Sarah Poppins has a new website for secular home education, sarcastically-named “The Denim Jumper.” Very sassy. It’s also one of the best-designed home ed sites I’ve seen. From the FAQ:
Is it true that I have to wear an official “Not a denim jumper” thong to post??
Nonsense. Many people wear teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy, yellow polka-dot bikinis.
Back in July, I noted that the Wilmington News-Journal seemed to be skating on thin ice, allegedly outing an anonymous blogger who was critical of the government of Smyrna, DE. The paper predicted that the “Supremes” would uphold a ruling that the blogger’s ISP must reveal his name. The same name that the paper revealed.
Wrong! The Supreme Court yesterday reversed the ruling. Anonymous political speech is protected in DE.
So, does the Mayor now sue the N-J for outing him?
Carol Narigon posted on the HEM-networking listserv that tonight’s Nanny 911 (Fox) will feature a home educating family. Ugh!
The Miami Herald has an excellent Op/Ed on the problem with granting equal time to ID. The piece doesn’t really go into it, but the practice of journalists always seeking he said/she said “balance” in their work doesn’t work very well when one side is obviously, unequivocally wrong.
At least it should be:
BOSTON –Some of the state’s largest school districts are among at least 20 that are exploring plans to extend the day in some of their schools by about two hours.
…School officials say the traditional schedule — 6-hour days, 180 total days — doesn’t provide enough time, especially with the increased demands of standardized testing.
“The hours in the school day just aren’t enough for us,” Mary Russo, principal of Boston’s Murphy K-8 School, told The Boston Globe on Monday’s editions.
…”If you have students who have more limited learning opportunities at home, because their parents are working extra hours, or because there are some resource limitations at home, if we can have that added work time with students as part of the school day, that’s extremely helpful,” Springfield Superintendent Joseph Burke said.
Two ugly ideas in the same article– the tests are evil and the source of all evil. And they have to deny parole for an extra two hours because some kids might not have a set of encyclopedias at home.
I’m no fan of NCLB, as I think it was a set-up from the start. Eventually (~2014), every school in the country will be termed “failing.” That’s the way the law is designed. And I believe that it was intentional– a disingenuous way to get to vouchers for all. But the educrats have their own flavor of disingenuousness. Witness above. They know parents aren’t going to go for an extra two hours of school. So they have a built-in excuse for why they can’t make progress fixing the schools.
A pox on both their houses.
GoogleNews this morning pulled in a half-dozen articles on home education that were published in late 2004. It took me a while to figure out why RealityCheck.org was ranting about John Kerry.
Bill Bennett of K12, Harrah’s, and (lately) Eugenics-‘R’-Us (OK, that last one is an exaggeration) has resigned from K12 over the flap caused by his abortion comment last week.
How can you pass up a hed like this (caught in my GoogleNews scrape)?
Locals get naked for a good cause
Alas, the “homeschool” part didn’t have anything to do with the “getting naked” part.*
*Thanks to Heather at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for giving me free access to read the piece.
Salon has a really good article up on unschooling. A taste:
Their days at home were loose and unstructured, filled with hours reading on the living room futon or playing homemade quiz games about Greek mythology and geography, calling off nations from a map. While occasionally Francoise nudged them in a certain direction, by suggesting a book or an activity they might enjoy, in the end she felt it was important that Celine and Julian call the shots. Since entering adolescence, both have been entirely in charge of their own schedules, attending tai chi classes twice a week and volunteering part-time as antiwar activists. Julian, a devoted member of the New York Assembly of the Society for Young Magicians, performs regularly around the city for other home-schooling groups. Still, both admit that some weeks pass in a blur, without anything to show for the hours. “There are times that I’ll spend a bunch of days hanging around the house, bored,” says Celine. “Then I start to feel guilty.”
Interestingly, the only critic quoted is another home educator:
After talking to a dozen unschooling families and studying their blogs and message boards, I’ve found countless similar tales of sucess. But outside that small circle, even among liberal home-schoolers, unschooling still provokes uneasiness. Gail Paquette, a home-schooling mother of two and the founder of the Web site Hometaught.com, is one of unschooling’s most vocal critics. “A child-led approach may develop the child’s strengths but does nothing to develop his weaknesses and broaden his horizons,” she writes. “I [mostly] disagree with the premise that children can teach themselves what they want to learn, when (and if) they want to learn it. Certainly children do learn some things on their own, but their often roundabout way of going at learning is not necessarily the best way.”
We’re not unschoolers, but I don’t diss them. I just don’t have that kind of strong faith. Seems to be a pattern.
The educrats aren’t often this honest about what really matters.
In the grocery store of education, Greeley-Evans School District 6 is planning to place another choice on the shelf.
Competition for kids is heating up, and the dramatic increase of students in charter, private and home-school populations show that the district must step up to keep its students. School board members and district administrators hope that more choices for parents stop kids from leaving and perhaps lure some back into the district’s fold.
“Today, as a society, we like choice,” said Mark Wallace, board president. “Look at our grocery aisles. We’ve got hundreds of boxes of materials to choose from. I’m hopeful we’ll be able to hold onto kids and families that would otherwise leave our district right now.”
I undrstand that this is a function of having choices in education, and it is far preferable to the Soviet style system we all grew up with. But still…
Here’s a charter school that is working to increase efficiency in the school. How? No recess, no lunch, and a 5 hour school day. The kids in the morning session are done by 12:30, freeing up afternoons for homework or intensive training.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a nice background piece on the legal issues surrounding the Dover ID case.
The Yankees have clinched the A.L. East title for the 8th year in row (and 9 of the last 10).
Yes, Chris, I wrote this at the top of the 9th.
I don’t believe I’ve seen a college fair for HEKs before. Good idea.
A couple of news-to-me bits in this piece on Andrew Wyeth. 1) He was home educated and 2) He’s still alive. I’ve always liked his work, and there’s lots of it in the Wilmington, DE area. One of the stranger places I seen it hung is in the Brandywine Room at the Hotel DuPont. The BR is a restaurant (a very expensive one). If you’ve ever had a hankering to enjoy a meal with a high-priced piece of art hanging over your table, the Brandwine Room is the place to go.
