[contextly_sidebar id="GySPjV8lEtT09GchLuYxPVqm5NW0lHU3"]We come to this story from a place of concern. We come with a benefit of the doubt. We come with Hearts of Niceness, even. Topeka, Kansas, City Councilman Jonathan Schumm and his wife, Allison Nicole Schumm, have bonded out of jail on abuse charges --
Yes, she had not one blog, but two. For telling others about her many responsibilities as a serial Mom and sharing her favorite recipes designed to serve about 20. In between going to church, cooking and cleaning, and tweaking her chore log, she had time to BLOG to encourage other women to adopt children, in the service of the Lord, you betcha. Interesting, with all the talk about employers looking up potential hires on Facebook that it never occurred to Kansas Social Services to Google this goddam woman before they allowed her to take these children.
I know two women who were oldest daughters in huge Irish Catholic families and neither of them has kids ... for the same reason you quoted. They had to give themselves the freedom and room to grow they should have had given to them during their first 20 years on earth.
It isn't hyperbole if it is happening - which it is - and you refusing to acknowledge it doesn't make it evaporate, no matter how much you might wish it so. So tiresome . . . ah well, you've lived down to expectations, so you can shuffle off back to your mom's basement. Come back in a few dozen years when you've grown up and stopped believing you know it all. Ruddy teenagers.
No bonehead - your comments are hyperbole - as in exaggeration of what I said...that aside, nothing you said is necessarily happening. There will always be corner case scenarios in real society and legislating on the corner cases is about a retarded an idea as one can possibly imagine...get a frickin clue...
Really? You think it's OK to let kids be told that the only thing that matters is their parent's version of God, and it doesn't matter if they can read or write as long as they are fulfilling the roles that god ordained for them? Because that is happening to girls in areas of this country which adhere to an ultra-patriarchal version of Christianity and where there is no attempt by the state to make parents prove that they are actually educating the kids they are claiming to "home-school". In that case, their "schooling" consists of cleaning and cooking and functioning as nanny to their younger siblings and being brainwashed to believe that their job is to be a slave to whichever male is head of their household, be it father or husband. That you would agree that parents should have no oversight in educating their children and be allowed to steal a boy or girl's ability to decide his or her own future is all I need to know about how screwed up so-called libertarian conservatives are that they would countenance such abuse in the name of "parental rights".
I'm glad for you and I hope that in the end your children are being better educated than they would in the public schools. I fully recognize that not one size fits all, but in my experience as a college professor, I've only had one home-schooled kid whose experience measures up to what you are giving your kids. Maybe home-schooling has changed in the last 15 years, since I stopped teaching undergraduates, but I never had any trouble telling kids who were home-schooled apart from kids who were educated in public or private schools, and not in a positive way. Most were ill-equiped to meet the demands placed on them in a college environment, and many required not only remedial math classes or science classes, but full-on adjustment to the work load and, in some cases, having to decide between accepting that what they had been taught previously was flat-out wrong or withdrawing and going to a religious institution that would allow them to continue deluding themselves. If your state requires accountability, that may make all the difference, as some of the students I encountered had never actually been tested before taking their college boards (often multiple times) and passing with the bare minimum that would allow acceptance to a state university. They certainly never had to take blue-book exams or delve deeper than the surface of a subject (i.e. do more than rote regurgitation of facts).
I am not saying that public or even private formal schools are perfect, because they sure as hell aren't, but by and large, most parents are not equipped or able to provide the kind of enriched home-school environment you seem to be able to, even if their intentions are good. At least the ones who are schooled by parents with good intentions can usually make up for any deficits fairly quickly. Its the children whose parents don't think much of education in the first place but don't want their kids in public school because it will give them 'ideas' their parents don't want them to have, or whose children require something they aren't willing or able to give (see the Schumms), or who are withholding education altogether in the case of the ultra-religious who believe girls should be barely literate, who live in states where no oversight or only minimal oversight is given who are being disadvantaged by their parents to their future detriment.
If your kids had "science" teachers who told their students that evolution isn't real, then they weren't science teachers. It takes effort, but it is possible to put together a school board, even in more religious areas of the country, which takes its oversight function seriously and won't permit the encroachment of religion into public education. In fact, "taking back the school boards" has become almost a cottage industry in the rural areas of my state because of the real drop in standardized test scores in districts with RWNJ boards. If people are beginning to recognize the damage being done to their kids by substituting religion for education, it gives me hope that maybe they can be rallied to fix the funding situation eventually, too.
i regret that i only have one upfist to give. That and a ginger tabby is slowing down my typing (oh, he took the hint, oh no, that means he can read...)
Parents who withhold life-saving medical care to kids are often prosecuted, though not nearly often enough. We aren't talking about something that requires a band-aid or a case of the sniffles. When your "freedom" encroaches on another person's, that's where the state must step in to decide how far you will be allowed to go. Parental abuse (including the failure to seek medical treatment when warranted) is a crime, precisely because minor children have little to no recourse to protection otherwise from parents who believe that their authority should be absolute.
Great post and great non-comments! I teach patients, nurses, PA students and med school graduates, but they already have a background in which they can understand what I tell them. I barely have a grasp on how different adults learn (if they do) but despite having been a child, (my parents lost a bunch of my baby pictures when the film they mailed to be developed got lost in the mail so I say it's because I was never a baby...) I have to constantly remind myself and other adults that kids are not just mini-adults but they more often than not, have good intentions and want to please and also thrive on attention (which sometimes can lead them to making questionable choices.) In making my decisions to keep my snowflakes in the public school system (other than being cheap and lazy) I realized that until the repugs and libertariantards destroy the public school system, the system at least in Northern Virginia has more resources than the schools I can afford. I certainly couldn't do it myself as I am a single mother, I have skills that it took more than a village to help me acquire (thank you CMS and USAF), I have a mortgage to pay to shelter my snowflakes and me, and there are people trained to do it better.
spot on comment, but for a solid five seconds I thought you meant MI as in Michigan and was about to tell you they live in Kansas. Just thought I'd share that confusion with you.
Speaking as a kid whose parents travelled for their profession (writer/journalists) and as the sister of someone who's chronically ill to the point where traditional school isn't a viable option, I can say that homeschooling is a really good option to have. There are people who homeschool for the wrong reasons and who are incompetent, but that's true of any possible choice.
The abuse is sickening. So, too, is the cloistered culture that projects an impossible idealized womanhood that says a good woman can naturally take on and manage a huge brood and homeschool them. The stigma of mental illness and western medicine -- how was she treated? By a doctor? Doubt it. My MIL was like this and was clearly in deep depression during my husband's homeschooling days, half of which he spent watching Matlock reruns on tv while his mom slept. There are no options for sick women in the fundamentalist homeschooling culture. I grant that there are women who do this beautifully. But there are tragic exceptions to the rule.
Yes, she had not one blog, but two. For telling others about her many responsibilities as a serial Mom and sharing her favorite recipes designed to serve about 20. In between going to church, cooking and cleaning, and tweaking her chore log, she had time to BLOG to encourage other women to adopt children, in the service of the Lord, you betcha. Interesting, with all the talk about employers looking up potential hires on Facebook that it never occurred to Kansas Social Services to Google this goddam woman before they allowed her to take these children.
First thing I thought of also too.
I know two women who were oldest daughters in huge Irish Catholic families and neither of them has kids ... for the same reason you quoted. They had to give themselves the freedom and room to grow they should have had given to them during their first 20 years on earth.
It isn't hyperbole if it is happening - which it is - and you refusing to acknowledge it doesn't make it evaporate, no matter how much you might wish it so. So tiresome . . . ah well, you've lived down to expectations, so you can shuffle off back to your mom's basement. Come back in a few dozen years when you've grown up and stopped believing you know it all. Ruddy teenagers.
No bonehead - your comments are hyperbole - as in exaggeration of what I said...that aside, nothing you said is necessarily happening. There will always be corner case scenarios in real society and legislating on the corner cases is about a retarded an idea as one can possibly imagine...get a frickin clue...
Really? You think it's OK to let kids be told that the only thing that matters is their parent's version of God, and it doesn't matter if they can read or write as long as they are fulfilling the roles that god ordained for them? Because that is happening to girls in areas of this country which adhere to an ultra-patriarchal version of Christianity and where there is no attempt by the state to make parents prove that they are actually educating the kids they are claiming to "home-school". In that case, their "schooling" consists of cleaning and cooking and functioning as nanny to their younger siblings and being brainwashed to believe that their job is to be a slave to whichever male is head of their household, be it father or husband. That you would agree that parents should have no oversight in educating their children and be allowed to steal a boy or girl's ability to decide his or her own future is all I need to know about how screwed up so-called libertarian conservatives are that they would countenance such abuse in the name of "parental rights".
Cool. I have students who tell me how Statistics really kicks their butts. (I teach computer science stuff.)
I'm glad for you and I hope that in the end your children are being better educated than they would in the public schools. I fully recognize that not one size fits all, but in my experience as a college professor, I've only had one home-schooled kid whose experience measures up to what you are giving your kids. Maybe home-schooling has changed in the last 15 years, since I stopped teaching undergraduates, but I never had any trouble telling kids who were home-schooled apart from kids who were educated in public or private schools, and not in a positive way. Most were ill-equiped to meet the demands placed on them in a college environment, and many required not only remedial math classes or science classes, but full-on adjustment to the work load and, in some cases, having to decide between accepting that what they had been taught previously was flat-out wrong or withdrawing and going to a religious institution that would allow them to continue deluding themselves. If your state requires accountability, that may make all the difference, as some of the students I encountered had never actually been tested before taking their college boards (often multiple times) and passing with the bare minimum that would allow acceptance to a state university. They certainly never had to take blue-book exams or delve deeper than the surface of a subject (i.e. do more than rote regurgitation of facts).
I am not saying that public or even private formal schools are perfect, because they sure as hell aren't, but by and large, most parents are not equipped or able to provide the kind of enriched home-school environment you seem to be able to, even if their intentions are good. At least the ones who are schooled by parents with good intentions can usually make up for any deficits fairly quickly. Its the children whose parents don't think much of education in the first place but don't want their kids in public school because it will give them 'ideas' their parents don't want them to have, or whose children require something they aren't willing or able to give (see the Schumms), or who are withholding education altogether in the case of the ultra-religious who believe girls should be barely literate, who live in states where no oversight or only minimal oversight is given who are being disadvantaged by their parents to their future detriment.
If your kids had "science" teachers who told their students that evolution isn't real, then they weren't science teachers. It takes effort, but it is possible to put together a school board, even in more religious areas of the country, which takes its oversight function seriously and won't permit the encroachment of religion into public education. In fact, "taking back the school boards" has become almost a cottage industry in the rural areas of my state because of the real drop in standardized test scores in districts with RWNJ boards. If people are beginning to recognize the damage being done to their kids by substituting religion for education, it gives me hope that maybe they can be rallied to fix the funding situation eventually, too.
i regret that i only have one upfist to give. That and a ginger tabby is slowing down my typing (oh, he took the hint, oh no, that means he can read...)
Parents who withhold life-saving medical care to kids are often prosecuted, though not nearly often enough. We aren't talking about something that requires a band-aid or a case of the sniffles. When your "freedom" encroaches on another person's, that's where the state must step in to decide how far you will be allowed to go. Parental abuse (including the failure to seek medical treatment when warranted) is a crime, precisely because minor children have little to no recourse to protection otherwise from parents who believe that their authority should be absolute.
Great post and great non-comments! I teach patients, nurses, PA students and med school graduates, but they already have a background in which they can understand what I tell them. I barely have a grasp on how different adults learn (if they do) but despite having been a child, (my parents lost a bunch of my baby pictures when the film they mailed to be developed got lost in the mail so I say it's because I was never a baby...) I have to constantly remind myself and other adults that kids are not just mini-adults but they more often than not, have good intentions and want to please and also thrive on attention (which sometimes can lead them to making questionable choices.) In making my decisions to keep my snowflakes in the public school system (other than being cheap and lazy) I realized that until the repugs and libertariantards destroy the public school system, the system at least in Northern Virginia has more resources than the schools I can afford. I certainly couldn't do it myself as I am a single mother, I have skills that it took more than a village to help me acquire (thank you CMS and USAF), I have a mortgage to pay to shelter my snowflakes and me, and there are people trained to do it better.
spot on comment, but for a solid five seconds I thought you meant MI as in Michigan and was about to tell you they live in Kansas. Just thought I'd share that confusion with you.
Speaking as a kid whose parents travelled for their profession (writer/journalists) and as the sister of someone who's chronically ill to the point where traditional school isn't a viable option, I can say that homeschooling is a really good option to have. There are people who homeschool for the wrong reasons and who are incompetent, but that's true of any possible choice.
The abuse is sickening. So, too, is the cloistered culture that projects an impossible idealized womanhood that says a good woman can naturally take on and manage a huge brood and homeschool them. The stigma of mental illness and western medicine -- how was she treated? By a doctor? Doubt it. My MIL was like this and was clearly in deep depression during my husband's homeschooling days, half of which he spent watching Matlock reruns on tv while his mom slept. There are no options for sick women in the fundamentalist homeschooling culture. I grant that there are women who do this beautifully. But there are tragic exceptions to the rule.
Kansas is the gift that keeps on giving, isn't it? It's almost like Mississippi.