Loyalty to the State, Pt 2 by canttakesky

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
1. Education is the only aspect of child-rearing where the law legally compels routine action and monitoring. There is no compulsory feed-your-child law, or compulsory well-child visit law, or compulsory clothing law. There is however a compulsory schooling law. WHY IS THAT?

2. Most states, though not all, have statutes requiring that homeschooled children be monitored through testing and/or record keeping periodically by the Dept of Education. What is legally required varies from state to state. Look at the color distribution on this page to get an idea.

Well, your second statement, which is not a question, somewhat contradicts your first. Right away, I could point to the part that says that educational monitoring is NOT required in all states which therefore do not require "routine action and monitoring". But, okay, it's not a total contradiction because it doesn't hold true in all cases, just "some".

Quote:
My question here though, is not so much that *I* am being inspected, but why everyone here WANTS all homeschoolers to be inspected. If you guys? had your way, every state would require inspection by the Dept of Education. However YOU don't advocate the same type of inspection in other areas. So my question, of course, is WHY IS THAT?

I'm not sure I want homeschoolers to be "inspected" if by that you mean a visit from the DoE to ascertain educational standards. It seems to me that standardized testing would ensure that the homeschooled student was at least paralleling the criteria and would be eligible for a credible HS diploma

So- does that answer your question?

Okay, now can you answer my question?

BTW- I'm surprised that Frem, Sarge and BDN aren't entering into the fray. None of them has proposed that we (1) accept the status quo with its current level of child abuse (2) eliminate the current government functions and accept a probable higher level of abuse or (3) propose an enhanced or alternate system of child care which would reduce the current level of child abuse. Y'all can't even get out a yes, no, or maybe.

Pitiful.

PS: Thanks for breaking up the thread. It WAS getting slow to load!

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Let's party like it's 1929.

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Monday, March 31, 2008 3:14 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
BTW- I'm surprised that Frem, Sarge and BDN aren't entering into the fray.

Heh... are you? Seriously??

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

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Monday, March 31, 2008 3:17 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
I'm not sure I want homeschoolers to be "inspected" if by that you mean a visit from the DoE to ascertain educational standards. It seems to me that standardized testing would ensure that the homeschooled student was at least paralleling the criteria and would be eligible for a credible HS diploma.

You don't have to interpret "inspection" so literally as a home visit. Any type of examination, such as the standardized testing you propose, would qualify as inspection. You are inspecting the child's knowledge base.

Quote:
So- does that answer your question?

No, because you still haven't answered the question, "WHY IS THAT?" All you've argued is that routine monitoring isn't required in all states, and skipped right past question #1 for the states in which the question DOES apply.

Furthermore, instead of answering "Why is that?" for why YOU want routine monitoring of educational performance in ALL states, you stalled at nitpicking the semantics of "inspection."

C'mon Sig. I know you are smart enough to understand the thrust and spirit of my question. I know you can skip past the semantics if you so choose. Why is it that you don't support compulsory standards for parents and routine monitoring in any other area of child rearing--just education?

Quote:
Okay, now can you answer my question?

I'll answer part of it, since you made some effort at mine. But for a full and complete answer, I'll need you to do the same for me.

Quote:
BTW- I'm surprised that Frem, Sarge and BDN aren't entering into the fray....Pitiful.

That is NOT fair, Sig. It is way below the belt to accuse people who don't want to play your game of cowardice or something similar. Maybe they just don't want to play with you.

Listen, I know where you are taking your question, just as you know where I am taking mine. That is why it's like pulling teeth to get you to answer my question--and you're still balking at it. Despite that, I don't throw out taunts like "Pitiful" at you.

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It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.
--Justice Robert H. Jackson

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Monday, March 31, 2008 3:37 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
C'mon Sig. I know you are smart enough to understand the thrust and spirit of my question.

Well, in this case I actually thought that by "inspection" you meant "inspection", not "monitoring" or "testing". If we hope to have a productive discussion I think we need to be very accurate in what we're saying, because I find... for the most part... that discussions MOST OFTEN turn into fights because of hidden meanings.

So- Why do I want standardized testing?
Because child will eventually grow up and be outside of mom and dad's orbit and have to deal with the larger society. It is useful to the child to have the tools necessary to deal.

This holds for ALL societies, even ones I disagree with. If I were to raise a girl-child under the Taliban, for example, she would definitely need to know how NOT to get beaten on the streets. And quite honestly, the more deficient the child, the more important that they fit in. A very bright child could lead a "double life" or even to become a force for change, but ALL children will need to know how to fit into the adult society.

Quote:

Why is it that you don't support compulsory standards for parents and routine monitoring in any other area of child rearing--just education?

Well, you prolly missed my post where I suggested well-baby home visits by a nurse. I would go further and say that any child who does not get a routine physical should be evaluated by a doctor or nurse and specifically looking for sign of abuse... which, IMHO, should be performed with at every routine physical.

In my mind that is not the ideal solution, but given the society that we have today it's the only short-term solution that comes to mind. That doesn't mean that there aren't better long-term solutions, but those would require that a lot mroe changes given that 10% of adolescents report having been abused I'm not sure that I want to wait that long.

But there are other programs to put into place as well, such as drug treatment programs for mom and/or dad (a lot of neglect and abuse is tied to drug use). Also, since drug use and crime is tied to unemployment and poverty, a raise in minimum wage and improved employment would also help. Better programs to eliminate spousal abuse, since that is also tied to child abuse.

It occurred to me the other day that we're raising a whole strange generation. So many kids being abused, and exposed to the violence and crime in their neighborhoods, along with their parents, means a LOT of people with PTSD burned into their brains from the very beginning, even in-utero. .

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Let's party like it's 1929.

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Monday, March 31, 2008 4:04 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Well, you prolly missed my post where I suggested well-baby home visits by a nurse. I would go further and say that any child who does not get a routine physical should be evaluated by a doctor or nurse and specifically looking for sign of abuse... which, IMHO, should be performed with at every routine physical.

And this goes back to my comment which you blew off earlier. How do you enforce this? You need a centralized list of all children, a requirement that the parents update the info when the child moves, a requirement that the results of all routine physicals of children be reported to the child care agency, specific requirements for what all doctors/nurses should look for, liability coverage for doctors/nurses who make incorrect assessments either way, a method of mandating and enforcing physicals (Well-baby SWAT Teams?), a bureaucracy to run this whole thing, plus chunks o' money. And that's just off the top of my head.

This would probably have to be a Federal agency, since folk do tend to move around, and states would have to do a massive amount of coordination to assure babies didn't slip through the cracks.

None of this is to say that having doctors look for signs of abuse during regular visits or in the ER is not valuable. But mandating inspections for every child is gonna be expensive, intrusive, a cause of distrust between parent and doctor (which could end up causing worse care for the child), and not popular with the medical community either.

Also, you're still using the shotgun approach. You haven't got - or haven't shown - any data to indicate that this would be an effective method of reducing child abuse.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Monday, March 31, 2008 4:16 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Yes, all of those apply. And given that we can't even seem to enforce child support payments across state lines (Oh, BTW, another helpful program would be to enforce child support payments.) But there are ways of enforcing such. For example: Do you file a tax return? (Been on my mind the past couple of weeks.

) Do you claim a dependent? Okay sure, that doesn't include the people who live solely off the black economy, but it's a start.

What I find inconceivable is that we can manage to do this:

Quote:
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson today proposed a set of sweeping changes to the nation's financial system, including a broad expansion of the Federal Reserve's powers, in what could herald the biggest regulatory overhaul of Wall Street since the Great Depression.

but we can't help the several million children who're being abused.
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Let's party like it's 1929.

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Monday, March 31, 2008 4:22 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Quote:
Originally posted by canttakesky:
The "what" is: build a community.

Okay- how?

First, we have to envision what kind of community we want. Community is so eroded in America that we can't even imagine what having one *could* be like.

1. Extended family. Before there were government "safety nets," family was who you found to carry you when you can't crawl. Our family units have eroded along with our communities to the point that many of us look to building our own "family" out of friends. This is an especially common theme in Joss Whedon shows and other entertainment. But imagine if your own extended family were as close and reliable as the Serenity crew or the Buffy Scooby team.

2. Moral authority. There's got to be a consensus in the community on what is moral and what is not. If everyone in your community believes and accepts that it is moral for a man to hit his wife, community won't do jack shit to prevent spousal abuse. In the past, such moral authority was provided by a church, but it can come from any canon of ethics.

3. Regular community gatherings and functions. Again, in the past, this need was met by weekly meetings at church, but it can be any type of event as long as it occurs on a frequent and regular basis. It could be a weekly dance, weekly bowling tournament, whatever.

4. Culture of responsibility. This is the most vital, yet probably the most elusive aspect of community. It is a mentality that if YOU don't do it, no one else will. When I was in grade school, I read a story about a boy finding a big rock in the middle of the road. He thought, "Someone bigger will move this rock," and went around it. A second boy came by. He huffed and puffed at great personal discomfort and moved the rock to the side of the road. He accepted that a person who finds a problem is the one who should solve the problem--rather than mentally diffusing that responsibility to others. (This mentality, as you may note, is actually contraindicated by government interventions. This is likely the reason my solution and yours are mutually exclusive.)

Here is an example. When my son was younger, he had terrible eczema. Conventional medications had only a temporary effect--they were bandaids. In the States, people would stare, sometimes murmur. One person in a public place told me to take him to a doctor. That was it.

In Peru, 4 out of 5 women would stop me on the street and ask me what was wrong with him, then proceed to give me advice on things to try. I'd have to explain what I was doing and why. These are strangers I'd never met before and would probably never meet again. I ended up trying some of their suggestions, and not others. But the point is, they were involved even with a "tourist." They made me engage with them and defend my decisions. Imagine the kind of "intervention" that would have gone on if I actually were one of their neighbors. In the states, that kind of "intervention" happens only with drug addicts and alcoholics, and only very recently. Just as the intervention model teaches that the responsibility of everyone around the drug addict as potential "enablers," people in community see lack of action in view of a problem as enabling the problem to continue. And enabling is not acceptable.

In the next reply, I'll explain how this would tie in with "prevention." But for now, it's your turn to answer my question: Why is that?

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Prevention is a lifestyle. Prevention as a security measure is either impotent or oppressive.

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Monday, March 31, 2008 4:35 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Well, you prolly missed my post where I suggested well-baby home visits by a nurse. I would go further and say that any child who does not get a routine physical should be evaluated by a doctor or nurse and specifically looking for sign of abuse... which, IMHO, should be performed with at every routine physical.

No I didn't miss it. But I don't see anywhere that you support legally mandating such interventions. Standardized testing is the only thing you want legally required so far. I made it clear in my question. It's about consistency.

If you say you want to LEGALLY require of all parents 1) well-child visits to the doctor, 2) nutritional testing to rule out nutritional neglect, 3) government mandated wardrobe list for all children, 4) housing inspection for cleanliness and roominess (this is separate from structural soundness of the building, you understand), and 5) regular educational standardized testing; I will grant you that you are at least ideologically consistent. If you are going to single out education as the only legally required intervention, I'd say there is dishonesty somewhere. And of course, the more you pick out of that list, the more consistent you would be.

I have spelled out the thrust of my question over and over again. Cmon Sig. I'm tired of pulling teeth.

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Give me some consistency, baby.

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Monday, March 31, 2008 4:46 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
This holds for ALL societies, even ones I disagree with. If I were to raise a girl-child under the Taliban, for example, she would definitely need to know how NOT to get beaten on the streets. And quite honestly, the more deficient the child, the more important that they fit in.

But fitting in, for a "deficient" child, is not on a standardized test. Knowing how NOT to get beaten on the streets is not on a standardized test.

How would your daughter do on a standardized test? Should her scores on such testing be grounds for the govt to accuse you of educational neglect?

Standardized testing inspects a very, very small portion of the kind of education you are talking about--to fit in and deal with the larger society. If functioning in society is what you are really concerned about, mandating standardized testing would be an impotent and misleading preventive measure. I'm sure Ted Kaczyinski did well on standardized tests, and we all know how well he fit in.

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All states have compulsory schooling laws. If parents in some states avoid legally mandated educational monitoring, it is only because homeschooling provides them with a legal loophole. All I see is that you want to plug up that loophole.

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Monday, March 31, 2008 7:42 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Part of fitting in with THIS larger society is getting a job and in THIS society it means (among other things) having the requisite education... at least a HS diploma. So simply looking at the educational aspects of schooling (home schooling or not) means that a child should at least be getting the curriculum that would allow a HS diploma. It wouldn't guarantee a diploma, just make it possible.

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Let's party like it's 1929.

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Monday, March 31, 2008 7:49 AM

So what was the point of home schooling again? Is it principly that parents think they can do a better technical job or is it so they can teach just the stuff they agree with (creationism for example?)

Wouldn't the solution be for like minded parents to found their own schools?

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Monday, March 31, 2008 7:52 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
...(Oh, BTW, another helpful program would be to enforce child support payments.) But there are ways of enforcing such. For example: Do you file a tax return? (Been on my mind the past couple of weeks.) Do you claim a dependent?

This has been in place for years. IRS and most state tax agencies apply the tax overpayments of child support delinquents to their overdue support. They also check to see if any dependents are claimed by more than one individual. As noted, this doesn't help if they're off the grid or don't file, but it's there.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Monday, March 31, 2008 9:39 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fletch2:
So what was the point of home schooling again?

The main thrust of home schooling is for parents to take over the management of their children's education. A school principal (or school board) manages education to balance the needs and interests of many students functioning at many different levels. A parent only needs to meet the needs and interests of his/her own child(ren). It allows a bigger range of options and allows a child to have a tailor-made educational experience, instead of education as a mass produced good.

I like to think of it as primarily eating home-cooking instead of eating at restaurants. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. At some point, it is a matter of preference. If you have a child who needs a very special diet, then home cooking would offer more advantages because it allows you to individualize the diet better.

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Monday, March 31, 2008 9:45 AM

Doesn't answer the thrust of the question. Is the idea to do a better technical job or to teach things in line with the parents own beliefs.

Case in point, a decent microscope costs several hundred dollars. My school had two and when we did biology part of the course involved making slides and looking at them under a microscope. How does home schooling deal with that? Do people rent equipment? Is there like a home schooling cooperative that makes equipment available or do folks just say "well Jimmy we can't afford the equipment I guess you never were interested in biology anyway where you honey?"

I have no doubt you can teach basic stuff at home, I was able to read and do basic arithmetic before infants school, but how do you deal with more advanced topics? How would you deal with none arts related subjects -- how could you teach chemistry for example?

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Monday, March 31, 2008 12:24 PM

Fletch,

The homeschoolers that I know solve that problem with something like the homeschooling co-op you mentioned, but I'd guess it can be difficult for people without access to such groups. I was very lucky in that my kids were very motivated, our public school system was very homeschooler friendly (offering part-time enrollment, tutoring and the like), and we lived in the heart of a college town where educational opportunities grew on trees.

This actually gets to how I'd like to see public education adapt. My fantasy scenario for public schools has them operating something like fully publicly funded community colleges. My issues with public education aren't that they are publicly funded, or that they teach things that the government finds desirable. Those aspects actually make a lot of sense.

My objection to the current public school model is similar to most of my objections to large scale state programs. The problem is that these programs, in general, work from the point of view that there is one right way to do things and then proceed to force everyone to play along.\

There are plenty of concerns that, arguably, require such 'one-size-fits-all' solutions. Regardless of the hypothetical musings of the anarchy threads, I'm certainly not suggesting that we let people 'opt out' of laws regarding violence and theft. But, outside of child abuse, I don't think that decisions about how we raise or educate our children, should be made at the level of public policy. That limits our options unnecessarily and puts all our eggs in one basket. It makes it harder for families and communities to adapt to changing needs and it all but ignores (some would say crushes) the individual child's interests and aspirations.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

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Monday, March 31, 2008 4:06 PM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by Fletch2:
Doesn't answer the thrust of the question. Is the idea to do a better technical job or to teach things in line with the parents own beliefs.

Depending on which homeschooling parent you ask, probably both of those and several others. I'd suspect that the folks who homeschool would provide several different reasons for why they do it.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Monday, March 31, 2008 5:26 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fletch2:
Doesn't answer the thrust of the question. Is the idea to do a better technical job or to teach things in line with the parents own beliefs.

Why do the reasons have to be one of only those two options?

There are many, many reasons why people homeschool. Some parents feel they know more and can teach better than school teachers. Some parents feel their kids need an individualized program that schools don't offer. Some parents want to teach materials from their viewpoints. Some parents hate getting up at 5 am for the schoolbus. Some parents don't like the social environment in schools. Some parents want to protect their children from abuses from other students and/or teachers. Some parents have any combination of the above reasons, and then some.

The ways for dealing with resources for homeschooling are as varied as the reasons. Some parents buy the microscopes, one for each kid. Some parents share with other parents. Some parents teach the information without the microscope experience, and let the student pursue it at college. Some parents hire tutors who have microscopes. Some parents work out some sort of agreement with local schools or community colleges. Some parents don't bother because their kids have absolutely no interest in microscopes.

Advanced or specialized topics are learned usually by following textbooks, multimedia equivalents, or taking classes. The parents and the kids learn it together. Sometimes, the parents will hire or find a tutor at a high school or college to answer questions. With over a million American homeschoolers, homeschooling materials are very easy to find and buy. There are college professors who tutor homeschoolers for a fee. There are online curricula that bring homeschoolers together to learn advanced topics in internet chatrooms. There are places that offer classes in dance, art, music, karate, fencing, etc.

I am teaching chemistry using an online multimedia lecturing program, kind of like a CDRom lecture with animations and other graphics that is used by Stanford University for teaching gifted students. At my kids' levels, I don't need to give them a lab yet. I went to a posh private school myself, and I didn't have chemistry lab until college. And I wasn't disadvantaged by that.

The point is, most parents can get their kids ready for college without any trouble, even if they are poor.

Hope that answers your questions.

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Monday, March 31, 2008 5:34 PM

Here are articles about homeschoolers at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. Maybe it will help answer those questions you asked.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=512786

http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/12169?badlink=1

http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2000/novdec/articles/homes
chooling.html

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Monday, March 31, 2008 8:56 PM

That's a very nice answer. One thing troubled me though.

Quote:
Originally posted by canttakesky:

I went to a posh private school myself, and I didn't have chemistry lab until college. And I wasn't disadvantaged by that.

Hope that answers your questions.

I was taught lab from age 12, I also had access to metal working and woodworking shops including lathes and forges. When we studied nuclear physics we had radioactive sources. Mine was just a village school with maybe 300 kids in various years we were not in a prosperous area.

I'm quite surprised that your "posh" school did not have these facilities. My sister went to a private school and they had far better equipment than we did. That was my core point, education is an expensive business and if your child has leanings in the sciences it can be really expensive to get the equipment.

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Monday, March 31, 2008 9:19 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:

This actually gets to how I'd like to see public education adapt. My fantasy scenario for public schools has them operating something like fully publicly funded community colleges.

In the UK secondary school finishes when you are around 15 or 16. That is still 2 years short of University entrance age and you spend those two years doing "A" levels. An "A" level is kind of like your SAT's in that universities use them to assess new students. The better your results the better the college you can go to. Now there are two ways of doing the A levels, one is to do it in a school that has that program, the other is at a technical college. My school didn't have an A level program and so I went to a technical college for those 2 years. It is a better system for matching interests to students, it gives you the ability to take just those combinations of things that would prove useful to you. I took computing, car mechanics and industrial archeology as secondary electives while I was studying for my "core" subjects. I ended up moving my major from physics to computing because of that exposure.

Had I had the opportunity to tailor my course earlier I think I would have preferred it. The UK government was making a big push to add foreign languages to the curriculum at that time and I was awful at them. I begged (unsuccessfully) to be allowed to continue metalwork and biology instead but at the time modern languages were a "forced elective" which meant that you had to chose to take them.

By comparison technical colleges offered you the choice of any course you could put together on a time table (and I cheated for one semester by stealing an hour from a creative writing class to let me do it alongside chemistry.)

Quote:

My objection to the current public school model is similar to most of my objections to large scale state programs. The problem is that these programs, in general, work from the point of view that there is one right way to do things and then proceed to force everyone to play along.\

Ok colour me confused. It was my understanding that the US educational system doesn't have centralised funding and that it was done at a local level and paid for mainly though property taxes? This is not a big government program in that case, it's determined by relatively small local communities with officials close to those that elect them. On paper, this should be a poster child for small government -- local programs accountable to the folks paying the bill through taxation?

I can imagine some poorer areas having insufficient funds to do a good job but I would have thought the parents would have far more control than with a statewide, or nationwide system?

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Tuesday, April 1, 2008 1:08 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fletch2:
I'm quite surprised that your "posh" school did not have these facilities.

I went to the most expensive private school in a South American country. It had a chemistry lab. We had class in it, but we just never DID any labs.

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Tuesday, April 1, 2008 7:04 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

IMHO there is nothing like hands-on coursework. There's a difference between learning how to cook in the kitchen and leanring how to cook by watching the Cooking Channel.

For "college prep" it prolly doesn't make much of a difference whether you learn "theoretically" or through practice. But if you're at a level where the next step is DOING the thing, then yes.... I want my doctor, plumber, mechanic, dentist to have had SOME hands-on experience before they get to me, my house and my car!

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Let's party like it's 1929.

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Tuesday, April 1, 2008 7:20 AM

You really don't do physical, wet chemistry until college?

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Tuesday, April 1, 2008 7:36 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I did. I also did dissection in HS biology, and physics experiments in HS Physics. But I attended a reasonably well-funded suburban school, and we had enough books to read as well as actual labs.
And what I learned is....
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If it's green a wiggles - it's biology, if it stinks - it's chemistry, and if it doesn't work - it's physics.

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Tuesday, April 1, 2008 8:00 AM

WeI built furniture and turned wooden bowls in woodwork class. The metalwork class built gocarts, we built crossbows by reforging leaf spring steel from scrapped cars. We cast components in scrap aluminium, then cleaned them up with the drills and lathes. We built bits for model steam engines and rockets.

In chemistry we had fun with thermite. In electronics we built radios, amplifiers and switch circuits. Those people that were good at foreign languages (not me) went to France and Germany for school trips.

Practical application of taught principles is the best way to make them stick.

I had a great time at school, it was fantastic.

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Tuesday, April 1, 2008 8:25 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

My god Fletch, your schools sound fantastic. If our schools were like your schools we might not actually have a "homeschooling" movement!

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Let's party like it's 1929.

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Tuesday, April 1, 2008 9:27 AM

In some respects I was lucky, the school was being revamped to take a spurt of boomers and had new facilities. A lot of my teachers had been retired, they had lured them back with generous pay because there was a shortage of teachers at that time. There were two unexpected benefits though, first was that the ones that came back were the ones actually interested in teaching because they could have just stayed home had they wanted. The second was that many of them had had a real life outside of teaching and were teaching in retirement.

One of my two woodwork teachers had been a cabinet maker in their working lives. I was taught metalwork by a blacksmith and a guy that had been a professional machinist. My physics teacher had worked on the development of airborne radar during WW2.

They made stuff interesting because they had done it and they knew the material backwards.

What I think would be wonderful would be if we could institutionalize that kind of system, give people with skills the ability to teach in retirement and pass that knowledge along.

Admittedly the cabinet maker had to suffer my attempts to make a reasonable mortice joint but on the other hand my friend Mike made furniture as a sideline for many years and my friend Peter made the windows for his house. Last week I made 4 small brackets for mounting a metal panel, I bent metal, drilled and tapped some holes. Not rocket science, not the neatest job since I don't really have a drill press but it works well enough and I knew I could do it because I have been able to do it since I was 12 years old.

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Tuesday, April 1, 2008 10:15 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fletch2:
You really don't do physical, wet chemistry until college?

A lot of people do. But a lot of people in regular public schools don't either. For those who are not fortunate enough to have had those opportunities, it is not that much of a disadvantage to wait until college.

Life is not equitable. Some folks are going to get more educational opportunities than others, whether they are homeschooling or school-schooling. I don't think homeschoolers should be particularly singled out as denying these opportunities to their children while everyone else in normal school gets a leg up. That is simply not true. Inequities exist in both environments.

The homeschoolers I usually hang out with tend to be upper middle class. They have no shortage of hands-on manipulatives and equipment for their children, including microscopes and telescopes.

My husband's a PhD chemist who has taught at universities, so I am personally not worried about chemistry lab when the time comes.

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It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
--Bertrand Russell

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Tuesday, April 1, 2008 10:24 AM

Quote:
For "college prep" it prolly doesn't make much of a difference whether you learn "theoretically" or through practice. But if you're at a level where the next step is DOING the thing, then yes.... I want my doctor, plumber, mechanic, dentist to have had SOME hands-on experience before they get to me, my house and my car!

Now you're just being silly, Sig. I don't think they give out licenses to correspondence medical school graduates. All doctors and dentists are going to have had hands-on experience in graduate school before getting to you.

Plumbing and mechanics is learned through apprenticeships, which is nothing but hands-on experience. It doesn't matter if they were homeschooled as children or not.

BTW, this is just a friendly and no-pressure reminder that in out tit-for-tat, the ball is currently in your court.

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If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
--Mark Twain

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Tuesday, April 1, 2008 10:38 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Eh, the reply wasn't directed at you specifically, but you might want to notice that I WAS giving homeschoolers a "pass" on hands-on experience, at least thru the HS level.

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Let's party like it's 1929.

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Thursday, April 3, 2008 6:35 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

About 1 in 50 U.S. infants are victims of nonfatal child abuse Bear in mind that this is VERIFIED abuse. CPS stats typically undercount by about a factor of three

Quote:
ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- About 1 in 50 U.S. infants are victims of nonfatal child abuse or neglect in a year, according to the first national study of the problem in that age group.

Other studies have looked at child abuse and neglect, but this is believed to be the first to focus on infants. The study focused on children younger than 1 year, and found nearly a third were one week old or younger when the abuse or neglect occurred.

"It is a particularly vulnerable group," said study co-author Rebecca Leeb, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "We were struck by the fact there was a clustering of maltreatment with the very, very early age group."

The researchers counted more than 91,000 infant victims of abuse and neglect in the period October 1, 2005 to September 30, 2006.

The information came from a national database of cases verified by protective services agencies in 45 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/04/03/infant.neglect.ap/index.html

So, this is about 100,000 verified cases a year, which prolly translates to about 300,000 actual cases per year.

"The system", such as it is, is desperately failing to protect those in most need of it. I also think these stats lay to rest the idea that parents are so biologically driven to be nice to their kids that it's a vanishingly small problem.

NOT.

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Let's party like it's 1929.

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Thursday, April 3, 2008 7:28 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
"The system", such as it is, is desperately failing to protect those in most need of it.

That much seems true enough. Makes you wonder if 'system' is even the answer.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

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Thursday, April 3, 2008 8:45 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

You can either junk the system (and replace it with what?) or fix the system. Or even both: work on a short-term fix at the same time that you work on a better one.

It reminds me of why the USA education system is failing: Rather than learning from experience, keeping the best of the past, education reformers have a tendency to toss everything out and start from scratch every two decades or so. In my lifetime I've seen reading go from phonics to whole-word and back to phonics, and math go from rote memorization to concepts (sets, number bases etc.) and then back again to basic skills and drills. Nobody seems interested in actually learning from experience, it's just so much easier to plaster a one-size-fits-all ideology over a complex issue.

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Let's party like it's 1929.

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Thursday, April 3, 2008 8:48 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

Maybe the asnwer is to find out which societies get more humane results and try to figure out what they do that we could do.

OH WAIT ! I have a better idea ! Let's give up on ALL experience and evidence everywhere and try to do something totally different, despite obvious problems !

That'll work.

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Really, what you are saying is that since the system finds at least 2 in 50 children are discovered abused or neglected - we as a society should do something different ! - just close our eyes and not look at all. Problem solved !

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Thursday, April 3, 2008 9:40 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

So we have about 100,000 known cases of agency-verified INFANT abuse and neglect each year in the USA. That translates to about 350,000 cases of agency-verified cases of abuse and neglect overall (children under five make up slighlty more than half of all abuse cases, and children under one make up about two-thirds of that.)

Given that agencies report abuse at about 3% overall, but self-report is more like 10%, that means about one million cases of abuse and neglect in the USA every year.

Now, we can whine a bitch about "society" and about "government" ... and believe me, I do plenty of that all on my own!... but we really need to step up the the plate on this one! It's no good crabbing about "the gummint" when you've got a crisis on your hands, and a solution a hundred years in the future just ain't gonna hack it.

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Let's party like it's 1929.

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Thursday, April 3, 2008 9:45 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
You can either junk the system (and replace it with what?) or fix the system. Or even both: work on a short-term fix at the same time that you work on a better one.

Or we could consider the possibility that not every problem can be solved by passing another law.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

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Thursday, April 3, 2008 10:14 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Who's talking about laws? If we funded drug rehab programs at least as much as we fund prisons we wouldn't have half of the problem we do now. And what about health care? It should be available to everyone.

LOTS of countries manage better than we do.

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Let's party like it's 1929.

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Thursday, April 3, 2008 12:14 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
I also think these stats lay to rest the idea that parents are so biologically driven to be nice to their kids that it's a vanishingly small problem.

I don't think anyone on this board has ever advocated that position. And if you think someone has, you have grossly misunderstood them.

You say other countries do better than we do on child abuse. Can you tell us which? What do they do? As you say, learn from experience.

All I can say it, I know lots of other countries who do much worse than we do with child abuse. Let's not do what they do.

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We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.
--Stacia Tauscher

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Thursday, April 3, 2008 1:45 PM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

"I know lots of other countries who do much worse than we do with child abuse. Let's not do what they do."

Ahhh yes - like Brazil. Let's just get government out of child welfare and we too can have packs of feral children roaming the city streets.

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That'd be the way to go. Or not.

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Thursday, April 3, 2008 7:01 PM