Tag: postaday2011

Posted in Home School

Do You Need to Choose or to Change Curriculum?

Posted on by Katharine

Get rid of doubt about your curriculum!Are you worried about curriculum? Worried about results?

Have you been wondering if you have (gasp!) bought the wrong curriculum?

Have you wished someone, who was NOT a salesperson, would explain all the curriculum choices to you in an unbiased way?

Are you ready for THE TRUTH about curriculum?

At this time of year, every mom wonders about her curriculum. She is not failing. She may even have forever decided which curriculum is best for her home.

Still, she wonders. Am I right? Am I just stubborn? Could our school be better? Is this a good time to switch?

I have tried all the types and have loved them all. Each type is just right for a particular set of circumstances and each type we will discuss is good. I will not tell you to use what I use, because what works for me might really dampen your homeschool.

I will help you understand what each type is like and who most benefits from it. And who, the least . . . .

(Also, do not forget you may have the perfect curriculum for your children. God can show you what is best for you.)

The following four posts will present aspects of typical curriculum and should help you as you try to figure out whether or not you need to start with something new. It should clear your mind so you can think more like a pro. As you read the descriptions, I hope you will be able to see yourself, your children, and your situation clearly.

You may decide to stay put, but you’ll know you were right in the first place. However, if you see you need to move on, it can be with renewed confidence.

Please note: this series will not include the name of every curriculum company out there. I am glad home scholars number over two million. Such a large people group, the largest school district in the country, commands a large market. This means, though, it would be impossible to know all the good resources, let alone list all the possibilities. Therefore, I will list some of the oldest and easiest to find, to give you some idea of what each category is like.

The shopping is still up to you. Go to home school conventions. Go to book sales, even used book sales. Go to curriculum shows. Ask around at your support group. And please, feel free to ask here, in the comment section. I’m always happy to help home educating moms to figure it out.

Before we go any further let me say, “All good curriculum is good. All tried and true providers are tried and true.”

Every question in your curriculum decision-making has to do with three factors:

  • What is your teaching style?
  • What are your children’s learning styles?
  • What is your home’s style?

So think about those three questions, then get on with this series. We begin with good old education tradition and move all the way to outer space!

And as always, if you cannot understand something in this post, ask in the comment box. I am happy to help home educators keep going!

Most of all, pray. God knows what you need and He knows how to show you what it is.

See ya on the next page!

Posted in Believe it or not!, Home School, Who's the mom here?, Wisdom

Same Song, Second Verse; It’s Worse.

Posted on by Katharine

Continued from the 18th.

The last time hopeless ideas about homeschool hit the legislature, anyone trained in logic could see: it was not logic. In fact, Arkansas lawyer, Dee Black, of Home School Legal Defense Association, dubbed it, “one of the most blatant  . . . ever seen.” This new piece, hoping to take its place and succeed where it failed, is just as bad. It is “Big Brother” by definition, regardless of the home-school facet of it. It looks—and is—very much like the worst of Hitler or Marx. If he were alive today, you could just ask Einstein. He knew when it was time to leave the German schools and had to flee Germany to do it.

This proposal does not affect only bad schools or bad homes. Any school, however good or bad, can become a target for danger, these days, as Columbine and Nickel Mines proved. Any parent, however good or bad, could desperately need to override the notification date for removing children. The facts are: YOU, Dear Taxpayer, wherever and whoever YOU are, could find YOURSELF desperately and immediately needing to remove YOUR child from school on some date that does not correspond with the August or December deadlines.

When we do insert the home-school element, though, we realize a truth proposed by world-famous author, George Orwell: it seems some of us are more equal than others, aren’t we! Look: if you have the funds to access a private school situation for your child, you may withdraw your child at any time. You retain your freedoms. If you are short on discretionary funds—who isn’t these days?—then you will lose your freedom. And that fact, the fact that only the wealthy Arkansan may have permission to protect his children in Arkansas, is unconscionable.

It makes sense that as an Arkansas taxpayer and American citizen, I should demand equal protection for my school-aged children. It makes sense that a parent should demand the freedom to remove his child from a dangerous situation. It makes sense that the law should trust a parent’s word—how much more that of a psychiatrist, pediatrician, lawyer, or other neutral professional practicing in his own profession!

No decision regarding the safety of a child should depend upon the financial situation of the parent.

No decision regarding the safety of a child should depend upon the financial situation of the state school.

You know, it also makes a sort of perverted sense that a hireling, teacher-lobbyist group, would ask us not to trust the child’s medical, psychological, or legal professionals, but only the teachers.

It does NOT make sense for us to trust the word of a member of a tax-funded near-monopoly. Of course, they think their situation better than yours! Of course, they want more power over your home! Of course, they-and-only-they can know or care about what is best for your child.

But you pay their salaries.

The end.

Pleae forward the contents of this post to everyone you know living in Arkansas. Thanks.

Posted in Believe it or not!, Home School, Who's the mom here?

We Told Them so Many Times!

Posted on by Katharine

Continued from yesterday:

They think you and I do not know when our children should come home. That’s what it’s about. Yes, Arkansas legislators are wasting time and money arguing with parents about whether or not we know anything, where we want our children to be all day, whether or not the idea of being at home is harmful to children.

A new piece of legislation, rebounding off a similar piece instigated in the past by David Cook, manages to insinuate that if the child wants to exit the school during a time of illness, stress, or danger, then the home must be bad, antagonistic, even hazardous. How insulting to all homeschoolers! How insulting to all parent, to all homes!

And if it should happen that the home is truly bad, they say, then we need more new laws to enlist the help of the public schools to protect the child from the home situation.

That is a lie.

Arkansas law already provides protection for such children, in that it provides the Department of Human Services (DHS). And the law, by providing mandated reporters, even provides that educators play a part in this protection.

Educators argue that the DHS never does anything, so, they do not want to call on them.

No, they do not want to call DHS. They want to be DHS. They want to be judge, jury, and jailer for any child who, in their opinion comes from an inappropriate home, regardless of—and by that I mean: completely disregarding—the inappropriateness of conditions inside the jail.

The teachers’ opinion, their judgment that the home is invalid, they tell us, finds its basis in innuendo and gossip from in-laws, only, and not in any type of home case study. Oh, and in the desire to homeschool.

Think for a moment! Forget homeschooling. Would YOU want your child’s future based on what your in-laws say about you? ME NEITHER!

But let’s back up a bit here. Do teachers actually want to do anything about the home situation, based upon fact, or upon existing laws? No, they are quite happy to leave things alone, quite happy to forget the home situation after 3:00 p.m., as long as they have that child (and I must add, the accompanying tax moneys) for a few hours.

Never mind where the bus takes the child afterward.

People who have qualms about allowing children to be in bad homes should become social workers, not teachers. Social service personnel who have qualms about entering or overseeing bad homes would make better teachers.

Or maybe, what we really need is law-abiding people who would mind—I mean, truly pay attention to—their own business, in both professions.

And, maybe, just maybe, if teachers, as mandated reporters, were upholding their end of the law, their students would not be so prone to breaking it. Now wouldn’t that make a difference!

Arkansas does not need one more law to give anyone any more power over our homes, our children’s homes, or our grandchildren’s homes. What Arkansas needs are effective penalties for dealing with public servants who refuse to obey the already-existing laws.

Any presumed problems this proposal might pretend to address would better find solution in complete reformation of public schools and complete reformation of the Department of Human Services.

Please forward this to everyone you know who lives in Arkansas.

Posted in Believe it or not!, Home School, Who's the mom here?, Wisdom

Arkansas Freedom

Posted on by Katharine

Homeschool freedom or this?Americans want several things from their government. We expect freedom. We expect protection. We work hard for them.

Although most of the people in the entire world homeschooled at one time, the current, popular, en masse return to homeschooling began in America.

This is the do-by-self country. American parents have always grabbed any challenge that might improve things for their children.

Today’s homeschool is American, transcending all barriers, and the school choice of the parents of one-third of our presidents. It is one big expression of the American way. (Two million strong, now.)

Americans in Arkansas, however, have had to fight harder for this way. In some states, few raise an eyebrow at parents desiring to provide the education. In Arkansas, though, parents struggle to stay one step ahead of their legislators. It seems a case of the government attacking the citizens instead of protecting them.

We’re gearing up for battle again, beating back the legislators again (in spare time we want to spend on our kids.) A new proposal is poised to posture itself before the legislature, wasting yet more time and money on hopes for a bill no one wants. Again.

This proposal aims at curtailing our freedom and undermining the privileges and obligations inherent to parenthood.

Lest you think you should yawn at another homeschool gripe, this proposal, if enacted, would make the state the mom, even if you never plan to homeschool.

Especially if you never plan to homeschool.

The time to wake up is now.

Imagine, if you can, your small daughter blood-spattered and traumatized, from seeing classmates and teachers murdered at school, and forbidden to stay home because someone on the school payroll deemed the home (THE HOME!) an unsafe place.

And never mind the child’s own psychologist has prescribed removal from the school situation.

Our new proposal sets this scenario.

Or perhaps your son has refused to “do” a classmate in the locker room. He has been kicked in the lower back repeatedly with a steel-toed boot, is urinating blood, and forbidden to stay home because someone on the school payroll deemed it just not timely.

Never mind the child’s own pediatrician demands removal from school.

The new proposal sets these parameters.

Or try this idea: Your child tells you the most exciting thing he learned in school today is how to put a condom on a dead bird.

Or your mother is near death and your children want to be beside her as much as possible while they still can.

Or your child has MS and must nap daily and eat five times daily and it’s not happening when he’s at school. Not only that, but because his speech is difficult to understand, he is left to sit at his desk and educate himself by reading a dictionary all day, every day.

Or your daughter is receiving sexual threats and her only instructions from school staff?—to kick the bully between the legs.

These things all have occurred in Arkansas schools. Of course, children everywhere are molested, accosted, assaulted, threatened, harassed, or raped while at school. At almost every school. Even the “good” ones.

But in Arkansas schools we would have no recourse.

Even if the children in the above situations were to be excused from attending, in the future Arkansas that we discuss today, it could be after a three-week waiting period.

How can it be that a child could be forced to remain in such a dangerous and dehumanizing situation for three weeks, while grown-ups deliberate about whether or not to allow his removal?

How can the main questions be whether or not the parents need daytime supervision and what the date is!

How can this be happening to Arkansas’ children!

It simply must not be.

Please forward this post to everyone you know living in Arkansas.

More tomorrow.