My boys meeting their new sister for the first time

It seems Agricola is the game of choice to celebrate a new life. Makes sense. 

My Beautiful Girls

We welcomed the newest member of our family this morning, Abigail Raye! Mother and daughter are both doing great.

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.
-G.K. Chesterton

Parental Rights in Public School: Not So Fast

A very interesting article from The Great Education Struggle:

There has been a huge grassroots push to Op-Out from the new assessments given at schools all across America. Mostly concerned mothers (another topic in and in-itself) have come together as a new form of militia in order to “starve the test” of valid data points. I whole heartily support their effort and do all I can on the podcast and social media to help. However, I believe the only way to truly have a say in what your children are being taught and method of assessment your children are being exposed to is to withdraw our children from any education program that is connected with the Common Core apparatus. Yes this means from public school and in many cases, from private school too.

 

Why do I say this?  Because the federal courts have ruled many times that as parents we abdicate our parental rights when we send our children to public school. Before you start calling me a right wing extremist or fundamentalist, hear me out, or should I say, hear what the courts have already forced upon you.

 

The First Circuit ruled, in Brown v. Hot, Sexy and Safer Productions, Inc.,1 parents do not have a “fundamental constitutional right to dictate the curriculum [or assessments] at the public school to which they have chosen to send their children.”2 Did you catch that?  The court ruled you voluntarily abdicate your rights when you willingly send your children to the public school. The court said you do not have to send your kids to public school, therefore, if you do, you do so willingly, and thus give up your parental rights in determining what your children is taught and how they are assessed and by what instrument.

 

The court clearly stated the government does not have the right to tell parents where to send their children for education, or to tell them what to teach if they teach at home, but the Court did declare parents cannot tell public schools, “You can’t teach my child subjects that are morally offensive to me.”3  The justification they cite also demonstrates what is wrong with our current governmental philosophy. They claim citizens do not have the right to tell their government what to do. That’s right, the government is not there to serve us, but we are to serve and obey the government.

 

And people think we are crazy for wanting to be responsible for what our children learn.  The alternative is frightening. Yet this absurd op-ed chastises parents who homeschool as “abandoning the common good” and “detrimental to society as a whole”. She says that homeschoolers should keep their children in public school and fight to reform it instead of “opting out”. But this court decision clearly shows that parents are in no position to determine the course of their local schools.

This op-ed is ridiculous. It is clearly biased against homeschool, as the author does not similarly lecture parents who choose to “opt out” by placing their children in private schools. She also never mentions that public schools still receive the tax dollars of families who choose to homeschool though they do not use the schools. She is upset that people are teaching their children outside the purview of the state. She is upset that people are opting out of the collectivist brainwashing that happens in these “institutions”. Well too bad. The idea that anyone should sacrifice the best interest of their children for some dubious and ambiguous common good is offensive and contrary to the concept of individual liberty.

The long and the short of it is, the system doesn’t want our input, and we don’t want what the system is selling. We are doing the best thing we can for our children. I personally couldn’t care less whether the author (or those like her) like it or not, I am not interested in ceding my parental rights to the state and trusting them to do what is best for my children. It is obvious from articles like these that the state isn’t interested in what is best for my child. According people like this, my child’s welfare is subordinate to the state’s. It is almost unbelievable that this is the world we live in. 

 

We have had enough of shamelessness and foolish wars against reality.  

You cannot make “the world” a better place. The world is the world, old and stupid. Man is a sinner, and worst when he forgets that he is. That’s not to say that you should sit and do nothing. Do the dishes. Read a good book. Be kind to your bothersome neighbor. Darken the church door and bend your knee in prayer.

Accept reality, and do the hard and unheralded work of cultivating virtue. Children are imprudent because they lack experience. Let them learn prudence from their elders. It takes no courage to follow the dreamy fad of the day, and children are suggestible. Let them learn the courage to resist the foolish and ephemeral. Children are often intemperate, because they’re full of energy and so are given to hasty action and violent passions. Let them master and marshal their passions by subordinating them to right reason. Children see the world in stark oppositions of just and unjust. Let them keep their strong sense of justice, but let them temper it with the mercy that comes from acknowledgment of sin. Let shame instruct them in clemency.

Deny reality, dive deep into vice, and you will be a slave. Free the children? Teach them to blush. It’s a good start.

I am finding I very much enjoy Anthony Esolen’s work. You can read the article that this quote is from here. 

How North Carolina Pushed Back On Common Core

From an article I found at Freedom Works:

The Standards Commission needs to be appointed. The chance of a rebrand is strong. One can be sure that Dr. Atkinson and the Chamber of Commerce are using all their pull to make sure they have as many of their Common Core supporters appointed as possible.

This is why I am calling on citizens across this state to pay close attention to every move this Commission makes – including who is appointed. If we don’t, a rebrand is sure to be the result.

 

People have been fighting Common Core all over the country, but this is what we are now in danger of. Proponents haven’t given up. Unable to advance their cause on merit, they are now using obfuscation, rebranding the Core while trying to convince the opposition that it has won. Don’t give up! Continue to pay attention and hold your public servants accountable. 

We should allow no separation to grow up between the intellectual and “spiritual” life of children; but should teach them that the divine Spirit has constant access to their spirits, and is their continual helper in all the interests, duties, and joys of life. 

– Charlotte Mason

The Myth of the Helpless Parent

Incredible article from Truth in American Education. 

“I Can” statements are all the rage in our public schools. Students are to say “I can” and then positively reaffirm something they feel capable of doing.

I’m offering suggestions for “We can” statements. If your school district obeys the law, tells the truth, spends money wisely, and properly educates children, then you probably don’t need these. Sadly, most citizens don’t have a school district like that, and this article is directed to them.

Parents have been trained for decades to trust in America’s K-12 government schools. This trust now serves the districts but not the students within them. Most districts aren’t being held accountable for violations of the law; failures to properly educate children; improper spending of tax dollars; or long-term refusals to tell citizens the truth.

Many districts seem increasingly dictatorial, deceitful, expensive and intrusive. We trust them with our children, and in return, they lie to us, miseducate our children and blame us for their failures. When we question them, some even attack us, using government/media/corporate allies to help pile on. They retain power in the way schoolyard bullies do, by ensuring that parents remain cowed, isolated and uninformed. It’s ironic. In reality, parents have all of the power.

Most parents don’t know that. Schools have purposefully fostered a sense of helplessness in parents (and in students and teachers), training us to believe that we must do as we’re told. Schools couldn’t eliminate parents altogether, but they could create parents who agree to eliminate themselves.

Schools thus trained successive generations to work in a group, defer to the group, think as a group, achieve consensus with the group, be assessed with the group, and defend group decisions. Punishments and rewards have been used to mold thinking and behavior and to direct energies. Parents are encouraged to be involved in the schools, as long as our involvement brings in money, furthers the agenda and doesn’t question the authority. Obeying = Rewards. Dissenting = Punishments.

Nowadays, when schools praise “critical thinking,” they usually mean non-critical thinking or groupthink. When they talk about community “input,” they tend to receive it via the Delphi Technique, a way of manipulating groups to agree on predetermined conclusions. When they ask for parent “help,” they mean any help that doesn’t question the authority, not even to help a child.

Meanwhile, parents have long been shut out of the education of our own children. Books are eliminated, homework isn’t sent home, traditional methods are derided as “old school,” and our wishes are undermined or ignored. Parent preferences are openly criticized and dismissed, and in conferences, we’re told: “Don’t teach that at home. Don’t help. You’ll just confuse your child.” Schools now use technology to hide the curriculum – on tablets and laptops and in private email accounts for children.

Follow the link to read the rest. 

Study: Math Success Aided by Knowing Facts, Freeing Working Memory

Dr. Kathy Mann, working for the National Institutes of Health, has discovered that children’s brains reorganize as they are learning math.  That means experience does matter and drilling children at home on simple addition and multiplication really could pay off in the long run, says Lauren Neergaard writing for the Associated Press. 

You can read more here, but the big take away is that the Common Core math standards run completely counter to this research. The new conceptual method Common core champions are backwards and counterproductive. They are not appropriate for how children actually learn, which is what experts have been saying from the beginning. The Common Core math standards undermine the way children learn naturally and effectively. But homeschoolers have already known this. I wonder how supporters will answer this latest setback.