Posted on 04/24/2005 3:26:43 PM PDT by wagglebee
Editor's note: This is an excerpt from a speech given by Kevin Swanson, the executive director of the Colorado Home School Association, at a banquet that was part of Homeschool Day at the state Capitol April 8.
One-hundred and twenty years ago, when Laura Ingalls Wilder walked into her one-room schoolhouse, there were no police officers in the hallways, and not a single arrest made the entire school year. A police officer in Colorado Springs recently told me that he makes an arrest a day at a high school in that city.
One-hundred years ago, there were barely 3-4 percent of children born without fathers. Today, that rate has grown to 35 percent. One-hundred years ago, 24-year-old men had no idea what transsexuals were. Today, 6-year-olds know what transsexuals are. We saw one at the restaraunt the other day.
Two-hundred years ago, our forefathers went to war over 67 cents of taxation.. The federal governmnet taxed the average citizen $1 in 1787. Today, each citizen pays $6,000 a year in federal taxes, an increase of 9000 percent adjusted for inflation. The government takes almost 50 percent of our income in taxes, whereas in 1913, that number was just under 10 percent.
Our nation has changed profoundly. And the worst part of it is that most people have no idea what they live in. We have perfectly patterned our lives after the Benjamin Franklin quote, "Either you'll be governed by God, or by God you'll be governed."
The agenda of the left is plain. They want 70 percent of children born without fathers – 35 percent is not good enough. They want 75 percent of our income taken in taxes, not just 50 percent. They are not satisfied with 50 percent of marriages ending in divorce. Let's make that 80 percent!
But, thank God, there are 30,000 homeschool moms and dads in Colorado who have turned to a burgeoning government and said, "NO!" Thank God, there are some who see the battle as the destruction of the family by means of a government that would control and displace the family.
The Pilgrims of a previous century saw the danger of a government that wanted to control the church. They boarded a ship and sailed to America.
There are roughly as many Pilgrims in this room today as there were Pilgrims on the Mayflower. The Pilgrims today have boarded a ship and taken their families away from government insitututions that are hell-bent on destroying the family.
Can we turn the tide with a mere 2 million pilgrims that have pulled out of the harbor? I think so. It has been done before. It can be done again.
Two million strong in this country are willing to say: "Maybe Karl Marx was wrong on his 10th plank ... Free Public Education for all. Maybe Rousseau, the father of the modern statist, humanist world, the father of the modern godless state, the man who envisioned a world without family, a world without parents, maybe he was wrong."
Of course, 2 million students are a mere drop in the bucket compared to 60 million public-schooled students.
"They tell us, sir, that we are weak, unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be next week ... or next year ... will it be when we are totally disarmed ... and when a guard is stationed in every house ... to check on your vaccinations ... and your standardized tests?
"Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Two millions of people armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us.
"Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battle alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery.
"It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, peace peace, but there is no peace. Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentleman wish? What would they have? Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death."
The quality of the academic education isn't the main problem, not by a longshot. Even though the academics in public schools are terrible, the behavior and interaction of the students is unbelievable. I was private schooled for all 12 years of my primary education, except for being in a public school for 4th and half of 5th grade. The reason for the half year in 5th was because the environment I was in day in and day out with the sick twisted little people we call children these days had nearly destroyed me. I was raised a Christian and ingrained with a strong sense of right, wrong, and work ethic to excel at my studies. This instantly made me the #1 target in the entire school. I aced my academics and even got into a special program that existed then for particularly talented students. Too bad I was quickly going downhill socially and emotionally.
Did you know that 4th graders (10 year olds) in a public school will cuss at other students 24 hours a day with every word you can imagine? You'd think you were in a porn studio the whole day with the phrases I rapaidly learned. No discipline, no one listening in on what these students are saying or taking action to make them behave properly. And this was over 17 years ago. By 5th grade I remember a few discussions of disgusting sex acts that couples in my gradeschool had done. Seventeen years ago. They wanted to put me on medication because I was distraught at being bullied and beat up every day on school property. And no, these weren't the kind of normal kid things where you just throw a few punches and end up as friends. These were the kind of kids that would come back with their gang and you wind up in the hospital. And I wish I was talking about middle school and high school. I'm not. This was all in a typical middle class neighborhood gradeschool, not some urban ghetto. Why don't you ask your gradeschooler if they recognize a few of the most horribly vulgar phrases you can imagine. I bet they can describe it better than you can. Ask them how many people they've said them to... they've lost count. Ask them how many times they've used those phrases in anger at someone and not just joking with friends... again, they've probably lost count. This is our public school system. There is no discipline, or order, or sanity.
Sleep well tonight, and don't send your kids to public shcools.
"I would urge all of you who do homeschooling to make sure your children get some sort of socialization with other children who are not homeschooled."
Try again. This is how that should read:
"I would urge all of you who do government schooling to make sure your children get some sort of socialization with other children who are not their same age, and with adults."
Friends, socialization is a problem. But it isn't a problem with those who don't go into the assembly line government schools. It is a problem for those who don't have enough imagination, social skills and real-life experience/know how to see that what happens in "school" does not correspond to any post-school social setting.
For those of you who are really concerned about "socialization" you need to turn your fire at government schools, not homeschooling. Homeschoolers are the ONLY ones getting properly socialized (ie, interacting with people outside of their age group, interacting with adults) while those in the schools are extremely limited in their social interaction.
Of course that challenge is difficult for some folks, because in the Orwellian world in which we live, up means down and down means up....nonetheless, I have to toss that out there.
If anyone needs socialization skills it's public school students. They are not going to get it by hanging around kids their own age.
Like all young employees...they must be trained. I find that homeschool kids are much easier to mold than public school kids.
Good grief.......where did you ever get the idea that homeschooling ticks me off? I am a major proponent of it and have always been, as well as a staunch defender. What ticks me off is the attitude of some who speak out of both sides of their mouth supposedly respecting the decisions of others while at the same time trashing them for it...which is exactly what you have done to me, once again.
You make a good point, especially from the perspective of the personal experience you tell us about. However, I have not found your experience to be the norm among the homeschool families I know. The socialization argument against homeschooling generally portrays these families as backwoods isolationists with their children virtually imprisoned behind locked doors. I don't find that the case at all. All of the homeschooling families in our church are outgoing, socially involved members of the local community. Their children are actually better adjusted socially than most of their teenage contemporaries in the public schools who suffer from the so-called generation gap. Homeschool kids, in my experience, can actually talk to adults without being surly and bound by the adverse peer pressure that so dominates the public school world---a peer pressure that has been demonstrated, time and again, to be extremely destructive.
Homeschooling is not primarily about protecting kids from outside influence. It is concerned with giving your kids a good education both academically and morally so that they can interact with and influence the world in a positive Christian manner, rather than being conformed by the world into its own mold. Home-schoolers want their kids to progressively socialize and interact with the world around them as they are progressively given the proper educational foundations to do so.
So, this is my take on the socialization argument. In summary, it often misrepresents home-schoolers as social hermits. And, on the positive side, I see them as better adjusted and more mature than most of their contemporaries in the public schools.
there is no way that you are going to change or reform the public schools... ask the many who have given their lives to public education... the ones who truly thought they could make a difference... i come from a family of some of those very educators... what these very commited educators have discovered is that the public school system is so deeply entrenched in its bureaucracy and its ways--its very bizarre and artificial ways--that the only way it will ever change is if the entire US government collapses, and Americans rise up to rebuild something entirely different...
homeschoolers taking a different route is not hurting the public school system... you are in a situation that you have come to believe and accept gives you no choice but to send your children to public school... that is analogous to your being a farmer who only has a donkey to plow his land and thinks it's not right that other farmers are able to use tractors...
or better yet, you are in a situation where you believe you must go to this one doctor--you have no other options... the doctor is not a good doctor, and many of his patients are "fleeing" to other doctors and are discovering other ways of treating their illnesses themselves... but you have come to accept that you cannot do what these other patients are doing... and you think it's not right that they are turning their backs to your doctor...
how is it that you could fault these patience for taking a different route? how is it that you could fault parents for leaving the public school system that they do not believe in...
for many of us homeschoolers, public school is actually the enemy to everything in which we value and believe... conviction does not allow us to stay there... please know that many of us homeschoolers actually believe we are accepting a call from God to educate our children ourselves... we will not--cannot--trade in the first eighteen years of our children's lives just to give the public schools a chance to reform... those eighteen years are the only ones we have as parents to do what we can to train our children to become men and women who love God with all their hearts, souls, minds and strength...
personally, i am not willing to support the public school system... and my obligation to mankind, my obligation to love my neighbor as myself, does not require that i do so..
Based on much of your posting on FR, I'd say you leave the distinct impression of being the antithesis of Patrick Henry.
Oh, yes, BIG TIME. It's my number-one gripe. I must complain every single day about the outrageously high school taxes we property owners have to fork over in our state (NJ).
I don't blame parents like yourself for putting your children into public school. After all, you're paying for it, whether you use it or not.
But, please don't buy into the myth that only "higher income" families can afford to homeschool. My husband and I worked split shifts and could only afford one automobile that we shared, and we managed to do it. I didn't stop working until our third was born, and then we still shared one car. (Recently, we bit the bullet and bought a second one). If we didn't have to pay close to $4,000/year in school taxes alone - (property owners in other NJ neighborhoods pay even more) - we could afford much more.
Meanwhile, educating our children at home doesn't cost much at all. I get most of their books at dollar and discount stores, and spend maybe $200/year to teach all three kids, including museum memberships, group activities, outside classes, field trips, etc.
I also know single and working parents who homeschool. It can be done.
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