Why Homeschooling Is Easier Than You Think

I homeschooled several children all the way into college, back when people thought you were seriously crazy for doing it. So, I have some background for what I’m writing today. And I want to get this out now, because millions of parents are presently considering options they never expected to face.

Please pass this along to anyone who may need it.

The Problems With Home Schooling

When I say homeschool is easier than you think, I really mean it, but there are complications and caveats involved. So, let’s start with the problems and get them out of the way.

First of all, there will be days that suck. The kids won’t listen, will be difficult, or will just be obtuse. Expect it. Either you’ll come home from work to your spouse telling you to forget the experiment and find some other place to send them… any other place; or perhaps you’ll be that spouse. It happens. No experienced person ever said that raising kids was painless. That said, nearly all such parents get over the day’s mayhem, and decide to continue the experiment.

Secondly, there’s an underlying problem that tends to drive many others, including the one above: You arrange your homeschooling so that other people can’t criticize you. Below I’ll explain why.

After that are the kinds of problems you’ve already considered: Things like two incomes being required in the modern world and figuring out how to reschedule the work lives of two parents. These are significant problems, but they can be worked out if you take the education of your children as an imperative and arrange your other affairs around it. I’m not promising this will be easy, but please believe me that it’s worth it. Educating your child is rewarding and meaningful.

You are likely to remember these years as your hardest but your best. When you’re 90 years old, do you want to remember the giant screen TVs you had in every room, or the fine people that you – with blood, sweat and tears – molded, filled and sent into the world?

The Big Problem

As I noted above, a terribly common and large problem is arranging your efforts to keep people from criticizing you. I’m telling you to forget that. Let them criticize; let them whisper about you and make fun of you. You don’t want such people in your life anyway. What you must do is arrange your efforts around the results you want.

Your goal is well educated children: Children who can think clearly; who can read, write and do arithmetic well; who are blessings upon Earth; who have confidence in their own abilities. And I’m telling you that doing this, with all the caveats noted above, is easier than you probably think. Please consider:

You do not need to start at 9:00 AM. Start when all involved are ready to start. The clock is not God, and you’re dealing with complicated little beings. (As well as your very complicated self.)

You do not need to spend 5 hours per day. In fact, you may not need to spend even 2 hours per day. One hour of quality learning, every day, is a lot of learning. Government schools – factory-model schools – are hideously inefficient, and children simply cannot maintain unidirectional concentration for hours on end… and more than that, they shouldn’t.

Still, routine can be your friend. Will power is required to set up habits, but once set, willpower and cajoling are no longer required. And so you may find doing school between breakfast and lunch to be a great model. Get it set up early and run with it. You can certainly make exceptions, but a routine helps make the journey a lot smoother.

Be adaptable. Once the learning habit is established, be open to temporary adaptations. At one point in my homeschooling career, we looked out our window to notice a deep trench being dug through a nearby park… a park I knew to contain debris from the 1871 Chicago Fire. And so we dropped everything and spent three days digging in a trench, uncovering artifacts of the 1860s. This is one of the great advantages of homeschooling: you can follow the surprise opportunities that arise. It’s especially important for the older kids.

Adapt your lessons to each child. Like the clock, the curriculum is not God. Each child is different, and each will respond to each subject and lesson differently. That’s okay; more than that, it’s good. You, the homeschooling parent (or grandparent, aunt, uncle, or whatever) are very directly observing this child; so, decide what you think will be best for him or her. Will you be wrong sometimes? Of course you will, but you’ll also be able to adapt instantly. The ability to tailor lessons to each child is a central advantage of homeschooling. Use it.

The Unexpected Benefits

Before I close, I’d like you to know some of the benefits of homeschooling you may not be expecting:

You’ll forge closer relationships with your children. Not only will you know each other better, and will have a larger number of personal and intimate conversations, but you’ll have more shared experiences.

Your children will learn how to learn. That is, they’ll develop confidence in their ability to read, examine and grasp concepts by themselves. They’ll tend to become self-driven learners.

Your children will not see much of an adult-child divide. They’ll consider themselves full beings, jumping into conversations with adults. They’ll tend to be bolder than they would as products of factory-style schooling.

Once you see some results, your confidence in your own abilities will grow. Accordingly, the set of options you see in life will expand.

All of this said, I’m obviously an enthusiastic proponent of homeschooling. But I’m also an experienced advocate, and I told you the bad bits first

SOURCE





COVID-19 Has Made It Undeniable: We Need School Choice

A new Gallup poll that surveyed parents with school-aged kids has startling results, much more because of how opinions are split than the opinions themselves.

Given the COVID-19 threat, 36% of parents want their children to receive fully in-person education, 36% want an in-person/distance hybrid, and 28% want all distance. Each mode was preferred by essentially one-third of parents, neatly capturing a now undeniable reality: Families need school choice.

The basic problem is that diverse people have different needs, but a school district is unitary. This is always trouble — diverse people are stuck with one dress code, history curriculum, etc. — but COVID-19 makes the stakes far higher and more immediate than usual. You might be willing to engage in a protracted school board battle to improve curricula, but COVID-19 could put your child’s life, or basic education, in potentially huge danger right now.

In many places, the public schools have taken the side of maximum COVID caution. The school districts in Los Angeles, Chicago, and elsewhere will, at least to start the year, only offer distance education.

That may be fine for kids who learn better at home, have medical conditions that make them high-risk, or who live with elderly relatives. But it is a huge hit to children with poor internet connectivity, learning disabilities, or those who simply thrive in a physical classroom.

It appears that a spontaneous, nationwide eruption of parent-driven, in-person education is the response to such closings. The “pod” phenomenon is perhaps the most buzzy sign of this, generating both fascinated and skeptical coverage in major media outlets. Basically, parents are pooling their money to hire teachers and create closed learning communities for their kids.

We may also be seeing more families moving to traditional private schools, with reports of privates receiving increased interest, and sometimes definite enrollment boosts, around the country. There is no systematic data to confirm a national movement, but the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom has been tracking private school closures connected to COVID-19 since March and has only recorded eight since July 14. This low number may well reflect new enrollments in private schools.

Of course, affording a private alternative can be difficult for lower-income families, and many people worry that the move to private schooling will fuel greater inequality.

Thankfully, there is a solution, and it is straightforward: Instead of education funding going directly to public schools, let it follow children, whether to a pod, private school, charter school, or traditional public. With public school spending exceeding $15,000 per student, most privates, which charge roughly $12,000 on average, would be in anyone’s reach, while families pooling 10 kids could offer $150,000 to a pod teacher.

The Trump administration has been pushing choice, and certainly any federal aid should follow kids. But constitutional authority over education lies with the states, and it is from them that choice should come. Indeed, more than half-a-million children already attend private schools through voucher, tax credit, and education savings account programs in 29 states and Washington, D.C. But that is far below the number who need choice — states that already have it should expand it, and those without it should enact it.

But expanding funding may not be enough to supply the COVID choice people need. In some places, including much of California, public authorities are forbidding many private institutions from teaching in-person. Such prohibitions must be lifted.

These actions may be intended to protect public schools’ pocketbooks. For instance, the chief health official in Montgomery County, Maryland, has said no private school can open until at least October 1, a date right after the enrollment “count day” that determines how much state and federal funding public schools get.

Of course, health concerns may be the only driver of such decisions. But school-aged children appear to face very low levels of COVID danger. According to CDC data, Americans ages 5 to 17 account for fewer than 0.1% of all COVID-19 deaths, and since tracking began, it has accounted for less than 1% of all deaths in the 5-to-14 age group. While increasing safety measures is important, kids appear to face greater dangers than COVID-19.

What about teachers and administrators? Adults are at greater risk than children, but private schools will do many things to protect them, including mandatory mask wearing, face shields, social distancing, improved air filtration, and more. And teachers unwilling or unable to work in-person could choose jobs in online-only schools.

The simple fact is all communities, families, and children are different, and they need educational options reflective of that diversity.

SOURCE





Universities Circumvent New Title IX Regulations

For years, universities have denied basic procedural protections to students accused of sexual misconduct. Despite the seriousness of such allegations, schools routinely condemn students as responsible without so much as a hearing or the opportunity to confront their accusers. This was supposed to change when the Department of Education’s new Title IX regulations took effect on August 14.

But the more things change in higher education, the more they stay the same. It’s no secret that schools fought the new regulations tooth and nail. Now they are outdoing each other to circumvent them.

Universities resisted the regulations despite the fact that they actually deregulate higher education in important ways, by limiting universities’ liability exposure and narrowing the scope of students’ private lives that universities must police.

But universities clearly want to police their students’ sex lives and are now finding creative new ways to do so.

This is a continuation of universities’ zealous expansion of sexual-harassment policies to infringe upon constitutionally protected speech and academic freedom in ways that could never be enforced in a court of law. Civil anti-discrimination laws already extend to behavior that is severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive, but schools want to push beyond this to accommodate everyone’s subjective feelings of offense. Once sacrosanct, academic freedom is now routinely cast aside in the name of student “comfort” and “safety.” Professors can now teach controversial subject material only at great personal risk. At public universities, where the First Amendment applies, numerous Title IX policies have been ruled unconstitutional by federal courts. No such constitutional protections apply at private institutions.

Things were supposed to change in August, when the new Title IX regulations took effect, with robust free speech and due process protections. Now it appears that many campuses are fighting to ensure these protections remain illusory. It’s not that institutions aren’t changing their policies. Rather, they are doing so to comply superficially while claiming increased authority to subject students and faculty to processes that provide few, if any, of the protections that the regulations require.

Take the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, for example. With nearly 50,000 students, it is one of the largest American universities. Last month, UIUC adopted a new policy that claims that the new Title IX regulations establish “a floor — not a ceiling — to the varied forms of misconduct that can be prohibited at a university.” UIUC “has decided to go beyond this floor to promote a safe and welcoming culture and climate.”

Schools bemoaned the new regulations’ complexity and the extra costs, as well as the confusion they would supposedly cause. So what is UIUC’s antidote? UIUC now wants to maintain two separate definitions of sexual harassment: “Title IX sexual harassment,” tracking Supreme Court law in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, and another, special and broader category of campus speech and conduct that UIUC will now police as “sexual harassment.”

A student accused of “Title IX sexual misconduct” will get the new procedures specified in the regulations. These include, importantly, the right to a live hearing with cross-examination. Not so if you’re accused of “non-Title IX sexual misconduct.” Then you’re out of luck — no hearing for you.

This also raises the possibility that students will be subject to the whim of bureaucrats, who will switch the new Title IX regulations on and off depending on the situation. (Spoiler alert: They will usually turn them off.)

And how are schools such as UIUC going to decide which policy to adjudicate various behaviors under, since the broader category of campus sexual misconduct will always encompass Title IX sexual misconduct? No potential source of confusion there, right?

Take the new policy of Arizona State University. Like Illinois, ASU establishes two separate procedures for adjudicating sexual-misconduct tracks, one with robust protections and one without. Why not use both? says the university.

ASU’s policy defines Title IX sexual harassment in accordance with the regulations, but maintains other policies defining “sexual harassment” more expansively. And ASU makes clear that “if the facts or occurrences forming the basis of a formal complaint of Title IX sexual harassment would also constitute a violation of other university policies,” respondents may be subject to a second process that could “proceed concurrently.”

In one proceeding, students will receive all the due-process protections required by the regulations, including the right to access evidence, the right to a hearing, the right to cross-examination, and the right to be presumed innocent. In the parallel proceeding, however, students will not. They cannot even challenge the findings of an investigator until everything has already been decided and sanctions already doled out.

Dating back to 2011, universities bemoaned Title IX mandates as a heavy-handed federal imposition. This was always dishonest. Universities clearly wanted to extend their control over campus sex life and promote new norms for sex on campus. Universities’ zealous activism has now found new expression in the voluntary creation of multi-track, ever more byzantine enforcement regimes, even as they continue to bemoan federal mandates. It really is Opposite World on college campuses today.

The Department of Education carefully created a system that offers procedural protections commensurate with the seriousness of sexual misconduct accusations. Unfortunately, universities’ commitment to procedural unfairness never was about government policy with regard to Title IX, a common excuse during the years when Title IX guidance itself undercut due process. The inescapable conclusion is that this is about the university’s perceived need to redefine sexual agency, sexual mores, and consent, which will apply only on campus and nowhere else in American life. To do so, they are claiming ever more power over the minutiae of students’ private lives.

SOURCE






Australia: Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the person who distributed controversial material designed to teach schoolchildren about sex, gender fluidity and relationships has been “spoken to”.

Sneaky attempt to promote sexual deviance

Asked about the material, which has been likened to the shelved Safe Schools program, Ms Berejiklian said the documents are “not official Department of Education material”. “The person who distributed has been spoken to,” she said.

Speaking ahead of her Education Minister confirming an investigation into how the material was uploaded, the Premier said she would expect the material to be taken down.

Earlier, NSW’s Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said public school teacher guides about on penis tucking and bra padding for students who want to appear feminine was posted “without permission” and is now being investigated.

“Safe Schools has never been part of the NSW Curriculum nor will it be and there are no plans to bring that in,” she said on Wednesday.

“In relation to that particular issue there was a link that was provided without permission that did go to resource and content that isn’t endorsed by the Department or by the Government.

“We’re looking at the processes to how that has happened because as I said it was something that was posted without permission.”

The guides have come under fire for being a rebranded version of the controversial Safe Schools program.

Safe Schools was axed in 2017 after uproar that the ­program taught young children about sex, gender fluidity and relationships.

But resources accessible to teachers on the School Biz portal provided by the NSW Department of Education appear to mirror material from the program which critics say is bringing it back “by stealth”.

Links on the portal transfer teachers to various websites, including a 40-page guide OMG I’M TRANS which talks through how to pad your bra for bigger breasts or tuck your penis to reduce its visibility.

Resources included fictional stories for children, ­including The Gender Fairy, Are you a Boy or Are you a Girl and on the young readers’ list a story titled Sex Is A Funny Word: A Book About Bodies, Feelings and You.

“Some people have a ‘fluid’ gender — it changes over time. My friend has warned me not to be surprised if one day she rocks up with a shaved head and asks to be called Bruce. But you know what? That’s completely up to her,” says a passage in the PDF OMG I’m Queer.

Even though the Safe Schools Coalition is no longer operating, the portal includes “All of Us”, its guide on gender diversity, sexual diversity and intersex topics.

The website also linked to the Commonwealth’s Student Wellbeing Hub which had ­articles on supporting sexual diversity in schools, students changing their gender and LGBTI classmates.

NSW One Nation leader Mark Latham obtained screenshots of the School Biz portal and said teaching materials offered ahead of Wear It Purple Day on August 28 taught children about exploring sex, gender identity and being transgender and queer.

“This worries me because if Safe Schools was abolished then why do we need people within the department building an extensive catalogue of material relating to this,” Mr Latham told The Daily Telegraph. “It’s absolutely brought back by stealth. Behind a firewall they are sending information to teachers which resurrects Safe Schools des­pite the government ending it. There was a reason this was kicked out of schools in the first place. There has been no disclosure.”

The notification for teachers on the portal said: “There are also a number of resources available to help foster discussion about everyone having the right to be proud of who they are, and everyone having the right to feel safe and ­supported.”

Institute of Public Affairs director of the Foundations of Western Civilisation Program Dr Bella d’Abrera criticised the teaching resources.

She said with Australian children lagging behind the rest of the world in education the department should be foc­using on teaching children how to read and write, not ­indoctrinating them with radical gender theory.

“There is absolutely no place in NSW schools for this kind of social engineering. Teachers should not be politicising impressionable children in the classroom,” she said.

A NSW Education Department spokeswoman said the links were operated by third parties.

“These are all external websites operated by third parties not NSW Education. The Safe Schools Program has never been part of the NSW curriculum and we do not promote it,” she said.

A spokesman for the Federal Department of Education said the resources on the Student Wellbeing Hub were ­removed but had been reinstated since 2016 after an ­independent review found them suitable.

“The resources you refer to were originally published in 2013 as part of the original Safe Schools Hub that was funded by the previous Labor Government. The resources were removed while a 2016 ­independent review was ­conducted by Professor Bill Louden,” the spokesman said.

“This review found that the resources were ‘consistent with the aims of the program … suitable, robust, age-appropriate, educationally sound and aligned with the Australian Curriculum’. The resources were returned to the Hub in 2016 after the completion of the Louden review.”

SOURCE