Free Republic

It's not that top universities are telling people directly to homeschool their kids. Instead, top schools are using a selection process that gives homeschooled kids a huge advantage. Here's why: 1. Good grades are a commodity, so they don't help in the admissions process. Girls are doing so much better than boys in both standard high school courses and in standardized tests that their good grades and good scores don't get girls into good colleges. It's not enough anymore. White girls especially need a hook. A hook is, ironically, something you are passionate about and engaged in that is outside...

TORONTO, November 29, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Homeschoolers are incensed after Anna Maria Tremonti, host of CBC’s The Current, decided to air what she called the “last word” on her show discussing homeschooling. Following her November 14 show, a two minute skit cast homeschooling mothers as incompetent, uneducated, and sexually irresponsible. The home-schooled teenage male—who was cast as unchallenged, resentful, rebellious, and delinquent—suggested at one point that he would rather not have been created than homeschooled. “OK, so I’m supposed to learn geometry from a lady who never graduated college and wasn’t smart enough to use condoms?” rants the teenager in...

This cartoon was drawn by a 16-year-old homeschooler.The title of this article is polarizing and I expect to get in trouble for writing it. As a homeschooling parent, I’m not supposed to think homeschooling superior to institutionalized education. I’m supposed to take the stance that all choices are equal in the effort not to offend anyone who prefers public schooling. It’s a hot topic in the mommy circles and one that most homeschooling moms want to avoid. We all encounter the same comments and exclamations like, “How do you do it? When are you going to put them in...

'Tis education forms the common mind Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined - Alexander Pope Progressive education.... what is it? Where does it come from? Is America the only place it's ever been tried? I've made my own attempts to dig into progressive education, but I can only use the internet for my queries. This book titled "Bending the twig; the revolution in education and its effect on our children" is a genuine inquiry based on thoughtful research into the topic using sources I'd probably never have access to. The review for this book comes from a...

Homeschoolers Flee Persecution in Germany and Sweden The New American 03 November 2012 This weekend the first ever Global Home Education conference is being held in Berlin as homeschool families tell of being forced to flee Germany and Sweden. Related Articles: German Statesman Backs Homeschooling, Slams State for “Usurping” Kids In Sweden, Persecuted Jewish Homeschoolers Win Court Battle Persecuted & Exiled Swedish Homeschoolers “Walk to Freedom,” Vow to Fight On Homeschool Leader Flees Swedish Persecution Sweden Bans Home-schooling, Religious Instruction State "Kidnapping" of Swedish Home-schooler Prompts International Outcry U.S. Judge Grants Asylum for Homeschooling Family Government Schools Are Bad for...

There are dozens of very tight, but winnable Congressional elections - both House and Senate. Why not combine your personal interest, our national interest and home schooling by making Get Out The Vote (GOTV) calls with your homeschoolers. We just took our homeschoolers over to our local Republican Victory Center here in Illinois and made about 300 calls. It is extremely easy. They set you up with a very short script. The kids were nervous, but it's very easy and a well spoken 10 year old can do it easily. Once they get started you just roll along. This isn't...

It’s hard to identify an area where technology has made more impact than homeschooling. With the growth of digital learning options, many parents who have never before considered taking more control over their children’s education are now withdrawing their kids from traditional schools — at least part-time — and allowing them to take advantage of courses offered by not only for-profit providers on contract to their school districts, but also online high school programs offered by some of the best colleges and universities around the country. (snip) Most of the studies compiled by groups such as the National Home School...

A college instructor in Nevada allegedly required students to masturbate and publicly reveal personal sex-fantasies in order to pass a “human-sexuality” class, reads a federal complaint filed in U.S. District Court late last month.Former Western Nevada College student and aspiring social worker, Karen Royce, filed the complaint against college administrators and instructor Tom Kubistant saying freshman and late-high school students were ordered to “openly discuss their orgasms” and masturbate. Kubistant “locked the classroom door” and played a “90-minute movie… depicting females engaging in sex and having an orgasm,” states Royce’s complaint.The complaint also alleges that Kubistant demanded female students turn...

Senator John Kerry (D-Mass), after being told to stuff his Law of the Sea Treaty (at least for this year), has announed he WILL pass the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) by July 26, 2012. Obama signed the Treaty in 2009. Now it has to make it out of Kerry's Committee, which is a given, and then must pass a two-thirds vote in the Senate. If Democrats, with the help of some Republicans, pull this off, it will be the "first time the U.S. has ratified a treaty that substantially impacts domestic law." This is...

Ten one-minute chapters on the development of the English language

... Before 2010, it was possible to home-school in Sweden. But new laws now ban the practice in almost all cases and forces private schools to teach the state curriculum. Swedish human rights lawyer Ruby Harrold-Claesson calls what's happening in Sweden a "parental inquisition." "Sweden's treatment of parents in the area of education is totalitarian, essentially. They want to take children from birth to graduation and control them," said Michael Donnelly, director of international relations at the Homeschool Legal Defense Association. Donnelly claims Sweden's treatment of parents violates established standards of human rights. "In fact, the U.N. Declaration on Human...

I don't engage in vanities very often, but I thought this one might be interesting to some folks, and I wouldn't mind a little (courteous) input. Some of you may remember that we homeschooled our two sons through eighth grade and then sent 'em off to a local Catholic high school. The older guy, who is registered here as swotsonofsitetest, graduates in June and will be off to college in the fall. We're now coming to the end of the college application and admission process and it's decision time. I'm interested in folks opinions about that decision. After eight years...

On February 13, 2012, Representative Bob Evans (District 91) filed a bill in the Mississippi Legislature that would require parents to obtain permission from a judge to homeschool their children. House Bill 464 would impose a duty on school attendance officers to collect and maintain unspecified and unlimited information on all children being homeschooled and to report this information to the judge of the youth court or chancery court. This information would be used “for the purpose of exempting such children from the truancy laws of this state.” There is no requirement in the bill that there be any case...

Seattle libraries will not allow patrons to eat or sleep or go barefoot. But they can watch all the hardcore porn they want in front of children. Seattle PI reported: The Seattle Public Library has a long list of rules of things you can’t do in the library, to ensure “comfort and safety” of staff and patrons. You can’t eat, sleep, look like you’re sleeping, be barefoot, be too stinky or talk too loudly. But you can watch graphic porn on a public computer in front of kids. Despite repeated complaints from female patrons about men watching porn in full...

Would any concerned parent willingly send their children to an average public school in this country if there was an option available? The word “concerned” in the question should be a tipoff that the answer is no. Still, states, localities and the federal government continue to dump billions of our hard-earned tax dollars into a system that is rotten to its core. Don’t think things are that bad? A student in Washington state named Austin took a video camera into his school’s cafeteria and asked students basic questions about U.S. history. The answers, although funny, are pathetic. Progressives say it’s...

They raise chickens. They grow vegetables. They knit. Now a new generation of urban parents is even teaching their own kids. In the beginning, your kids need you—a lot. They’re attached to your hip, all the time. It might be a month. It might be five years. Then suddenly you are expected to send them off to school for seven hours a day, where they’ll have to cope with life in ways they never had to before. You no longer control what they learn, or how, or with whom. Unless you decide, like an emerging population of parents in cities...

America is in shambles from sea to shining sea. Unemployment is nearly at Great Depression levels. The real estate is still week and near collapse. And, of course, our U.S. Triple A credit rating is gone for the first time in history. But this is National School Choice Week and all of that terrible economic news is child’s play (excuse the pun) compared to our failing government-run education system. The accelerating and dramatic decline of our public school system is the shame of this once great country. I call our public school system "Every Child Left Behind." The failure of...

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Last night in his State of the Union address President Obama called on all states to raise their school compulsory attendance age to 18, unnecessarily adding to bureaucratic requirements for homeschoolers. Homeschool advocates at the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) are dedicated to protecting the educational relationship between parents and their children. Parents—not the federal government and certainly not the president—are the ones who should decide how children are educated and when they’re ready to graduate from high school. But President Obama presumptively spoke on behalf of parents and the states: “So tonight, I am proposing that every...

This is young comedian jokes around about the lies about homeschooling. He nails it. Messy Mondays: Seven lies about homeschoolers

CHARLESTON, South Carolina -- Rick Santorum has no more loyal base than the crowd of home-schooled children and their parents who gathered here Thursday night. Not only are all of Santorum's children home-schooled by his wife Karen, but the family is committed to holistic medical treatments, health food, and Christian-inspired learning, popular causes with home-schoolers.The topics covered at the Charleston town hall varied widely, but the conversation always returned to education. And Santorum, whose late grassroots rally in Iowa was built on the foundation of endorsements from various home school advocacy groups, was all too happy to rally the...