I remember how it was -- JR
I’m a Full-Time Working Mom. Here’s Why I Love Homeschooling My Daughter
Any working mom can attest that work never quite turns off. We don’t necessarily get to sleep in on the weekends or kick back and sip wine when we get home from our jobs.
Most likely, we’re cooking dinner, giving baths, refereeing fights, negotiating on bedtime or television, reading stories, and trying to accomplish the million things on our to-do lists once we get home.
So, why add one more responsibility to the list—especially one as important as educating our kids?
That wasn’t the plan for me, but when my husband and I viewed the education landscape in 2021—when schools in Prince George’s County, Maryland, were in remote-only mode and the state pushes a radical gender curriculum that starts in pre-K—we saw homeschooling as the best option.
That meant a team effort where we both would be teaching kindergarten to our daughter, Rosemary. Luckily, my husband does shift work as a firefighter and could be the primary teacher. But he needed help, so I filled in by working remotely to give him a breather and help teach our daughter.
It’s a side hustle I have come to love, more so than any other I’ve done in the past—and I had the good fortune of writing a contributing column in the Capital Gazette newspaper for a time.
When we started kindergarten at home, it wasn’t all show-and-tell and playtime. Rosemary could write some letters well, but she struggled with others. Some of her numbers would be backward. Some days, she would be easily discouraged and want to give up before we even got started.
But my husband and I would coax her back and work on building up her foundation in a particular subject.
Over time, we saw the results get better. She was able to trace words and then write them independently with more clarity. She is memorizing more of her addition and subtraction problems.
A few weeks ago, my husband taught Rosemary how to ride her bike without training wheels.
Each accomplishment has bolstered her self-esteem with authentic confidence and empowerment. She understands more what her place is in our family and society, and my husband and I have an upfront view of those wins and challenges.
Being responsible for Rosemary’s education compelled me to try new roles that I might not have otherwise considered. We participated in a weekly homeschooling co-op this school year, where my husband and I shared teaching responsibilities for a few subjects.
We also joined American Heritage Girls, an alternative to the Girl Scouts, and helped as troop leaders. These opportunities have been great for Rosemary, but they’ve also pushed me outside my comfort zone.
Each co-op lesson or troop activity was sometimes foreign and nerve-wracking. But seeing kids glean some new information or smile after doing a group craft made the buildup and effort worthwhile.
More Input, Control Over Her Education
Figuring out the education you want for your child can be overwhelming at first, but once you get your bearings, it’s amazing how much freedom you have to determine what your child learns.
We followed the Code of Maryland Regulations for homeschooling to make sure Rosemary received regular and frequent lessons on English, math, science, art, music, health, physical education, and social studies. We added religion to fulfill requirements to be in a homeschooling umbrella group.
But we had a lot of freedom to try several options. We used several workbooks, followed a full-scale curriculum in Saxon Math, watched educational videos, made homemade worksheets, and took impromptu nature walks and field trips.
This allowed my husband and me to figure out what methods were most effective, and it gave Rosemary some variety in her learning.
And we’ve allowed Rosemary to provide some input in her curriculum. After we had several science lessons on the solar system, Rosemary declared we should be done with outer space and focus instead on animals. I was happy to comply.
Most importantly, we aren’t exposing Rosemary to books and concepts that would undermine her education and her view of others around her.
I read several “woke” children’s books for The Heritage Foundation a few months ago. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.) Suffice it to say, those books are not part of our revolving library at home. Instead, we get to focus on the topics and goals to help Rosemary to grow up to be a critical thinker—not to be indoctrinated by toxic ideologies like critical race theory.
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Jeff Jacoby: Canceling student debt will make things worse
FOR WELL over a year, President Biden has been under pressure from leading Democrats to issue an executive order cancelling $50,000 of debt for every American with an outstanding student loan. For most of that time he has stuck to the position he took as a candidate: He was open to $10,000 per borrower in debt relief but $50,000 was too much, and he wanted the legal authority for such a policy to come from Congress. In the meantime, Biden continued to extend the federal freeze on student loan repayments first put in place during the Trump administration. The latest extension, announced this month, lasts until Aug. 31.
But on Monday came hints that Biden has set aside his skepticism about the legality and wisdom of absolving tens of millions of borrowers' debts. CBS News reported that the president told members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus that he is considering various options to forgive a substantial swath of student loans. "I'm looking to do something on that, and I think you're going to like what I do," he said, according one lawmaker who attended the meeting. Later that day, White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced that Biden "would make a decision about any cancellation of student debt" before the end of August.
The decision he should make is that he was right the first time.
For an unpopular Democratic president heading into a difficult midterm election, unilaterally canceling college debt may be good politics. It manifestly is not good policy. It represents moral hazard taken to an extreme, a recklessly expensive giveaway to a politically influential bloc of voters that will encourage more bad decisions in the future and exacerbate problems already at the crisis stage.
How would canceling student debt make life in America worse? Let us count the ways.
1. It would be inflationary.
Large-scale student debt forgiveness will worsen inflation. That would be a problem at any time, but with the inflation rate now at a 40-year high and the economy teetering on the brink of recession, it should be unthinkable.
Prices soar when too many dollars are chasing too few goods. As the federal government massively boosted the money supply over the past two years, the purchasing power of the dollar dwindled. Freeing borrowers from their obligation to repay loans would amount to another gusher of funds. As it is, the current freeze on loan repayment — no one has had to pay a nickel toward their student debt since March 2020 — has been fueling the inflationary fires by about $5 billion each month. That's a trivial effect compared with the impact of erasing borrowers' liability altogether. As Adam Looney of the Brookings Institution has noted, "Forgiving all student debt would be a transfer larger than the amounts the nation has spent over the past 20 years on unemployment insurance, larger than the amount it has spent on the Earned Income Tax Credit, and larger than the amount it has spent on food stamps." The result would be even more upward pressure on inflation.
2. It would worsen inequity.
Student debt is disproportionately an upper-middle-class phenomenon, and wiping college loans off the books would enrich the relatively well-off at the expense of the less fortunate. Only a minority of Americans have earned a college degree, and only a minority of them have gone on to graduate school. That minority-within-a-minority — which includes doctors, lawyers, bankers, scientists — owes half of all outstanding student debt. It is logical for graduate students to take out more loans, since their advanced degrees generally lead to much higher earnings over the course of their careers. Liquidating that debt leaves them even more affluent and compels the majority of Americans who never got to go to college to help pay the tab for many of those who did.
And as if canceling student loans isn't regressive enough, it is made even more unfair by the fact that the borrowers are more likely to have jobs. The unemployment rate among college graduates is 2 percent. For Americans with only a high school education, unemployment now stands at more than 5 percent. Why should the debts of the well-educated and well-employed be treated more indulgently than the financial burdens of those whose path in life hasn't been so favored?
3. It would deepen cynicism.
Unearned debt forgiveness disseminates a corrosive message. It signals to Americans that they should regard their liabilities as someone else's problem. It promotes the mindset that defaulting on debts is not shameful but understandable — and that government exists to bail out defaulters. It mocks those who behaved responsibly — the ones who saved more and worked second jobs to pay for college or who deferred higher education until they could afford it. And it's a slap in the face to college graduates who faithfully repaid their loans.
"I have over $17,000 in student-loan debt, and I didn't go to graduate school because I knew that getting another degree would drown me in debt that I would never be able to surpass," lamented Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a December speech. "This is unacceptable."
But her decision was the right one: If you can't afford another degree — or a bigger house, or another car — you shouldn't get one. What's "unacceptable" is the lesson Ocasio-Cortez has apparently internalized: that she shouldn't be expected to pay back the loan that got her through college and put her on the path to success (and a $174,000 congressional salary). No good can come from the entrenchment of such cynical thinking.
4. It would drive up the cost of college.
The more the government does to make higher education affordable, the more unaffordable it becomes. Since 1980, the cost of going to college has increased 1,200 percent — more than five times the overall inflation of 236 percent. Much of that is the unintended consequence of steadily rising federal student aid. As a tidal wave of public dollars has been channeled into grants and guaranteed loans, colleges have happily raised their prices to soak those dollars up. Federal aid gives schools every incentive to keep tuition costly. Why would they reduce their sticker price to a level that more families could afford, when doing so would mean kissing millions of government dollars goodbye?
For Washington to now cancel hundreds of billions in unpaid student debt — while continuing to issue and guarantee even more college loans — would be to double down on this predatory cycle. Far from reforming the out-of-control loan program that has had such a catastrophic effect on college costs and student borrowing, it would turbocharge it.
If Biden is indeed gearing up to deliver radical student-debt relief, he is making a mistake. It may win votes for his party. But it will hurt more Americans than it helps and leave long-term economic and social harm in its wake.
https://jeffjacoby.com/26186/canceling-student-debt-will-make-things-worse
***********************************Australia: Jewish leaders condemn antisemitic Melbourne student union
A group of prominent Jewish leaders have condemned a motion passed by the University of Melbourne’s student union after it pledged support for the anti-Israeli Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, sparking fears it could have a flow-on effect across university campuses.
The student union passed a wide-ranging motion on Friday condemning Zionism as a “racist colonial ideology” and pledging its support for the BDS movement, urging the university leadership to endorse an academic boycott that would cut ties with Israeli institutions, researchers, and academics that support the “Israeli oppression of Palestinians”.
The Australian understands the union is the first student representative body to pass a motion formally supporting the BDS movement in the country.
The motion, which was passed 10-8 by the student council on Friday, stated the union’s endorsement of the BDS movement had been “long overdue” and would encourage other student bodies to adopt similar resolutions in solidarity with Palestinians.
“Students in Palestine and around the world have been key participants in the fight against the illegal occupation of Palestine, protesting, organising, and creating a discussion on respective campuses … it’s long overdue for a clear and firm stance by UMSU on these crimes,” the motion read.
Jewish leaders blasted the union for creating a “fictitious” and “one-sided narrative” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, describing the resolution as “perverse” and “blatantly anti-Semitic”.
Jewish Affairs Council director Colin Rubinstein said on Sunday that the language of the motion was something that could have been expected from “Hamas or Hezbollah … not from the student union of an esteemed centre of learning here in Australia”.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry chief executive Peter Wertheim said it was possible other university student councils “would follow suit” and adopt a similar “anti-Semitic” motion, but added that it would be a mistake to conclude there was a “broad student consensus behind these views”.
Adelaide University’s student representative council is considering a similar motion to UMSU, while the University of Western Australia’s student guild last year altered its support of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, suspending its clause condemning calls for the destruction of the state of Israel.
In February, Sydney University’s student body passed a motion supporting the boycott of the Sydney Festival but has not passed a formal motion supporting the BDS movement.
Mr Wertheim said the ability of a handful of student activists to pass through “propagandistic and racist resolutions” highlighted the urgent need for universities to adopt and apply the remembrance alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism.
The Australian sought comment from the universities of Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide student unions, who were unavailable to reply.
The Anti-Defamation Commission says acts of anti-Semitism in Australia have reached “pitch fever” following reports vandals had defaced the Lilydale Eagles Soccer Club in Melbourne, drawing Nazi swastikas on the club’s oval.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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