Posted on 02/11/2010 7:11:23 AM PST by Britt0n
Homeschoolers are not going to stop and shut up and slink back into a corner just because you don’t like hearing about it.
Pretty typical experiences.
Going to those BOE sessions are a lot like a congressional town hall meeting. Those are also fun. They LOVE to see me come through the door.
Back in the 80s, one of my boys brought home a school social studies book that was filled with clearly socialist/progressive nonsense.
I made it a point to show up at the next school board meeting.
After the board members took an hour to tell us what a wonderful job the schools were doing “educating” our children, the floor was opened to Q&A from the parents.
I was the second or third to be recognized. I spent a few moments ragging our local member for talking down to one of the previous questioners who had a very legitimate concern about the cost and the safety of all the bussing then going on. I apparently got through to her – a classic elitist Radcliff graduate – as she kept her mouth shut for most of the rest of the meeting.
I then asked any of the 4 board member to explain why it was that the book my son had shown me looked like it had been written in the Soviet Union?
When I finished the question over half the parents applauded and made positive comments.
One of the board members took an incredibly ignorant stab at answering the question. When I said as much, the Superintendent of Schools – a pretty decent and, it turned out, conservative older fellow – stepped up and remarked that he, too, had an ongoing concern in the area of textbooks and went on to offer that the problem was (and still is) that “…most of them are written by folks who teach at liberal Eastern universities.” He continued by saying that while many of those decisions were made at the state level, he asked any parents who knew of alternative publishers to get in touch with him.
When the meeting broke up, over two dozen parents surrounded me and asked if I could steer them to organizations where they could learn more about how to cure the problems they were also having with the government schools.
I was more than happy to do so. :-))
Thanks for the kind words.
More and more folks are starting to “get it” about the government schools.
Sadly, it’s now late in the game.
I’ve often said that over 100 years of that system — turning out thousands of new little socialists every year —made Obama INEVITABLE!
If we don’t fix it, there is worse in store for this country.
DEFINITELY NOT PC!!
Mmmmmm , mmmmm , mmmmmm Barack Hussein Obama is THE ONE.
Just ask your government schooled child!
Under 3 minute video depicting how the Obama cultists resemble the cultists who worshipped that other guy 70 years ago in Germany:
(Accompanied by one of that other guy’s favorite ditties.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u0GJSZttZE&feature=channel_page
No, essentially she’s right. There is no difference in the government paying for your child’s education so you can work and the government paying for food and housing so she can homeschool.
In both cases the government is subsidizing one portion of the child rearing expenses. It’s just that people manage to justify it more because we’ve been conditioned to accept taking money from the government for education but to look down on those who take money from the government for food and rent.
So, you’d have to make sacrifices to homeschool? Big deal. We all do....
I’ve met precious few people in my 12 years of homeschooling who truly are able to live to the standard which they’d like to while homeschooling. In most cases they wouldn’t have to make sacrifices while the mother stayed home.
Thanks for clarifying that without the emotional involvement I had in the argument.
That selection of states is no better.
But your point is well taken.
Likely it’s got to do with the $$$$$$.
The biggest purchasers of textbooks are going to have the most say.
I was a single mom many years back so I get some folks have to work.
Now I am married and am blessed to have the choice to homeschool. Like you, I can’t do it without some MAJOR changes to lifestyle!
In order to have me at home, here’s what we did:
*Got out of debt (except mortgage) before starting
*Sold a car and got a moped to save on gas
*Cut our utility bill by 60% by stopping using our dryer, turning off lights, not let water run, using a woodstove to heat our home, etc.
*Learned to cook from scratch.
*Started buying everything in bulk, especially when things go on sale. For example, if we find a good deal on say, chicken, we fill our freezer full.
*Found ways to stretch some things, mixing store bought milk with powdered milk (the kids haven’t caught on yet LOL)
*Got rid of satellite TV, trash pick up, home phones (still have cell phone and internet)
*Shop at consignment stores/thrift/ebay for clothing, books, whatever I can find! Anytime we need to buy things we go there first.
*Learned to sew and knit. We repair a lot of things, like socks, rather than run out and buy new like we used to.
*Learned to do handyman stuff ourselves
*Grow a garden plus canning the food
*Started last year raising chickens for eggs, this year we are hatching many more chickens for meat
*Use bleach, vinegar, or baking soda for 99% of cleaning things around the house
Anyway, doing all this we still squeak by. It is a full time job for me - I work harder now than I ever did working 40-50 hour a week job. But what a blessing it is and how worth it!!!
We are definately a no-frills family. You would laugh knowing how preppy we are, or used to be and how nerdy now. My friends think we’ve turned into greenies but fact is, we just became tightwads LOL!
I think... there are some folks who want to homeschool that can’t (finances or other issues), there are some that can and do, and there are some that can but won’t.
Whatever you choose, I personally think everyone should have on hand history and science books that teach truth. I think folks should read what their kids are reading in school, to be able to counter lies and propaganda.
ping!
No one but you has any say in your kids’ upbringing. However, I ought to have a say in things I have a financial interest in. If I invest in a company I expect to see earnings reports, etc. If I tithe to a church I want to know what they spend that on. If I pay school taxes, then I ought to have a say in what that money does.
It infuriates me at Walmart to buy my kid the off-brand formula while a unwed bimbo with three kids by three men has her grubby hand full of WIC checks I pay for. It also makes me mad when government schools pull garbage like this. Not much of my money might go to that particular woman, or anyone’s specific school, but morally I am being forced to fund both things and therefore ought to have a say in it.
What, actually, is the difference between government-funded schools and government-funded WIC?
bump
Revisionist history writing is rampant and largely unstoppable since the libs sit exclusively on the boards that make these universal textbook decisions. They require Southern kids, for example, to read that their ancestors were all traitors and slave whippers who got straightened out by the Glorious Union. When you are in 8th grade and you sit in a history class and read some account of what happened for the first time, you have NO prior knowledge upon which to draw to question something. This only comes from further study or from home schooling. It is a huge problem and nothing new. The victors and the libs write the texts for our kids. Now you can add the PC and anti-white American twist to what was already a serious problem.
You guys need to read the Politically Incorrect Guide to American History by Thomas Woods. According to him, there is a lot more than that wrong with what we have been taught! As I teeter towards old age, I am beginning to strongly suspect that I have been fed a steady diet of BS practically all my life. It does not leave a good taste in my mouth.
For all its faults, you can use the internet to ‘go to the source’ - you can easily read verbatim transcripts of letters, papers, orders, laws, etc rather than just get the twist some historian with a mission wants you to believe. BE YOUR OWN HISTORIAN AND ENCOURAGE OTHERS TO ALSO DO SO!
I apologize for letting my emotions get the better of me. I have been homeschooling for 6 years and I have had to repeatedly justify my homeschooling to people who think automatically that my decision to homeschool is an affront to their character. I read your post the same way. While, I still believe my arguments to be correct, I could have presented them in kinder manner.
One more thing, it’s not impossible to work and teach. I have some friends who work and homeschool (one is a teacher LOL). One group of 3 came up with a pretty good system.
What they do is they do tag team teaching on different days/shifts while the others work. It’s working out well for them. They’ve shifted their schedules a bit (for example one works on a Saturday to be able to have a day off to teach during the week)
Good lord....I wasn’t trying to start a fight.
My intent was to prove how quickly home schoolers jump on those that don’t home school, that they should, and have no excuse not to.
It’s annoying, at best. My apologies for coming across the wrong way.
I ping the Another Reason to Homeschool list about goings on in the public education system because that’s what the list is for.
It’s not just another *Duh* comment. It’s to keep homeschoolers abreast of what is going on in the public schools, and curriculum changes like that are of interest to homeschoolers.
We need to know what’s going on with textbooks because we buy them ourselves and need to make informed decisions about them. And we have say as taxpayers regardless of our decision to avail ourselves of public education.
It, however, is still a legitimate reason to homeschool, regardless of whether it is blindingly obvious to us, because it is not so obvious to others, like the morons who think that this kind of revisionism is OK.
Apology accepted. I hope you can accept mine as well. Next time you don’t want to start a fight you may not want to use the phrase “let the attacks begin”. ;)
But because of California's budget crisis, the state hasn't been able to purchase as many new textbooks, he explained. So the default is Texas.
"So when this 15-member board – eight people of that will make a majority – make a decision, it will affect the entire nation," Staver said
What needs to happen here is that parents need to contact local school boards and their state board of education and alert them to this and insist that the schools buy historically correct textbooks, and that if they don't they will be voted out and the parents will threaten them with homeschooling.
If enough of the smaller states refuse to buy the revisionist history books, the textbook publishers are going to lose more money from those lost sales than they will gain by having a big state like TX buy them.
And local schools like their money, too. They lose it when people homeschool.
Ooops, forgot I said that. I s’pose I was already on the defense.. ;)
Good point, metmom! I am involved in our local school district because A) I still pay taxes for them, B) The kids that go to school there are my son’s peers and I care about them as well and C) I really hate how lopsided the system is and how it aims to growing little socialist democrat voters, so they can be in power forever!
I ping the Another Reason to Homeschool list about goings on in the public education system because that’s what the list is for.
It’s not just another *Duh* comment. It’s to keep homeschoolers abreast of what is going on in the public schools, and curriculum changes like that are of interest to homeschoolers.
We need to know what’s going on with textbooks because we buy them ourselves and need to make informed decisions about them. And we have say as taxpayers regardless of our decision to avail ourselves of public education.
It, however, is still a legitimate reason to homeschool, regardless of whether it is blindingly obvious to us, because it is not so obvious to others, like the morons who think that this kind of revisionism is OK.
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