I remember how it was -- JR
Sunday, July 03, 2022
Best Teachers Could Be Your Parents, ‘Homeschool Awakening’ Documentary Suggests
Actor Kirk Cameron’s new documentary “The Homeschool Awakening” features 14 homeschooling families. Those families, failed by the public education system, have embarked on a homeschooling journey, and they share how the decision has changed their lives.
Like most other American families, those parents initially sent their children to public school because “it’s just what you do.” The public education norm controlled their family life, but they began to question it.
“As a mom with my first baby, you are just with them 24/7, but then all of a sudden, time for school and the kind of unnatural feeling inside of me: ‘Is this really what I should be doing, dropping them off for a lot of hours, somewhere else?’” asks Cameron’s wife, Chelsea. The couple has six children, all of whom were homeschooled.
Should it be the norm for a 6-year-old to spend eight hours away from his or her mother? Should the norm be for parents to have no idea what their children are being taught? Should the norm be considering a child smart based on how they compare with their peers? The 14 featured families are driven to challenge these norms and more through their homeschooling lifestyles.
The parents addressed common concerns brought up by non-homeschoolers, such as whether homeschooled children would be socialized or whether the parents themselves are qualified to teach their own children.
How do homeschooled children socialize? Well, do you consider socialization sitting at a desk next to someone for eight hours a day, with an hour for recess? Or is socialization, as these homeschooling parents suggest, the freedom to pursue friendships with individuals of their choice as opposed to who they are placed next to in class.
The documentary highlights how homeschool children socialize through co-ops, sports, part-time jobs, and more.
Many parents have the misconception they’re not qualified to teach their children, but Kathy Koch, the author of “8 Great Smarts: Discover and Nurture Your Child’s Intelligences,” and who holds a doctorate in reading and educational psychology, said, “Homeschoolers, we don’t teach content. We teach children.”
She encouraged prospective homeschooling parents, saying, “You know your children better than anybody else, and you love your children more than anybody else, and you will be an excellent teacher.”
She added, “One of the greatest advantages of homeschooling is learning with the kids.”
“We redeemed over 16,000 hours to be with our kids just because we chose to home-educate our children,” one father noted.
The parents in the film realized their responsibility in shaping their children’s minds. The benefits of homeschooling outweighed the sacrifices. The parents explained how homeschooling set them free to individualize learning unique to each child’s needs, and his or her style and pace of learning; to preserve their child’s identity, protecting them from negative outside influences; to deepen their relationship with their child through one-on-one time; and to allow for free, healthy discourse in their homes.
As a former homeschooled student myself, I thought the film did a fantastic job showcasing the joys and freedom homeschooling offers while also including the common worries parents might have before they homeschool.
The film did not offer a look into homeschooling as in depth as a personal experience would, but I think it would be helpful for those parents even slightly contemplating homeschooling to get a feel for the lifestyle and benefits it offers.
The film concluded by featuring children expressing gratitude to their parents for homeschooling them.
As one son said, “It is so easy to buy into the narrative you need to be this, you need to be that, that you lose your own sense of identity. I don’t know why you are here if you are just trying to be someone else. The greatest gift I was given was my own identity and the ability to do things my way.”
“The Homeschool Awakening” was shown in theatres on two nights only last week, but post-theatrical release plans will be announced on thehomeschoolawakening.com.
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Liberal ‘Tolerance’ on Display After Overturning of Roe v. Wade
The war on history came for all our past, from Columbus to the Founding Fathers to Abraham Lincoln. Now, college campuses appear to be conducting mop-up operations.
The College Fix reports that officials removed a bust of Lincoln from a Cornell University library exhibit after somebody complained.
“Someone complained, and it was gone,” Cornell University biology professor Randy Wayne said, according to The College Fix.
It wasn’t just the bust. They removed the plaque with the words of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, too. In its place stands an empty display and a plain white wall.
Perhaps that says a lot more about the current state of our “elite” institutions than a statue of Lincoln and an ode to America’s founding principles.
The Lincoln bust and plaque were part of a “temporary exhibit” put on display in 2013 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. Given that the exhibit has been there for nearly a decade, it doesn’t seem like a coincidence that the disappearance occurs now.
Cornell, according to The Fix, hasn’t announced why it decided to remove the bust and plaque.
In his interview with The Fix, Wayne explained what Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address mean to him and why it’s a travesty that the school removed them:
The Gettysburg Address is an incredible speech. We have a handwritten copy in Lincoln’s hand. It is known as the Bancroft Copy. It comes with an envelope signed by Lincoln (using his franking privilege), and a letter to [George] Bancroft, thanking him for requesting a copy of the address to put in a book to be sold for charity. I show these documents to my class, as well as the heavy iron manacles worn by slaves. Yes, we have a Lincoln legacy that has been inspirational to me and my students. To take his words (and bust) out of the hallway says something about our love of liberty.
Did this complaint come from a woke student or the ghost of Jefferson Davis? It’s unclear.
Still, it’s telling that a single complaint led to the removal of a cherished part of our history, with seemingly no resistance whatsoever from college administrators. Par for the course.
When our country’s most powerful institutions aren’t going out of their way to placate the most absurd demands of every left-wing extremist, they generally are leading the revolution.
Although one would think Lincoln’s role in the dismantling of slavery would earn him at least a few points with the woke, it hasn’t stopped them from canceling the Great Emancipator in the past.
No accomplishment is great enough. A single transgression against the current, evolving standards of social justice makes one susceptible to cancellation.
If you aren’t serving the cause, you are dispatched easily to the dustbin of history. Or perhaps that’s the dustbin of an Ivy League school’s library.
In 2020, when the San Francisco Unified School District suggested stripping Lincoln’s name from a school, the chairman of the naming committee said the 16th president “did not show through policy or rhetoric that black lives ever mattered” to him.
Lincoln only led this country through a war that ended slavery, signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and ultimately was killed while leading this cause. But that just isn’t good enough for the zealous, middling bureaucrats now standing to judge him.
Of course, plenty of those who go through our esteemed colleges don’t appear to have much of a grasp of even the most basic facts about Lincoln’s life, or history in general. One of the leaders of a movement to force removal of a Lincoln statue at the University of Wisconsin said in 2017 that among the reasons is because Lincoln “owned slaves.”
Lincoln never owned slaves. No big deal. Why let a few details get in the way of the narrative about how our past and greatest heroes amount to little more than an edifice of structural racism?
It shouldn’t be surprising to see Lincoln unceremoniously dumped by Cornell or any other Ivy League school.
A few years ago, the so-called experts—as the corporate media portrayed them—weighed in on the war on history and said it was preposterous that removal of Confederate statues and monuments would lead to a general attack on historic figures such as Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington.
Now these experts stay mostly silent as Lincoln, Washington, and many other parts of our past come down, too.
A vacant space truly is the best symbol to represent the values of our elite institutions.
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Australian teachers expose how much they REALLY earn and the reasons why they're striking: 'Pay isn't even the problem'
Teachers in New South Wales have explained the reasons why they're striking after marching on NSW Parliament demanding better wages and working conditions.
Dressed in red shirts emblazoned with the text 'More than Thanks', fired up teachers called on the government to offer them more than a three per cent pay rise on Thursday.
The NSW Teachers Federation is asking for a pay rise of between five and seven per cent to keep up with the cost of living.
Aussie teachers on Reddit and social media have cited work load as their main concern.
'I earn $110K. My problem isn't really how much I'm paid,' one teacher wrote.
'It's the ridiculous amount of work that has nothing to directly do with teaching and learning. It's the changes in policies that require teachers to support a wider array of students in the same class.'
The same teacher added that schools have 'no idea how to measure workload' and teachers often have to 'parent students'.
Another posted: 'Pay isn't even the problem though - it's workload.'
'My contract says 30 hours a week, but I've easily cleared that by Wednesday because of admin. What I wouldn't give for a PA, just so I could do my job.'
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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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