

Saturday, March 08, 2003 - 11:33 am Click here to edit this post
Learn In Freedom
http://learninfreedom.org/

Save Our Schools Network (Outcome Based Education)
http://www.3dresearch.com/hoge/

PebbleNet Guide To The World Wide Web
Libraries online, teacher’s guides and more
http://www.pebblenet.org/

National Home Education Research Institute
http://www.nheri.org/

A To Z Home’s Cool
http://www.gomilpitas.com/homeschooling/

Crayola Creativity Central
http://www.crayola.com/

Heather’s Homeschooling Page
http://www.madrone.com/home-ed.htm

HEM’s Homeschooling Information And Resources Page
http://www.home-ed-magazine.com/

Homeschooler’s Curriculum Swap
http://theswap.com/

Homeschooling Resources (Bill Beaty’s Page)
http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/home.html

Homeschooling With The McVies
http://www.csranet.com/%7Evlmckie/homeschool.html

Home School Legal Defense Association
http://www.hslda.org/

Home School World
http://www.home-school.com/

Home School Zone
http://www.homeschoolzone.com/

Home Taught: Gail Withrow’s Home Education Site
http://www.hometaught.com/

Jon’s Homeschool Resource Page
http://www.midnightbeach.com/hs/

Kevcornett’s Homeschool Links Page
http://members.aol.com/Cornettes/hslinks.htm

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Steve Stock

Tuesday, June 17, 2003 - 11:03 am Click here to edit this post
Homeschoolers In The Trenches
By David Limbaugh

Excerpt:

As more parents opt for homeschooling, public schools will grow increasingly nervous. Homeschooling's financial impact on public schools can be significant. If thousands of students are homeschooling in a school district, it stands to lose millions of dollars in revenue. And with every additional homeschooled student, the public-education monopoly is eroded a little further, and control over children's academic and social development shifts away from the state and back to the family unit.

So, despite homeschooling's outstanding academic track record, we can expect persistent opposition from the establishment, sometimes reaching the point of policemen and social workers at homeschoolers' homes threatening to snatch away their children.

But we can also be sure that homeschooling families will continue to resist this oppression. They deserve our support, because they are fighting over the most fundamental rights of a free society: the right to raise and educate children as they see fit. They are carrying the banner of liberty for all of us.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33117

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Kay

Saturday, October 04, 2003 - 01:20 pm Click here to edit this post
How Public Education Cripples Our Kids And Why
by John Taylor Gatto, a former New York State and New York City Teacher of the Year and the author, most recently, of The Underground History of American Education.

Excerpts:

We have been taught (that is, schooled) in this country to think of "success" as synonymous with, or at least dependent upon, "schooling," but historically that isn't true in either an intellectual or a financial sense. And plenty of people throughout the world today find a way to educate themselves without resorting to a system of compulsory secondary schools that all too often resemble prisons. Why, then, do Americans confuse education with just such a system? What exactly is the purpose of our public schools?

…The aim ... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.

…School didn't have to train kids in any direct sense to think they should consume nonstop, because it did something even better: it encouraged them not to think at all. And that left them sitting ducks for another great invention of the modem era - marketing.
Now, you needn't have studied marketing to know that there are two groups of people who can always be convinced to consume more than they need to: addicts and children. School has done a pretty good job of turning our children into addicts, but it has done a spectacular job of turning our children into children. Again, this is no accident. Theorists from Plato to Rousseau to our own Dr. Inglis knew that if children could be cloistered with other children, stripped of responsibility and independence, encouraged to develop only the trivializing emotions of greed, envy, jealousy, and fear, they would grow older but never truly grow up.

…"Our schools are ... factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned .... And it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down." – Ellwood P. Cubberley

… It's perfectly obvious from our society today what those specifications were. Maturity has by now been banished from nearly every aspect of our lives. Easy divorce laws have removed the need to work at relationships; easy credit has removed the need for fiscal self-control; easy entertainment has removed the need to learn to entertain oneself; easy answers have removed the need to ask questions. We have become a nation of children, happy to surrender our judgments and our wills to political exhortations and commercial blandishments that would insult actual adults.

We buy televisions, and then we buy the things we see on the television. We buy computers, and then we buy the things we see on the computer. We buy $150 sneakers whether we need them or not, and when they fall apart too soon we buy another pair. We drive SUVs and believe the lie that they constitute a kind of life insurance, even when we're upside-down in them. And, worst of all, we don't bat an eye when Ari Fleischer tells us to "be careful what you say," even if we remember having been told somewhere back in school that America is the land of the free.

…You can read the rest of this article at http://www.rense.com/general42/how.htm

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Kay

Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - 08:06 am Click here to edit this post
A CBS Evening News report called "A Dark Side to Homeschooling," hinting at the need for regulation to protect children, has homeschool advocates crying foul.

The two-part report focused on a handful of child-abuse cases from the past decade involving families who claim to homeschool their children.

"We are outraged that CBS would ignore the obvious facts and draw the erroneous conclusion that homeschoolers need to be strictly regulated," said J. Michael Smith, president of the Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association.

"The story is a shameless attempt to smear an entire community of committed, dedicated parents," he said.

Excerpt above (and the rest of the story below) from "CBS Warns of Homeschooling 'Dark Side'" at

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35082

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Eden

Thursday, October 16, 2003 - 10:31 am Click here to edit this post
The Dark Side of CBS
Joseph Farah responds to CBS’ recent “expose” on homeschooling

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35104

Remember the days when the press believed its highest calling was to serve as a vigilant watchdog on government fraud, waste, abuse and corruption?

Those days are long gone.

Today, too many in the media – Dan Rather and CBS News among them – apparently see their primary mission as to bring as much of American private life under the realm of government control.

CBS and other establishment news organs now seem to think their primary job is to create imaginary crises – like homeschoolers losing their lives because of abusive parents – and lay the groundwork for a solution imposed by more intrusive, more costly, more pervasive government regulations.

When was the last time CBS did an expose on abuse in the government schools?

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Kay

Thursday, October 23, 2003 - 04:32 pm Click here to edit this post
Survey: Homeschoolers New Political Force
Refutes 'socialization' concerns posed by thinkers in academia
By Art Moore

Excerpt:

According to some estimates, the number of homeschoolers in the U.S. is as high as 2.5 million . . . Only 4 percent of the homeschool graduates surveyed consider politics and government too complicated to understand, Ray found, compared to 35 percent of U.S. adults . . . In its synopsis of the study, the Home School Legal Defense Association said it presented good news for homeschooling parents wondering whether they made the right choice for their children, showing 95 percent of the homeschool graduates were glad they were taught at home.

Full story and other survey results at
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35226

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Steve Stock

Monday, February 23, 2004 - 01:14 pm Click here to edit this post
WVA Bill Will FORCE ALL CDC Vaccines On ALL Citizens

A devastating new bill has been introduced in West Virginia. It is SB439, introduced by Senator Prezioso of Marion County and Senator Minard of Harrison County. SB439 has already passed the Senate HHR Committee on February 19, 2004. It is expected to pass the Senate floor and House committees next week.

As written, the bill will require that all children in West Virginia be vaccinated, whether they attend school or are homeschooled, with no recourse for exemptions. Homeschoolers in all 50 states have always been able to choose not to vaccinate. They either are exempt from mandatory vaccination required to attend school, and/or they are offered religious exemptions. This bill will make WV the first state in which homeschoolers have no choice.

Full story at http://www.rense.com/general49/wwv.htm

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Navajo.George P.Lee

Wednesday, February 25, 2004 - 12:13 pm Click here to edit this post
Hi Steve Stock, you seem on top of it I remember in the bible both the Pharoh in the days of the birth of Moses and King Herold at the birth of Christ did pass bills that required the mid wives in Egypt to murder baby boys born from the Jews and Herold was no exception he passed a bill also killing little children.So today the children will also suffer from the plagues of Babylon with injections that Cliton apolagises for when they murdered the blacks with contaminted sifilis vax,its all part of the globalization depopulation agenda. The Christians gave small pox infested blankets to the Indians in the name of Jesus we depopulate (manifest destiny) now the government is turning on their own. If only the citazens didn't fall for President Andrew Jackson's Indian removal act and instead joined forces to defend themselves from this corruption. But as the Indians say what comes around gos around so if the Christians supported the anti-Christ agenda to depopulate the Indians they now have to expect big brother is going to turn on them too. As the scorpian said to the frog who was on his back. I bit you because it is the nature of the scorpian he is not faithful to anyone and neither are those corrupt lawyers who now rule the earth in terror.

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susan

Wednesday, February 25, 2004 - 12:58 pm Click here to edit this post
Navajo, George P. Lee: I agree with your sentiments. I was rather surprised to see your name at the homeschooling message board as the George P. Lee I am aware of is an educator on the reservation somewhere? Are you that George P. Lee?

I was most concerned in the early 90's when I heard at the Salt Lake Preparedness Fair from one of the speakers (can't remember who) that there was going to be a virus unleashed in the Four Corners area in the next few years that attacks a specific population (ie native americans) and is a biological warfare "test". Hante Virus turned up first killing in the Four Corners area and I always felt that was it, bingo!

What we do to one, we do to all. "The deceived person looks at freedom only as it applies to him and not as it applies to the whole. If an act or a law brings him more freedom at the greater expense of the group, his vision becomes blurred through selfishness. Because he seems to be more free he thinks he is fighting for the cause of freedom. The illusion is that if the freedom of the whole is diminished then the body becomes sick and when the whole dies the individual dies also. Then his little grip on individual freedom comes to an end." Quoted from JJ Dewey (see more of his writings at http://www.greaterthings.com/JJDewey/index.html)

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Steve Stock

Wednesday, February 25, 2004 - 01:52 pm Click here to edit this post
"If you give the bureaucrats the children, you might as well give them everything else as well." -- J. Gresham Machem, Princeton Theological Seminary, "Testimony before the House & Senate Committees on the Proposed Department of Education (1926)"

Read “Government Education Is Evil, Period” by Abe Arias at http://www.strike-the-root.com/4/arias/arias2.html

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Eden

Thursday, February 26, 2004 - 02:40 pm Click here to edit this post
Home schooling article from Jan. 22, 2004 plus links to many other great home schooling sources on the Web at http://www.edweek.com/context/topics/issuespage.cfm?id=37

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Larry

Tuesday, March 02, 2004 - 01:49 pm Click here to edit this post
My wife home schools our children. I didn't know about it at first but am very happy about it so far (2years). Moreover, I have found a good result has much to do with what the parents are willing to sacrific for their children. In my cass my wife is an Architect who could earn 80k a year here in the Bay Area (ouch!). So, to know your children better, and do the best for them it can be very expensive. I am resigned to future in an old trailer in Indian flat or something:) We keep going back and forth about moving to New Zealand or some place better, -I mean safer from a World War. We don't watch TV anymore and switched to organic food for the most part. I feel like an out cast these days. My family thinks I'm crazy as well. But I suppose it will make it easier pick and move somewhere better for them in the end. There seems no clear answer to question of where. Though with the declining fuel supplies in the near future a location with a good carrying capacity to grow food seems like a good idea, being that our fertilizers come from oil. My children are half Filipino so they might blend with the NZ gang banger better than most:} I am planning a trip this year to see for my self.

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Vaughn Robison (Vrobison)

Wednesday, March 03, 2004 - 12:25 am Click here to edit this post
Dr. Laura has been very vocal lately in favor of homeschooling. Just this week, again, she told a father who was questioning if he should take his child out of private school to afford having the next child, that if she had it to do all over again with new children, she would never place her children in public school at this time because the public schools "endoctrinate instead of educate." Check out her website (dr.laura.com) to read all of her validated documentation included in her calls to action; for example, against the UEA's newest "sex education" curriculum they're pushing (ie., masterbation--self-touch for elementary school ages, creative ways to have sex without intercourse for middle school ages, and exotic films for high school aged), etc.(also on worldnetdaily.com). We, too, have noticed the increased "interest" in Utah with fluoride in our water, having the most troops being sent to Iraq, etc., 2 space experimentation capsules landing in Utah next year and again later years that "might" not have any space-bacteria on them, etc. etc. etc. Now, with Calif. Gov. Arnold saying he wishes the US Constitution could be changed to allow him to be President, our own Utah Sen. Hatch has introduced the bill this week to do it for him. The word "Utah" seems to be on every media lip for every purpose to explore or exploit. We've found some organic grain that could even deflect "their" Mad Cow attempts--we're still doing research, so we'll give out the details as soon as we have results to publicize which could be by late April or early May. "They" make all of us sound paranoid, don't "they?"

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Vaughn Robison (Vrobison)

Wednesday, March 03, 2004 - 12:27 am Click here to edit this post
opps! It's "NEA" not the "UEA"---"UEA" will take orders from the "NEA" as soon as it's implemented in the public schools.

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Eden

Thursday, March 18, 2004 - 11:35 am Click here to edit this post
MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB

Mary had a little Lamb,
His fleece was white as snow.
And everywhere that Mary went,
The Lamb was sure to go.
He followed her to school each day,
T'wasn't even in the rule
It made the children laugh and play,
To have a Lamb at school.
And then the rules all changed one day,
Illegal it became;
To bring the Lamb of God to school,
Or even speak His name.
Every day got worse and worse,
And days turned into years.
Instead of hearing children laugh,
We heard gun shots and tears.
What must we do to stop the crime,
That's in our schools today?
Let's let the Lamb come back to school,
And teach our kids to pray!

Once the Creator (the Lamb) was driven out of the public schools, a vacuum developed which was filled with the Humanist/Communist idea of evolution . . . All parents ever wanted was "back to basics" but they got, instead, this United Nations agenda eroding our national sovereignty and preparing the school children for one-world government scheduled to begin in the early years of the 21st century.

Excerpted from “To Home School Or Not” by Betty Freauf
http://www.newswithviews.com/Betty/Freauf51.htm

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Steve Stock

Friday, April 02, 2004 - 09:44 am Click here to edit this post
On public schools.

Watch Out For This School Note
By Paul Vitello

The various notices from the school pour into our house daily like some slot machine jackpot of pre-sorted mail. Some days, it's one or two pieces. Some weeks, it seems like hundreds - announcing board meetings, PTA meetings, book sales, sports schedules, bus schedules, interim grades, yearbook pictures, invitations, permission slips, health notices...

It is a wide and deep river of paper, and in the currents it would be easy to miss the school notification required under Sec. 9528 of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

Think of this notification as the dangerous undertow in the river of paper from your local schools.

It is the one required under the "Armed Forces Recruiter Access to Students" section of the "No Child" law. It says that school officials are required to turn over to U.S. military recruiters the names, addresses and phone numbers of every child - male and female - enrolled in the ninth, 10th, 11th and 12 grades of your school system . . .
Full story and what you should do at http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-livit303729558mar30,0,93188.column

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Kay

Saturday, April 10, 2004 - 03:03 pm Click here to edit this post
“Federal aid to education is comparable to carrying water in a leaky bucket from your own reservoir to a big central well. What is left of the water is poured into the well, and then those in charge apportion you some water in that same leaky bucket and you bring it home. Besides losing what water is spilled on the two-way trip, you eventually find yourself being told what to do with the water that remains — although it was your own water in the beginning.” — The Freeman, February 1961.

Despite the political backlash from several states, the federal government continues to push its nationalized education agenda. See “No Child Left Unbrainwashed” by Jodie Gilmore (home-schooling mother of two) at http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2004/04-19-2004/child.htm

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Kris Camden (Midnightmoon)

Wednesday, August 04, 2004 - 03:40 pm Click here to edit this post
Home Schooling Is On The Rise

For more and more students, homeroom has become a room at home. Almost 1.1 million students were home-schooled last year, a 29 percent increase since the last government survey in 1999. The growth comes as more parents, frustrated with traditional schools and limits on curriculum, say they would rather handle lessons themselves. The estimated figure of students taught at home comes from parent surveys. The results were released Tuesday by the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the Education Department.

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/ap20040804_257.html

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Steve Stock (Steveandkaystoc)

Friday, August 27, 2004 - 07:37 am Click here to edit this post
Homeschoolers Fight Regulations
While many parents are preparing their kids for school, the Newborns are taking their suburban Pittsburgh school district to court. The Newborns homeschool their kids and object to the legal requirement that the local district superintendent must have final approval of their children's education, which includes religious studies. "It's not the paperwork we are objecting to . . . because there is no religious objection to paperwork. It is the final approval by the superintendent, a secular institution, over our children's religious education," said Maryalice Newborn.

Full story at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,130295,00.html

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Shawnee Lane (Shawnee)

Friday, September 03, 2004 - 09:16 am Click here to edit this post
There's no place like home (school)
The old stereotype that homeschooling is primarily for right-wing religious fundamentalists appears to be far from the truth, according to a report released in August by the U.S. Department of Education. Out of the 1.1 million children in the nation who are homeschooled, only one-third cited religious or moral reasons for their decision. More often, according to the report, parents said they were concerned about their public school's environment or were dissatisfied with the public school's academic instruction… Muslim families are considered the fastest growing demographic of homeschoolers in the county, said Shay Seaborne, president of the Virginia Home Education Association, an advocacy organization.

http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/article.asp?article=39621&paper=61&cat=109

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Steve Stock (Steveandkaystoc)

Wednesday, September 08, 2004 - 08:53 am Click here to edit this post
Judges try to snatch homeschoolers

Germans who choose to homeschool their children are coming under increasing pressure from the state with some families escaping the European Union nation to keep from having their children taken from them. The U.S.-based Home School Legal Defense Association, or HSLDA, has appealed to its members to assist its counterpart organization in Germany as it battles for the right to homeschool.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40332

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Shawnee Lane (Shawnee)

Sunday, September 12, 2004 - 12:23 pm Click here to edit this post
Audit Recommends Closer State Monitor of Home Schoolers

State auditors in Arkansas recommended Friday that the state keep a tighter rein on home schooled children. An audit report showed a sharp increase in home schooled children, from 572 in 1986 to more than 13,000 this year. It also showed that those home-schooled children who take standardized tests have higher scores than their counterparts in public schools. But legislative audit staff also noted that nearly three out of ten home schoolers never take the exams. Auditors recommended that the Legislature require home-school parents to notify local districts when moving out of the district. Other recommendations included that legislators consider the need to maintain a database profiling each student's enrollment, grade level and standardized test results.

Full story at http://www.katv.com/news/stories/0904/172202.html

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Kris Camden (Midnightmoon)

Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 08:58 am Click here to edit this post
Government Portrays Homeschoolers as Terrorists

In a federally funded exercise to prepare emergency responders for a terrorist attack, a Michigan county concocted a scenario in which public-school children were threatened by a fictitious radical group that believes everyone should be homeschooled. The made-up group was called Wackos Against Schools and Education. The exercise in Muskegon, Mich., yesterday simulated a situation in which a bomb on board a bus full of children knocks the vehicle on its side and fills the passenger compartment with smoke. Dan Stout, director of Muskegon County Emergency Services, told WorldNetDaily the choice of the fictitious group certainly was not meant to offend homeschoolers. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40563

Anti-homeschooling bigots strike again

Michelle Malkin blasts school district for suggesting connection to terrorism
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40569

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Kris Camden (Midnightmoon)

Thursday, October 14, 2004 - 10:48 am Click here to edit this post
School Violence Toleration
By Walter Williams

Nationwide, there were approximately 1,466,000 violent incidents that occurred in public schools in the 1999-2000 school year. Violent incidents, according to the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, include rape, sexual battery other than rape, physical attack or fight with or without a weapon, threat of physical attack with or without a weapon, and robbery with or without a weapon. Most school violence occurs in inner-city schools. During the 1999-2000 school year, 7 percent of all public schools accounted for 50 percent of the total violent incidents, and 2 percent of public schools accounted for 50 percent of the serious violent incidents.

Students aren't the only victims of school violence. Between 1996 and 2000, teachers were the victims of approximately 1,603,000 non-fatal crimes at school. There were 1,004,000 thefts from teachers and 599,000 incidents of rape, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault and simple assault.

Full commentary at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40901

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Vaughn Robison (Vrobison)

Thursday, October 14, 2004 - 06:02 pm Click here to edit this post
Here's another reason for parents to homeschool--it is already printed in the original "Goals 2000" program, but has been given a new "twist" to match our current "needs." There has been a commerical on the Paul Harvey radio program that indicates you, the parent, can "help" change our public schools to a new status to be called "community schools" where the time in school can be changed to 6 days a week with longer hours during the day each day, coming home in the early evening, the extra hours being filled with sports and other "fun" activities that "finally" allow the teachers to have "more time in the day to teach all the subjects," and the female voice tells you that now the problem with school is that her son hates to come home.....included in the original "community schools" are the "free" medical clincs and "lock downs" with the students "getting" to spend the night at the school building instead of going home, and now here's the media finally telling us all about how the students will be screened for "mental illness" and given proper treatment, without requiring the parents knowledge, let alone permission--eventually having all of us screened for the same thing, to avoid terrorism, of course. The original plan was for anyone, including preschool-aged youth on up, who appears to be too "hyper" or who usually in the past was sent to a special ed. class for unruly, anti-social behavior, all examples of who do not adhere to "group think" and are to be taken to a "detention center/medical facility" until they decide to join the "group think" (now re-named as mental illness to be more acceptable to the public from current "trends" of scary things), whether they are students or adults...thus, the new requirement 2 years ago for special ed. teachers to "discuss" anything pertaining to their student, whether it's with the student/parent/or mainstream teacher, and keep track/record of said "discussions" and then to turn "their report" into the district for the district reimbursement from Medicaid! Now we've moved on to screening/diagnosing/treatment of "mental illness" by our "community school" nurses...named "New Freedom Commission on Mental Health"...with money and/or perks being given to the state officials from the drug companies who will be "treating" the students....this was all to have been a sweeping announcement in July 2004, but it has been quietly introduced to students and staff instead. Just type into your favorite search engine "New Freedom Initiative" or "New Freedom Commission..." and other Orwellian-sounding phrases!!

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Shawnee Lane (Shawnee)

Thursday, October 28, 2004 - 10:21 am Click here to edit this post
Seven homeschooling fathers in Germany spent several days in jail for refusing to pay fines that were imposed on them for failing to send their children to government schools. The fathers, who are part of the Twelve Tribes Community in Klosterzimmern, Germany, were forced to spend between six and 16 days in what the group's website translates as "coercive jail."
Full story at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41144

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Steve Stock (Steveandkaystoc)

Thursday, January 06, 2005 - 07:47 am Click here to edit this post
Homeschoolers Debunk Charges of Isolation

Home-schooling parents represent about 2 percent of the school-age children in America. A July U.S. Department of Education report on home schoolers found that 31 percent kept their children home out of concern about what children are exposed to in public and private schools. Another 30 percent said they wanted to control their children's understanding of religious or moral ideas. Only 16 percent named academic instruction as a reason.
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/living/10562249.htm

Japan: Homeschooling Finds Foothold

Home schooling is common with some Christian families, and about 1 million children are schooled at home in the United States alone. However, it is still a relatively unusual concept in Japan. According to the Tokyo-based nonprofit organization Homeschool Support Association of Japan, there are about 2,000 to 3,000 children home schooled in Japan and the number is gradually rising. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20050104f3.htm

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Steve Stock (Steveandkaystoc)

Friday, March 25, 2005 - 09:18 am Click here to edit this post
Bill Lets Home-School Parents Teach Driving

Legislation requires extra training time; similar measure vetoed last year

The Iowa House on Wednesday passed legislation that would allow home-schooled students to take driver's education classes from their parents in order to qualify for a driver's license.

But the legislation faces a bumpy road.

More at
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050324/NEWS10/503240403/1011

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Steve Stock (Steveandkaystoc)

Friday, August 05, 2005 - 07:26 am Click here to edit this post
Socialist Public Schools or Homeschooling?

If you...send your beloved children into governmental indoctrination centers, you will get what you deserve when your children stand against you.-Nancy Levant/News With Views
http://www.newswithviews.com/Levant/nancy8.htm

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Shawnee Lane (Shawnee)

Thursday, November 10, 2005 - 06:30 am Click here to edit this post
Study: Preschool Harms Children's Development

A new study on the effects of preschool on children, which finds attendance harms kids' emotional and social development, is being used by a homeschool organization to help encourage parents to educate their children at home.

The study, conducted at UC Berkeley and sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, found that while youngsters gained cognitive abilities via the preschool experience, behavioral problems also increased – especially among kids from wealthy families.

"The biggest eye-opener is that the suppression of social and emotional development, stemming from long hours in preschool, is felt most strongly by children from better-off families," said UC Berkeley sociologist and study co-author Bruce Fuller.

Full article at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47322

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Shawnee Lane (Shawnee)

Monday, January 16, 2006 - 07:53 am Click here to edit this post
Stupid in America
Why your kids are probably dumber than Belgians

By John Stossel/ABC News

Excerpt:

A Gallup Poll survey shows 76 percent of Americans are either completely or somewhat satisfied with their kids' public school, but that's only because they don't know what their kids are missing. Without competition, unlike Belgian parents, they don't know what their kids might have had…

The longer kids stay in American schools, the worse they do in international competition. They do worse than kids from countries that spend much less money on education…The inability to fire the bad and reward the good is the biggest reason schools fail the kids.

Full article at http://www.reason.com/hod/js011306.shtml

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Ralph Hughes (Rhughes)

Monday, January 16, 2006 - 12:24 pm Click here to edit this post
I happened to catch part of that Stoessel program the other evening. I don't watch much TV, but I have seen him do some good shows. that one was slanted, in my opinion. I have been working nearly every school day as a substitute school teacher in the public schools since I retired from engineering (turbomachinery) in early 2001, minus some 19 months while we lived in Denmark. I'm usually in a different class, a different school, a different city every day. I do a lot of special ed., but also high school and junior high school. I also lived and worked some 12 years in European countries, and had plenty of contact with European school kids. A few comments:

It is ridiculous to criticize American kids for not being conversant in foreign languages. Most do not have the exposure to other languages, unless they grow up in multilingual homes. Nor do they have the incentive to learn other languages which they see no future opportunity to use. Our own kids, now 28 & 25, have long forgotten Italian, which they learned in school and at play when we lived 2 years in Italy. Same basic story with Danish & Norwegian.

Speaking now of regular classes, as opposed to special ed classes: I find lots of kids in this area quite receptive to the educational process, who when class starts get on task and pretty much stay on task. Unfortunately, there are too many who are learning resistant, who for various reasons create disruption in class. Desperation for attention and social life is a major cause of this. Unpleasant conditions at home are a factor. Disrespect and rudeness is also a big factor. I have concluded that poor parenting is a major part of the problem, and note that teachers and administration generally fear conflict with parents. Too many kids have not learned that undesirable behaviour brings undesirable consequences, because in school it doesn't happen enough. I have wished for the opportunity to confidentially suggest to some parents to get their kids out of a particular class, and even out of one particular school which I refuse to go back to because of so much flagrant disobedience. I suspect some kids get much more parental support for school work than others.

I have had kids try to provoke me to hit or otherwise use my hands on them with the obvious intent of getting their parents to sue me and/or the school district to fire me. Some make no secret of it.

I have also had some kids thank me for being their substitute, tell me I was a "cool sub", (whatever that means), give me the names of those I need to write up for bad behaviour, and even apologize for bad behaviour of classmates. So there are plenty of good kids in American schools.

Re. teachers, lots of them are dedicated and seem to espouse the basic principles and goals as you all on this site. Then there are the ones who dress like slobs, not much better than some of the students, and talk and act the part. And in fairness, I suspect I get called to sub in those classes that many other subs will not do.

From my 12 years living and working in Europe, I conclude that American kids are every bit as intelligent and sharp as European kids, generally as well behaved, and better taught to be more versatile and to better think for themselves than their European counterparts.

Understand, I was not educated to be an educator. I do it now because of the satisfaction I get enhancing the education of kids(especially in the area of history and governement and social studies). And it beats the "honey do list" at home.

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Ralph Hughes (Rhughes)

Monday, January 16, 2006 - 12:35 pm Click here to edit this post
Three boys sitting outside the school principals office awaiting disciplinary action. One says "I said a bad word." The second says "So did I." The third says "All I said was Merry Christmas."

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Vaughn Robison (Vrobison)

Monday, January 30, 2006 - 01:29 pm Click here to edit this post
We watched Stoessel's program, also. It was disturbing because of the bias..."more money" would help whem more money never reaches the classroom, it's used/abused by those above--click in "school embezzling" and see how many hits! In the original "Goals 2000" plan, in print, the strategy is to stir up the population about "how horrible public schooling is," which at first appears to be in support of the parents and children who are complaining....no, it's to get us so stirred up that we sheeple finally demand a "solution" and Whala! the "solution" is to have "global schooling," which term is newer than the original plan that called it the one-world order: one-world order in government, one-world order in religion, one-world order in education, etc. "Global" was introduced as the "buzz word" to help us get brainwashed into accepting it, because, after all, it "sounds" like a good thing, right? We're the frogs in the cool water set on boiling temperature...they no longer need concentration camps and cattle trains, we willingly go along with the rhetoric we're fed. Having been a special ed. teacher for the "hard-core" anti-social students, those who are either entering or returning from rehab/prison/mental hospital, with my classroom the last step before leaving or the first step to re-enter the system, I can vouch for the students who are all very, very intelligent, including those in the special ed. classrooms. With each generation, "more valiant" generations sent here at the last of this dispensation, they are more and more intelligent and more and more abused by Satan's system to deter the mission they were sent here to do, and we allow it to happen. Every year, in the special ed. room, there was always one student who was too far gone emotionally/mentally to reach and would end up leaving, but the rest who were fully expected to be "kicked out" would respond to my teaching methods and books/materials retrieved from school dumpters and back-room archive storage areas. I was told to my face by the district director here in Utah: "You don't need to teach them spelling, they have spell checkers to use, you don't have to teach them math, they have calculators, you don't have to teach them reading or phonics, just hold their hand and help them get through the mainstream reading assignments," to which I replied that I would do all of that in addition to "sqeezing in" some of the other, too. My contract was not renewed because I was not a "team player," even though all of my students advanced 2 grade levels in all academic subjects, as usual; however, that year were some unusual achievements with 2 sixth-grade boys advancing 4 reading grade levels as well as the 2 grade levels in all other subjects, and 2 students, when it's usually at least one, passed the district tests and permanently left the classroom. The excuse for being upset instead of rejoicing with the students and their families, was that the district would be "losing money now," even though, as I pointed out, there are 10-20 students on the waiting list to take their place. Our youth, all over in general, are extremely intelligent, but are not challenged enough, as well as taking heavy hits from "worldly" vices. We are literally fighting for their very souls! Have been serving in our local scout troop committee, and have had a hard time watching the adult leaders refuse to get the correct training in order to conduct the scout program correctly, the way the Lord intended, if you read the handbooks and receive the proper training, so our youth who could soar like Eagles (pardon the pun)are left without proper activities to teach them that scouting is the activity arm of the priesthood and each advancement in scouting is an advancement in the priesthood, as the Lord has set it up. Instead, the boys run wild through the church building or make up their own entertainment as youth will do when left to themselves, good or bad. Recently 2 of our leaders just received the training, from BSA, not from another adult who claims to know the training, and what a difference--the young men responded instantly! Anyway, be aware that we're being brainwashed and manipulated into accepting the "global" agenda, one concept at a time---just like we refused the idea of "pay tv" back in the 1950-60, with the little black box sitting on the tv and having to put money in it to watch tv....they saw it didn't work, so they changed it...or rather, they told us the worst-case scenario and then altered it to our liking...cable tv, direct tv, satellite tv....some even with little black boxes on top of our tv, but all putting money into just as they predicted. Mailing it in an envelope at the same time we pay the utilities has made us "think" we "won." Watch how cleverly they use rhetoric to paralyze us ("looters, what do we do?" instead of "robbers, go get them!" etc.)

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Shawnee Lane (Shawnee)

Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 08:29 am Click here to edit this post
When Homeschoolers Grow Up
By Samuel Blumenfeld

Excerpts:

Parents interested in homeschooling often want to know what will happen to their children when they grow up and have to work for a living. Will employers recognize their homespun high-school diplomas signed by Mom and Dad and the local homeschool association? Will corporate America welcome them as competent "human resources"? Will the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force accept them? All legitimate questions which deserve to be answered.

Well, the answers were recently given by Dr. Brian Ray, director of the National Home Education Research Institute of Salem, Ore. – the authoritative source the media turn to when they want homeschool data. Dr. Ray, himself a homeschooling dad, studied 5,247 home-educated graduates and found that 49 percent were in college and the remaining 51 percent were earning their way in a wide variety of occupations. Over 10 percent were pursuing such prestigious professional careers as doctors, ministers, accountants, nurses, school and college teachers, and the like.

About 3 percent were owners of small businesses or contractors, and 6 percent were office workers. Nearly 10 percent were salesmen, computer programmers, draftsmen, service workers, hairstylists and in other such positions.

Two percent were wearing military uniforms or constabulary blue, and 4 percent were employed in such labor-intensive occupations as carpenters, mechanics, bakers and managers. About 7.5 percent were homemakers, and the rest were farmers and blue-collar workers.

Not bad for an education movement that is only 20 to 30 years old. I imagine that among the million or so homeschoolers, we'll see some getting into Internet high-tech businesses or going off to Hollywood to make wholesome, family-friendly movies – and also becoming actors, novelists, dancers, stuntmen, singers, musicians, artists, journalists, photographers, talk-show hosts and free-lance magazine writers.

Another more limited study was done in 1993 by professor J. Gary Knowles of the University of Michigan. He surveyed 53 adults who had been home educated because of ideology or geographical isolation. He found that two-thirds were married. None was out-of-work or on welfare. Two-thirds were self-employed. This surprised him. He wrote:

"That so many of those surveyed were self-employed supports the contention that homeschooling tends to enhance a person's self-reliance and independence. Many mentioned a strong relationship engendered with their parents, while others talked about self-directed curriculum and individualized pace that a flexible program of homeschooling permitted."

Christopher J. Klicka, who presented all of this enlightening information to the readers of Practical Homeschooling magazine, is senior counsel of the Home School Legal Defense Association and knows all the ins and outs of home education. He commented:

"Homeschoolers are taught how to read well, write well, do math well and are self-disciplined. … [They] have the discipline, honorable character and ingenuity to make it in the workplace. They have embraced the biblical work ethic 'he who does not work does not eat.'"

Today's dumbed-down public education curriculum trains students to become cogs in the wheels of the economy. They can't read well, they can't write well if at all, and without supermarket checkout computers, they'd be lost in the unfathomable world of math. So they become victims in an economy that is changing too rapidly to accommodate them...

Read the rest of this commentary at
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48664

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Lester Leper (Theleper)

Thursday, March 02, 2006 - 02:29 pm Click here to edit this post
More reasons to avoid public schools:

From the very foundation of the public school system the elite made their plans clear. The goal was to psychologically mould people to create mindless drones and bricks in the wall of the system, via learning monotonously by rote and the day being divided up by pavlovian bells.

In his 1905 dissertation for Columbia Teachers College, Elwood Cubberly—the future Dean of Education at Stanford—wrote that schools should be factories "in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products...manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry."

Similarly, the Rockefeller Education Board—which funded the creation of numerous public schools—issued a statement which read in part:

"In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way."

These are the founders of the public education system in America. The agenda from the very start was to eliminate all forms of objective thought and use education to produce automatons of the state who would shrink from embracing higher forms of intellectual pursuit and truly understanding their role and potential to advance freedom in human society.

Full article at http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/march2006/020306knowmore.htm

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Gary R. Van Horn (Cyrus35)

Thursday, March 02, 2006 - 11:17 pm Click here to edit this post
To Vaughn Robison:
"You said: The excuse for being upset instead of rejoicing with the students and their families, was that the district would be "losing money now," even though, as I pointed out, there are 10-20 students on the waiting list to take their place. Our youth, all over in general, are extremely intelligent, but are not challenged enough, as well as taking heavy hits from "worldly" vices. We are literally fighting for their very souls!"

This is true of the Public School officials attitude. My daughter, who has had to home school one of her children to get him "caught up," had a government school administrator try to convince her not to home school. She cut right through his excuses and said to him "It's about the money, isn't it?" He just stared at her and wouldn't say more.


You said: "Have been serving in our local scout troop committee, and have had a hard time watching the adult leaders refuse to get the correct training in order to conduct the scout program correctly, the way the Lord intended, if you read the handbooks and receive the proper training, so our youth who could soar like Eagles (pardon the pun)are left without proper activities to teach them that scouting is the activity arm of the priesthood and each advancement in scouting is an advancement in the priesthood, as the Lord has set it up. Instead, the boys run wild through the church building or make up their own entertainment as youth will do when left to themselves, good or bad. Recently 2 of our leaders just received the training, from BSA, not from another adult who claims to know the training, and what a difference--the young men responded instantly."

This is a good illustration of why there needs to be a cleansing of the Church and why it IS going to happen!

Some of these so-called leaders have not only NOT magnified their priesthood, they have actually helped Lucifer undermine the Lord's program for blessing his children and preparing them for their glorious missions.

There are many in the Church (especially in Utah, sadly) who would never have joined the Church if they had not been born into it.

The Lord will not be mocked. These "latter-day aints" must speedily repent or they will be destroyed along with the rest of the wicked.

Cyrus35

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Ralph Hughes (Rhughes)

Friday, March 03, 2006 - 12:44 am Click here to edit this post
True enough, "There are many in the Church (especially in Utah, sadly) who would never have joined the Church if they had not been born into it." Then there are those of us who, had we been born into the Church, might well have gone away from it, instead of the other way around as in my case.

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Gary R. Van Horn (Cyrus35)

Friday, March 03, 2006 - 06:50 pm Click here to edit this post
Amen,Ralph! With cynical and unbelieving l-da (latter-day aint) parents, I might have rejected the Church as a teen-ager instead of embracing it as a young adult looking for answers.

I am VERY fortunate to have heard the truth under favorable conditions. And there were some wonderful people in my first ward (It was NOT in Utah!) who helped me along as I struggled to throw off the old man and put on the new.

God bless the humble followers of Christ!

Cyrus35

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Lester Leper (Theleper)

Wednesday, March 08, 2006 - 02:28 pm Click here to edit this post
Little Manchurian Candidates

"One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them,
One ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them." --Tolkien

Our six-year-old daughter was so excited to start school. At our first parent-teacher conference, Barb and I expected to hear the usual compliments and heartwarming anecdotes about our bright little angel. From our experiences with activities like T-ball and soccer, or dance and music recitals, we had learned that parents always say nice things about the children of others. If the compliments are sometimes unrealistic or excessive, well, parenting is tough work. We can all use the encouragement.

I guess we had been spoiled. Jenny's teacher got right to the point. She had some negatives to address. For one thing, Jenny was struggling with her reading. The teacher confessed that one of the most difficult parts of her job was deflating parents with the news that their children were simply not exceptional. Jenny was, at best, an average reader. She was not an Eagle; she was a Pony. Our job was to learn to enjoy her as a 40-watt bulb rather than a bright light. Was it my imagination, or did this middle-aged matron's sweet smile contain a trace of malice as she related these tidings?

I was confused by this assessment of Jenny's reading abilities because it simply didn't fit in with her prior history. She had a love affair with books for her entire childhood. We have a photograph of her at 11 months of age staring earnestly at the contents of an open book. I remember reading to her when she was three. I stopped for some reason, but she continued the narration. She knew her stories by heart. Like many other children, Jenny had learned to read at home. She was a bookworm, and she was an experienced and passionate reader before she ever started first grade.

The teacher went on to explain that Jenny cried too much at school and that we needed to correct this problem with the appropriate discipline. Barb and I exchanged glances but didn't argue. We were in shock.

I was curious about the crying. Jenny was such a happy child. I asked her that night what made her sad at school. Expecting to hear about something on the playground, I was surprised by her answer. The listening-hour stories made her sad:

Once upon a time there was a daddy duck with seven ducklings. They ranged in age down to the youngest (who reminded Jenny of a first grader). The daddy was mean. One day he demanded that all his children learn three tasks, such as running, swimming, and diving. If a duckling was unable to master all of the tasks, he would be banished from the family to live with the chickens. The youngsters struggled under the cruel eye of their father. When it came to diving, the first grader floundered and was sent away to live with the chickens.

This was the story Jenny related, in her own words, as an example. I heard it told a second time several years later, by my cousin Nancy, as a sample of objectionable curriculum. We were impressed with the coincidence, since our families resided in different states.

Jenny told me she also cried over stories in her readers. They made her sad and frustrated in some way. What a mess! In one evening we had found out that Jenny was unhappy at school, that her teacher thought she was a poor reader and a dim bulb, and that she heard mean tales during listening-hour that I wouldn't repeat to hardened convicts. What in the name of heaven was going on at this school?

I was determined to get to the bottom of things. Since they didn't send books home with students in the younger grades, I went to the school the following day and spent a couple of hours reviewing the elementary readers. As I read, my eyes opened wider and wider. I had assumed the purpose of the reading curriculum was to stimulate the juvenile imagination and teach reading skills. Instead, I saw material saturated with, to borrow another parent's language, "an unadvertised agenda promoting parental alienation, loss of identity and self-confidence, group-dependence, passivity, and anti-intellectualism."

I once daydreamed through a basic psychology class in medical school which described the work of Pavlov and B.F Skinner in the twentieth century. Their conclusions were that animal (and human) behaviors can be encouraged or discouraged by associating them with pleasure or pain. This is such an obvious fact of nature. It is amazing that anyone would bother to prove it with experimentation, as if the carrot and the stick haven't been used since time began.

In behaviorist experiments various stimuli, such as food or electrical shocks, were used as rewards or deterrents. Over time, due to animal memory, a pattern of behavior could be established without food or shocks coming into play. This educational or training process is called "conditioning." With enough conditioning, the dog will stop chasing cars.

As I read the stories and poems in Jenny's readers, I was astonished to discover that they were alive, in their own way, with the theories and practices of these dead scientists. But the animals to be trained weren't dogs or rats. They were our young students. Pleasure and pain signals were embedded into the reading material in a consistent way. Given the vicarious nature of the reading experience, and by identifying with the protagonists in the stories, it was our first graders who were "learning" certain attitudes and behaviors.

When a child-figure in the stories split away from his group, for example, he would get rained on, his toes would get cold in the snow, or he would experience some other form of discomfort or torment. Similar material was repeated ad infinitum. Through their reading, our students would feel the stinging rain and the pain of freezing toes. They would learn the lesson like one of Pavlov's dogs: avoid the pain, stay with the group.

The stories in the readers consistently associated individual initiative with emotional or physical pain. Consider the example of the little squirrel whose wheel falls off his wagon. When he tries to replace it, the wagon rides with an awkward and embarrassing bump, noticeable to his friends, who then tease him about it. Another attempt to repair the wheel results in an accident, with bruising and bleeding and more humiliation. The cumulative effect of this and similar story lines, given the vicarious nature of the reading experience, would be to discourage initiative and reduce self-confidence in the first grader.

Animal dads, moms, and grandparents were portrayed over and over in various combinations as mean, stupid, unreliable, bungling, impotent or incompetent. Relationships with their children were almost always dysfunctional; communication and reciprocal trust were non-existent. A toxic mom or dad, for instance, might have stepped in to help our youthful squirrel repair his wagon, only to make matters worse and wreak emotional havoc in the process. Jenny's heart would be lacerated by stories which constantly portrayed parent/child relationships as strained, cruel, or distant. I could see her crying with hurt or frustration.

It occurred to me that over the long run, at some level of consciousness, our daughter would have to hold us accountable for permitting her to be tortured in school. Logically, Barb and I had to be stupid, unreliable, uncaring, or impotent, just like the parents in the books. By sending her to school, we were validating the message in her readers, contributing significantly to the parental alienation curriculum. Continuing in her school-based reading series, Jenny's relationship with us would have become tarnished or eroded, and an element of bitterness or cynicism might have crept into her personality.

I borrow the term "anti-intellectualism" to describe another dominant theme in the readers. Many of the compositions were, essentially, word salad. They lacked intrinsic interest, coherence, or continuity, and they often demonstrated a sort of anti-rationality. The stories and the corresponding questions seemed to require the student to suspend the natural operations of his intellect, such as the desire to make sense out of things or the impulse to be curious. Under this yoke, a student could learn to hate reading or even thought itself.

The following "story" and "comprehension" questions are representative of the anti-intellectualism that I found in the readers:

Once upon a time there was a little green mouse who hopped after a tiger onto a yellow airplane. The plane turned into a big red bird in flight, and the mouse turned into a blue pumpkin. The pumpkin fell to the ground and its seeds grew into pots and pans. Blah, blah, blah.

1) "What color was the mouse?"

2) "Why do mice turn into pumpkins?"

3) "How do seeds grow?"

I can see children getting frustrated over material like this. It is debatable as to which facet of the exercise is more onerous, the reading or the "comprehension." I almost incline to the latter. Among other concerns, I wonder if it is a good thing to pressure children to respond to stupid or unanswerable questions. Such a process would lead to passivity and a loss of confidence, to a little engine that couldn't.

According to Pavlov and B.F. Skinner, repetition of unpleasant reading experiences would turn a student off to the reading activity. Predictable consequences would be a child who hates reading and loses out on vast intellectual benefits and development. In addition, his reading failure would tax his self-confidence, and he could be branded with one of society's popular labels such as dyslexia.

I considered Jenny's reading struggles in the context of performance expectations as well as grading and comparisons with other children. It seemed as if she faced a nasty dilemma: force herself to read alienating material, or disengage and then disappoint parents, teachers and self. What an impossible predicament for a young child. Once sunny and blue, the skies had turned dark and stormy for our happy little girl whose only offense had been to attend her friendly neighborhood school at the innocent age of six.

It has occurred to me that the cause of America's illiteracy crisis has been discovered. It is the reading curriculum in our schools. Unfortunately, the damage to children appears to extend way beyond reading failure. One wonders if the hidden agenda in the readers has created our victim culture, a generation of withdrawn and resentful children, alienated from themselves, their parents, society, books and ideas.

I was reminded of the plight of our neighbors. The father and mother were loving, dedicated parents. He was an accountant and she was a homemaker and community leader. They were nice people, and so were their children. The two teenagers were bright but got poor grades and hated school. They hung out with the crowd and participated in the kind of self-destructive behaviors that are commonplace today. I asked these young people why they would behave in ways which would cause pain for themselves or their loved ones. They smiled quizzically and professed not to know. Maybe the ideas that moved them truly were subconscious.

We are all familiar with kids like this (Our own kids are kids like this, or they come too close for comfort). They spend a lot of time "doing nothing" with like-minded friends. Passive-aggressive with suppressed individuality, they all seem cut from the same mold. Self mutilation with tattoos and body armor is almost universal. Some of their groups are virtually masochistic cults. Sadism is the other side of the masochism coin.

That so many of these dysfunctional teenagers come from loving homes and neat families is inexplicable and shocking, until you realize that they have all been tortured together in school since the first grade. They are a batch of little Manchurian Candidates with attitude, victims of the obscure behaviorism that I found, and that others have found before and since, in school readers.

Barb and I had seen some perplexing changes in Jenny's reading since she started in first grade. For one thing, she had stopped reading her favorite books and stories at home. Before starting school, she had feasted on Grimm's Fairy Tales. Although she still begged us to read these to her, she now explained that she was not supposed to read them herself, according to her understanding from her teacher, because they contained big words and content in advance of her abilities. Barb and I, holding our tongues, exchanged tortured grimaces and cross-eyed glances.

When reviewing the school readers, I had noticed an impoverished vocabulary, composed mostly of three and four letter words. I brought this up with the teacher. She explained that the readers were integrated into a district policy that no more than five hundred new words be introduced to students during any grade level. The idea was to protect children from the dizzying and confusing effects of an overabundance of words and ideas. I nodded as if I understood, but I didn't really get it.

Barb and I had clearly used the wrong approach with Jenny. We had allowed her to read anything she wanted and had provided her with a flourishing home library. Furthermore, we had encouraged her to run around in the grassy meadows and on the sandy beaches. She must have collided with great numbers of unfamiliar words and ideas, as well as a perilous diversity of flowers and sea shells. It's a wonder she survived at all.

We considered the various elements of Jenny's brief experience in first grade. She had a clueless teacher. She was regressing in her reading skills, vocabulary, and enthusiasm. She was being indoctrinated with character destroying qualities like passivity and group dependence. Her intellectual development was being stunted and she was being bombarded with a curriculum of parental alienation.

Judging by her crying in the classroom, she was part of a captive audience being repeatedly exposed to painful stimuli. To put it plainly, she was the victim of ongoing torture and cruelty. Along with her classmates, she was becoming, as one of her school poems pointed out, "Small, small, small, just a tiny, tiny, tiny piece of it all."

_____

In our state at that time, compulsory education began at the age of eight. Jenny was not obliged by law to attend school. With our various concerns, we pulled her out of school while we tried to figure out what to do.

http://www.rense.com/general69/little.htm

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Vaughn & Lynda Robison (Vandlrobison)

Friday, March 10, 2006 - 03:06 pm Click here to edit this post
Oh, good!! Somebody else found the above article---and having taught in public school, every bit of it is true. Have my masters in behavior disorders--Pavlov and Skinner part of the "training." Being older at the time of finishing up the degree (40ish), I could see where maybe .5% could be followed on the Pavlov/Skinner program, and then switch to other resources (not to forget using Gospel principles!). Younger college students were brainwashed into following the entire program, no matter what. Since I don't brainwash easily, that's why I'm not a very good "team player." Anyway, the "method" for teaching that absolutely gagged me was called "DI" which is not the Utah store, but stands for "Direct Instruction." Sorry if any of you worship this sacred cow, but it's all part of the many above-mentioned doctrination of our youth. For those not familiar with it, it's "group think" where you respond in ALL subjects (not just reading as they want you to believe) to group recitation with the "aid" of a signal (light switch turned on and off, whistle, hand gestures, facial gestures, ANYthing creative as they put it), and within a few hours a student can tell he/she does not have to think because no matter what question the teacher poses, within a few minutes the teacher gives the answer and the entire group recite/regurgitate it back to the teacher. My "BD" students in special ed (students who are totally normal, just have learned coping skills while in survival mode--that need to be changed/adapted/modified--which have also matured them faster than their emotional-age level, and, therefore, they don't do well in the "group think" category--they have already learned to think for themselves in order to survive/cope--and idle hands/minds begin to act out and they get sent to the special ed class, or chickens as mentioned in the above first-grade reader, complete with peer humiliation and alienation) hated the "DI" approach, so I validated them by not ever using it, and walah! they began to learn and be motivated to learn, some even passing the district "tests" to leave special ed class---more than once, they came back to ask how to get back in!! This is just the tip of the ice berg...your children's public school teachers are well-meaning, it's the system that's broken/dead and refusing to lie down, but this is all part of the Goals 2000 printed plans....to make us want a solution so that "global education" can finally be implemented. Just as they want to believe we've all been fooled about a "new" company being in charge of the ports, and not the Arabian company who's in their pocket, they want to believe us sheeple do not see what is going on with our youth....and yet, as all bullies do, they must have it both ways so that the victim is in a no-win situation (see Tim Field's bully studies in the UK website), so when we finally rebel, it's their excuse to use the renewed Patriot Act and martial law. Nothing is by accident. Will submit another message later in regards to why it's time for all to do homeschooling! But, be sure, take the above article VERY seriously, right to the very end with the author's conclusions about our teenaged youth behaviors.

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VandLRobison (Vandlrobison)

Friday, March 10, 2006 - 04:20 pm Click here to edit this post
The camel's nose has already been inside the tent with almost every movie having a "gay scene" or "gay reference." The Oscar attempt was to get the whole camel in, and to test the waters as to how much we Americans will tolerate and/or embrace, as the saying goes. With "health" classes in our public schools teaching via video that the gay lifestyle is an alternative lifestyle (complete with "visual examples" of what a gay lifestyle is---considered as porn anywhere else) that is "normal" and to be "accepted," being taught as early as Kindergarten right here in SLC, we now have the lines already blurred for our youth. Having same-gender friends in elementary & middle school has already confused our youth as to what "lifestyle" they belong to, even though same-gender friends is a universally known concept of normal childhood development. It has also spawned the "curious" and the "rebellious" among teenagers to hold the "gay card" over their authority figures which causes parents/leaders to buy into the labels and give up. Homosexuality is the 5th level of the 6-level hard-core addiction to pornography (LDS Social Services), so the gay lifestyle is a result of either no bonding whatsoever to a parent figure, or being molested, or being recruited via molestation and pornography addiction (although I have known youth who have lived through some of these same traumas and still turned out, with scars, but still turned out as good, normal, happy, well-adjusted heterosexual adults)....add to that list, recruitment now via movies, music, and mindgames in public education. Outside of Utah for sure, it’s a known and accepted fact that NEA insists on homosexual employees being hired for teaching in our classrooms "because their alternative lifestyle outside the classroom has no affect on their professional career inside the classroom"...Wanna make a bet? Case in point, did my student teaching in Kansas, and all the elementary students watched the 2 lesbian teachers hold hands and kiss in the hallway "secretly" between recesses...supervising teacher warned serious consequences had been promised to any staff who turned them in, and they all wanted to keep their jobs...Another case in point...It was soon learned that the "alternative lifestyle outside the classroom" DOES affect what's going on inside the classroom...students absorb and mimic what they see/hear/taught/brainwashed even when they don't understand what it is...male teacher (and the above mentioned 2 lesbians) all taught the material in the classroom, BUT through their own distorted/recruitment point of view...thus, a lot of female students were "hating" the male students and not considering marriage or family...likewise, a lot of male students were "hating" female students and not able to socialize with them on a normal basis, while same-gender activities, games and other academic subjects were being filtered and promoted through the sick beliefs of the world by their teachers! Same thing happened in a popular therapy office that took a lot of SRS insurance cases from the poor and/or recommended by the school...the whole office was full of homosexual "professionals" (both genders) who had total access to "therapy groups" of children (both genders) who had been involved in these groups for years with no progress and other professionals would wonder why and blame the parents of the children or the children themselves as being a lost cause....How do I know? First hand experience. The school recommended counseling for my son at this same office. I knew it existed but nothing about it until the school recommendation. My ex-husband (return missionary, BYU graduate, temple marriage) had molested my son based on "experiments" with porno addiction from high school days (he was on level 5 at the end of our marriage with 2 years of counseling at LDS Social Services---learned more than I ever wanted to know about pornography and sociopathic behaviors---Pornography Addiction's 6 levels: Level #1, look at dirty pictures/movies, etc. and experiment, Level #2, beastology and experimentation, Level #3, molest children that leads to Level #4 of stalking children to molest, Level #5 is experimenting with homosexuality, and Level #6 is when nothing else gives you the high you're looking for any more, so you are compelled to do all 5 levels to your victim and then murder them to get the final much sought after high), so it was long-term counseling to try and erase those scars, or at least diminish them....my son was having trouble "concentrating" at school again, thus the recommend for more counseling...(after this experience, we both decided he'd had more than enough counseling and it was up to him and me to help him get through it). During the intake interview, the infancy/toddler molestation had been mentioned as part of his "history," and for 3 months during the summer I was not allowed to meet the counselor or attend any of the therapy sessions. One day my son was reminded of the appointment and to get ready to go, and he burst into sobbing tears, begging not to go because he didn't like the games the counselor forced him to play, he couldn't describe all of them or know the names of them, but the worst one, to him, was the counselor having him jump into the counselor's lap and being held tightly in the lap....I cancelled immediately, stating that school was to start and we had to get ready for school and would not be back; went to our ward member who had a degree in social services and asked what to do because I was never allowed to attend the therapy sessions to know for myself what was going on, and taking the word of my son totally--his first reply was that it was illegal to not include the parent in the therapy session, and asked where it was----as soon as he heard where it was, he told me it was understood in the community that that particular office was full of homosexuals and nothing was to be done about it, and if I pressed charges, the system would end up taking away my son because after all, there were problems in the family already because the mother (me) was bringing the boy (my son) to their office in the first place based on a school recommendation!! Then I was asked who the counselor was, and when told, the reply was "He's the biggest known homosexual in the whole city, he's been out of the closet doing gay rights issues for years and openly recruits young boys and nobody ever stops him because when it's been tried, the person becomes the victim!" 5 years later, as a special ed. teacher (this is all in Kansas), one of my students, a new move-in, was told to attend therapy by the Powers That Be during his enrollment. Not knowing this, one day he erupted out of control and I had to call his mother who mentioned upon arrival that she was taking him to go see So'n So. It was the same name as the guy who'd been counselor with my son, so I asked MORE questions since it was between the parent and me, the teacher, and she had brought the subject up first(yes, you can be fired if you say/do the "wrong thing" in the eyes of the Powers That Be)....her son had been part of the "therapy group" for several months now, run by this same counselor she was taking her son to, and she had been hearing other parents in the group complaining that they were never allowed to attend and never allowed an appointment to share with them about the progress of their son (all boys), and that when asked, the parents were told that their sons were not progressing and it would take much longer, some of them had been attending this therapy group for almost 5 years!! I just listened with horror as she spilled her motherly guts--turned out this male student, her son, was acting out of control because he, too, did not want to attend this therapy group any more because it didn't "feel right" and the anxiety of it had made him lose it in the classroom that same day...my encouragement was for the mother to take him out of the therapy group ASAP for awhile to see if he got better without it, and then asked one specific question as to why the school had recommended her son getting counseling with this person, and when she answered, I was able to give hard facts of his progress that outweighed his needing any more counseling, and that she should listen to the other mothers' concerns, and shared what I had allegedly been told about the so-called therapy groups; she took her son out of the group to see if he would improve without it, which he did, but they had been "talked" into taking him back at the end of the school year, and of course, there were many other "important issues" that did not "allow" them to renew my teaching contract a 3rd year because I was not a "team player"....a brand that I got every time I "taught" in the public school, which I wore with pride and finally quit teaching in the public schools....however, when I taught in a private school that promoted "LDS standards" and homeschooling support, and was administrated by 2 apostates (here in Utah), I got my eyes full there, too, and also got branded as not being a "team player." (Male & female students were allowed total "privacy" in their cars in the parking lot with steamed up windows and other visible clues with clothing that more than conversation was going on; to play card games in the classroom during breaks, complete with poker chips, money & gambling rules; to bring "soft-porn" magazines to share with others & my younger class turned them in, which got me in trouble with the "principal" as having an out-of-control class, so I took the hit and when she left my classroom, validated my class of students who were questioning "Wasn't that porn? Our parents have taught us that's porn," and validated their actions as being exactly correct and invited them to ask their parents if they agreed, to which the parents did agree, and that added to my list of "crimes" with the principal; bringing toy guns and pretending to hold students hostage, which caused my younger group to turn the older student in again, etc. etc. Each teacher who went to the apostate "principal" and the apostate high-school level "teacher" were let go; my letter to the owners got a visit from them, but the 2 female apostates running the school "talked" to them first, and it was decided to "allow" me to finish the school year, after I'd already given my 2 week notice...trying to stay in order to protect the students, and maintain the “not a team player” status, doesn't seem to work in either public or private schools!)

Bottom line: Elder Hartman Rector, Jr.(as a retired General Authority), stated on Dec. 3, 1999 at a workshop I attended here in SLC, "The time has come to pull all of our children out of public schools and homeschool them throughout their entire childhood, never to go back to public school for any reason, to teach them the same way as the 2,000 stripling warriors were taught, and to also include in their curriculum the U.S. Constitution, where they are taught it word for word, so that they can never be fooled by corrupt and/or well-meaning persons as to what is in the U.S. Constitution because the U.S. Constitution and the American flag will be used during the Millennium, with most of the Bill of Rights and some, but not all, of the amendments kept intact."

Just recently on TV-Channel 58, during a quick remote scan of the channels, there was an audio interview with Alex Jones, where he said that he had a video recording of a reporter in a homeland security briefing, I believe in Washington D.C., where the reporter had asked about the 4th amendment not including the latest wire-tapping/spying on U.S. citizens, and Alex Jones said that the homeland security officer at the podium argued with the reporter, telling the reporter that he was not telling the truth about what was in the 4th amendment, and when the reporter allegedly read the 4th amendment aloud word for word, the homeland security officer at the podium raised his voice and repeated with rage, “That’s not true, that is not what is in the 4th amendment,” and refused to call on that reporter any more and dismissed the briefing soon thereafter.

We need to do homeschooling. We need to learn all the legal rights of families and education in each state, right from the statutes, not from the school districts' information. I would assume that's where our Homeschool Legal Defense organization comes into play. I cannot say it enough or emphasize it enough: we are fighting for the very souls of our youth.

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Kay Camden (Kay)

Friday, March 10, 2006 - 06:25 pm Click here to edit this post
Re: “…we are fighting for the very souls of our youth.”

Indeed!

My hair stylist, in her 30s, who’s very in touch with all the goings on at the local school, described a shocking conversation she had recently with her sister, P.

P. told my beautician friend, “Well, at least R. (her daughter; my stylist’s 13-year-old niece) is going to a slumber party, not to the dance tonight, so I don’t have to worry about her getting into any trouble over boy-girl hanky panky since she’ll be with a group of girls.”

After P.'s daughter returned home, she described what took place at the slumber party—and many other all girl slumber parties in the past. The girls had been “experimenting again, like Madonna and Britney Spears.”

My stylist explained, “These young girls are so mixed up these days that they don’t view themselves as ‘gay,’ or ‘lesbians.’ Instead, they have convinced themselves that they’re ‘only experimenting to see what they like.’ Those were my niece's exact words. They don’t see a thing wrong about imitating bad examples like Madonna or Britney, and they don’t realize that they’re sinning after they've been brainwashed by pornography and the media.”

We compared notes about school life in the 1970s, when it was a special night if we were allowed to stay up talking on the phone past 9 p.m., but these days, it’s “anything goes" in these mind control camps they call government schools. Teachers and counselors, as Lynda, pointed out in the post above, are as immoral and lead as poorly as our current government leaders in D.C. do.

Most parents want to believe, “Most public schools can’t be THAT bad!”

But they are.

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Kris Stewart (Midnightmoon)

Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - 10:26 am Click here to edit this post
X-rated 'Children's' Books Outrage Students' Parents

Parents across the nation are taking action against both school districts and libraries that feature books, some of them required reading, that include sexual issues and obscenity many believe are inappropriate for school children.
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/march2006/150306_b_X-rated.htm

Shock Therapy For Kids: Torture or Cure?

Jennifer McLogan reported from Freeport: Why they ask, is shock therapy, corporal punishment and this type of behavior modification illegal in this state, but acceptable for New York children elsewhere? Mrs. Nicholson sees it one way; other parents say their sick children are finally able to be mainstreamed if they are wearing the shock therapy packs. The debate has just begun.
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/march2006/150306_b_Shock.htm

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Shawnee Lane (Shawnee)

Friday, March 17, 2006 - 09:14 am Click here to edit this post
Along with the ABC's, kindergartners will now learn about HIV.

Beginning Monday, kindergartners in public schools will be told that HIV is a "germ" and "not easy to get."

The kids also will learn that HIV could lead to AIDS, which is hard to "get well" from, according to the city's new HIV/AIDS curriculum.
The changes are required by state law - but some parents and teachers fear kindergartners are too young to talk about the deadly disease.

"I don't think it is appropriate. It's scary for kids in kindergarten," said a Manhattan mom whose daughter attends kindergarten at Public School 166 on the upper West Side.

"How do you talk about AIDS without talking about sex and drugs?" she asked.

Elementary school teachers in all grades have been instructed to teach beginning next week from the updated lessons, which include a project that tells kindergartners to play "doctors" and discuss HIV.

Teachers won't mention that HIV is transmitted through sexual contact until students reach the fourth grade. At that time, teachers will provide little specifics, telling kids, "When you are older you will learn more."

Full article at:
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/400462p-339244c.html

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Steve Stock (Steveandkaystoc)

Tuesday, March 21, 2006 - 06:25 am Click here to edit this post
Putting Parents in Their Place

They are needy, overanxious and sometimes plain pesky -- and schools at every level are trying to find ways to deal with them. No, not students. Parents -- specifically parents of today's "millennial generation" who, many educators are discovering, can't let their kids go.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/20/AR2006032001167_pf.html

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Kay Camden (Kay)

Tuesday, May 02, 2006 - 07:01 am Click here to edit this post
Note from Charlotte Iserbyt:

This article [Learning On Their Own Terms; Md. School With No Curriculum Challenges Conventions of Modern Education—Washington Post] is more important than it appears to be, on the surface. If it weren't important, why would the controlled "Washington Post" publish it?

I see it as the necessary first shot in the implementation of the philosophy described in Lewis Perelman's "School's Out". You don't need schools if you have technology (computers, etc.), do you? You don't even need teachers, do you?

You just need a central state office which keeps data on each child, and that will be easy as long as they are hooked by computer into the state's data bank. The business/state school partnership will determine how your child is to be trained for the global workforce.

I recall the head of the Office of Technology in my old Office of Educational Research and Improvement saying "Charlotte, in the future education will take place in the home."

The public school infrastructure is collapsing. It has been planned that way.

Just my musings on this ridiculous article, which must be taken seriously.

http://www.rense.com/general70/student.htm


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