Tony Woodlief on homeschooling

What he said.

Guerilla math

Underground teaching at home, a.k.a. homeschooling.

Homeschooling in California

Mr Culbreath is all over the California homeschooling situation.

The homeschooling Pope

Check this out from B16's address to the European People's Party in March 2006 in which he recognizes the right of parents to educate their children as one of the foundations of a truly human society.

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable. Among these the following emerge clearly today:

- protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death;

- recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family - as a union between a man and a woman based on marriage - and its defence from attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different forms of union which in reality harm it and contribute to its destabilization, obscuring its particular character and its irreplaceable social role;

- the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.

These principles are not truths of faith, even though they receive further light and confirmation from faith; they are inscribed in human nature itself and therefore they are common to all humanity. The Church’s action in promoting them is therefore not confessional in character, but is addressed to all people, prescinding from any religious affiliation they may have. On the contrary, such action is all the more necessary the more these principles are denied or misunderstood, because this constitutes an offence against the truth of the human person, a grave wound inflicted onto justice itself.

A look at public-school abuse of students

Take a look at Hidden Violations by the Illinois-based Small Newspaper Group. As Mark Shea might say, it's reason #345234234 to homeschool.

But what about socialization?

Every homeschooling parent is tired of hearing that question. Folks seem to think it's good for children to spend all day with their age-peers. One of our standard replies is that we're aiming more for civilization than socialization.

In his February 2006 essay about Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, Theodore Dalrymple, a retired prison psychiatrist, described one of the common effects of g-school socialization:

And Mr. Burgess foresaw the importance that the youth culture would attach to sexual precocity and a kind of disabused knowingness. It would not have surprised Mr. Burgess that magazines for 10- or 11-year-old girls are now full of advice about how to make themselves sexually attractive, or that girls of 6 or 7 are dressed by their single mothers in costumes redolent of prostitution.

The precocity necessary to avoid humiliation by peers prevents young people from maturing further and leaves them in a state of petrified adolescence. Persuaded that they already know all that is necessary, they are disabused about everything, for fear of appearing naive.

With no deeper interests, they are prey to gusts of hysterical and childish enthusiasm; only increasingly extreme sensations can arouse them from their mental torpor. Hence the epidemic of self-destructiveness that has followed in the wake of the youth culture.

The world in which youth culture predominates and precocity is the highest achievement is one in which all tenderness is absent. When Alex and his gang attack the teacher, they find a letter in his pocket, which one of them reads out derisively: "My darling one ... I shall be thinking of you while you are away and hope you will remember to wrap up warm when you go out at night."

Such simple and heartfelt affection and concern for another person are extinct in the world of Alex and his droogs. Self-absorbed, Alex is self-pitying but has no pity for others. All relations with other human beings are instrumental means to a selfish, brutal, hedonistic end.

free-reading.net

This looks interesting - free-reading.net, a mediawiki-based website for teachers:

Free-Reading is an "open source" instructional program that helps teachers teach early reading. Because it's open source, it represents the collective wisdom of a wide community of teachers and researchers. It's designed to contain a scope and sequence of activities that can support and supplement a typical "core" or "basal" program.

It really works!

After a recent last-minute crazed cleaning session in advance of a guest's arrival, we instituted the "after-meal cleanup": when the last person walks out of the dining room at the end of each meal I call out "After-meal cleanup!" and we spend a couple of minutes restoring the family room and the library to guest-ready condition. I'm utterly astounded at the effectiveness of this - we've maintained the family room this way for a week and just today we achieved guest-readiness in the library. After a week or so of keeping both at the ready, we'll add another room.

Reason number 355468453 to homeschool

Award-winning books as required reading. The big national children's book awards are typically awarded to oppressive poorly-written crap that's completely inappropriate for children. Naturally, that's what government educators like to assign to kids. In our family they start with the usual toddler's books, move on through the decent pabulum of the Boxcar Children, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, then on to history, well-written fiction and encyclopedias.

Nine-year-old Sarah is a wikipedia maven. She's reading about chess at the moment after spending the morning with bears, cats and kittens.