Responsibility

Boy Wanders Into Mexico After School Bus Mix-up

"Gadsden Elementary School District board President Luis Marquez says that if any failure is found in the school transportation system, it will be corrected immediately."

"IF" any failure is found? You let a kid get onto a bus which wasn't his. You dropped him off at a place which wasn't his home. He "wandered" into another COUNTRY. I'd say that somewhere in there, something or someone failed.

People are surprised when something goes wrong after they turn their kids over to the government. Every time you hear, "This country is so messed up," "The government does this or that"...

I'm not even shocked anymore. The government screws up most anything it touches. I should know, I'm in the "go over there and screw that up" department of the government (only we use bombs and guns). Where's our "escape strategy" from the failed government education system?

Freedom ... for 10 weeks a year.

The back-to-school propaganda machine is in full swing these days. The news media makes light of both the collective groan from children, mourning the loss of summer freedom, and the cheers from adults, anticipating the return of "free" day care in the form of compulsory public education. Advertisers swoop in with the diversion of back to school shopping. New clothes, fresh supplies, the latest electronics - all to distract parents and children alike from the scary reality of ever-increasing government control over our children, our time, our entire lives.

Children are right to groan, but not for reasons that they are fully conscious of. Learning is about making sense of the world, but too many children are shut out of that world. They're stuffed in a classroom for eight hours a day after a too-early-in-the-morning bus ride and spend even more time away from family on homework or extracurricular activities. Caged like animals from dawn to dusk, separated from their natural instincts to explore, observer and learn, they turn into adults who can't make sense of the world around them. Their survival instincts were arrested at an early age. Good for a government that wants dependent and docile citizens, but a horrendous assault on individuality and the sanctity of a child's development. Children know it isn't right or natural, and I suspect, deep down, parents know this, too. But, just as in school, they are blinded by the status quo. They numbly go along. They shut up and put up, because they've forgotten how or never had the opportunity to think for themselves. They accept, essentially, government-mandated control over how their family spends its time.

Here in North Carolina, it's still over 90 degrees outside, hurricanes are churning in the Atlantic, summer thunderstorms wash away the day's heat, the ocean water is the perfect temperature, the cool air of the mountains still beckons, not a single leaf has turned color, tomatoes are still ripening on the vine, mosquitoes and fireflies still flutter in my backyard. Yet students are returning to school next week, unnaturally ending a season that naturally meanders into late September. Every year, I feel excitement with a twinge of sadness as seasons pass. But as a child, returning to school in late summer was met with unspeakable sadness and anxiety. It unnaturally cut short time with siblings, time to enjoy summer, to read, sew, garden, swim, be with friends or be alone, even do nothing at all.

The language of the back-to-school blitz makes me flinch. A "Kickoff to Kindergarten" event at a local museum was described as boot camp for 5-year-olds; a lifeguard described the change in demeanor among children in the past week saying "It's just like they put their heads down and look at their feet. They know what's coming."

A headline declared "Last week of freedom." I'm afraid that's old news. Our freedom was lost a long time ago.

I stumbled across this quote today in reference to the parents' right to homeschool.

"Reality Check: The state needs our approval to even exist. This need is not reciprocal."
By Bev Jones. HomeSchooling Texas.

By clicking on this quote, I was linked to this:

"Some homeschoolers have been scrambling to gain state approval for years now. Those of us who realize that parenting our offspring is a perfectly right and natural function of having produced those children, also realize that no state "seal of approval" is required. In fact, seeking the state's approval is seeking to bring force to bear upon your own children, family and home. "

I was recently posed with the 'accreditation' question, by a new acquaintance. I literally saw his nose turn up when he said the word. I believe him to be one who has not been around many homeschooling families.
I have been on the receiving end of many snarky comments lately. It's getting to me, through my usually thick skin - maybe my guard is down being in a new country with few friends, and fewer like-minded ones. I have had to make up my mind to stop trying to discuss with new meets (potential friends) our particular style of education (which is quite relaxed). I have seen first hand what happens when one mom asks the other what curriculum she uses, and the answer is 'ummm...none, really'. The conversation (the two sided kind) abruptly stalls. So I tend to elaborate and expound on the merits of unschooling. My first few tries to limit myself failed miserably. I love to talk about homeschooling and unschooling. Then when I finally got it right and kept my mouth shut, I was miserable - listening to this poor woman (who has 6 kids under the age of 11) discuss the merits of this curriculum or that one. I have only three kids and I can't stand the thought of trying to mold them all to one boxed curriculum. But, it is what they have chosen, because it works for them.

It really blows my mind that people who clearly like America for the freedom to say anything that crosses their mind (like 'oh we'll work the devil out of you yet,') are incapable of applying the concept of freedom any further than their own mouth.
Whether or not you believe the classroom is the right place for kids,
whether you suspect I am a criminal, breaking the law by teaching at home,
or that I am an idiot who can't even teach at an elementary level,
or that my kids are stupid and incapable of learning on their own,

...certainly as Americans we can all get behind the idea that parents should (I don't even like this word) be the ones to choose the path for their own offspring. And we don't need a government, which came along only in the last 250 years or so, to grant that to us. It was ours in the first place. The government should be protecting the rights we already have, not give them and take them as they see fit.

Brief CA Follow-up

About a week behind the curve, but I did want to post an update concerning the California decision being revisited. The word on the streets now is you may homeschool your children. Hooray! Next stop... DC. (Reactionary politics gone awry)

QED

Failure really should be an option

My husband and I recently watched "The Pursuit of Happyness." The only thing more stunning than the number of bottoms this man, Chris Gardner, had was the how many times he picked himself up, thought of a solution and moved on. Even more interesting was that his ultimate triumph was not overly celebrated in the film. (WARNING: Spoiler alert.) The final scenes showed Gardner stoically accepting a job offer, calmly walking out onto a busy city sidewalk and tearfully clapping his hands. He didn't tell his internship supervisors that he was living in a homeless shelter with his son, that his wife had left him, that he could barely make ends meet; he just showed up to work each day, did his job and tried mightily to keep his head above water in the hopes of winning a job at the end of an unpaid internship. He didn't look for approval or validation of his struggle from his peers. His motivation was all internal. Given the institutional schooling he surely was brought up in, his reaction to adversity is extraordinary.

In school, learning is a race against the clock, failure is stigmatized and avoided while success is narrowly defined, rewarded and expected. Part of my objection to institutional schooling is the intense focus on success, especially in this No Child Left Behind era. We're forgetting that failure is just as instructive, maybe even more so, than success.

Every day, my 19-month-old son tries and fails at a dozen small tasks. Fast forward a few days and he's mastered a skill that once frustrated him. What would happen if I insisted that he succeed at, say, shape sorting after a prescribed number of "lessons"? Would he learn any more completely, quickly or easily than if I had simply let him keep trying until he figured it out?

Lately, instead of showing him how to do something, I simply say, "Try it a different way" or "Turn [the object]" or "It's getting hard to walk around all those toys. Maybe we should pick some up." He doesn't usually get a "Good job" from us when he complies, either. I just describe what he's doing, saying something like, "You're helping Mommy pick up your toys" or "You got the triangle in the triangle hole." And I feel like it's working. He claps for himself when he knows he's done something well or accomplished a task. I loathe using praise with young children. It sets them up to expect external praise instead of experiencing the internal pride that comes from completing an act, such as cleaning up toys under their feet or seeing for themselves how an object fits, that is meaningful to their environment.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want my children to suffer needlessly. I want my children to be successful. But I also want them to fail so that they learn to pick themselves up, try again and be satisfied with whatever level of achievement they decide suits them. They don't have to be perfect. They don't have to be rich. They don't have to meet federal standards or anyone else's. They just have to be human.

found this on drudgereport.com



Please take a minute to check this out. I'll try to post my comments on this later today.