A Case for Homeschooling

[Strawberry]

Education in a Free Society

C. Bradley Thompson
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Education In “The New Abolitionism: Why Education Emancipation is the Moral Imperative of Our Time” (TOS, Winter 2012–13), I argued that America’s government school system is immoral and antithetical to a free society, and that it must be abolished—not reformed. The present essay calls for the complete separation of school and state, indicates what a fully free market in education would look like, and explains why such a market would provide high-quality education for all children.
The Need for Separation of School and State

What is the proper relationship of school and state? In a free society, who is responsible for educating children? Toward answering these questions, consider James Madison’s reasoning regarding the proper relationship of government and religion—reasoning that readily applies to the issue of education. In 1784, in response to Patrick Henry’s call for a compulsory tax to support Christian (particularly Episcopalian) ministers, Madison penned his famous “Memorial and Remonstrance,” a stirring defense of religious freedom and the separation of church and state. The heart of his argument can be reduced to three principles: first, individuals have an inalienable right to practice their religion as they see fit; second, religion must not be directed by the state; and third, religion is corrupted by government interference or control. Few Americans today would disagree with Madison’s reasoning.

One virtue of Madison’s response to Henry’s bill is that its principles and logic extend beyond church-and-state relations. In fact, the principles and logic of his argument apply seamlessly to the relationship of education and state. If we substitute the word “education” for “religion” throughout Madison’s text, we find a perfect parallel: first, parents have an inalienable right to educate their children according to their values; second, education must not be directed by the state; and third, education is corrupted by government interference or control. The parallel is stark, and the logic applies equally in both cases.

Just as Americans have a right to engage in whatever non-rights-violating religious practices they choose, so Americans have a right to engage in whatever educational practices they choose. And just as Americans would not grant government the authority to run their Sunday schools, so they should not grant government the authority to run their schools Monday through Friday.

Parents (and guardians) have a right to direct the education of their children.1 Parents’ children are their children—not their neighbors’ children or the community’s children or the state’s children. Consequently, parents have a right to educate their children in accordance with the parents’ judgment and values. (Of course, if parents neglect or abuse their children, they can and should be prosecuted, and legitimate laws are on the books to this effect.) Further, parents, guardians, and citizens in general have a moral right to use their wealth as they judge best. Accordingly, they have a moral right and should have a legal right to patronize or not patronize a given school, to fund or not fund a given educational institution—and no one has a moral right or properly a legal right to force them to patronize or fund one of which they disapprove. These are relatively straightforward applications of the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness—the rights on which America was founded.

But the educational system in America today systematically ignores and violates these rights. At its core, America’s system of state-controlled education is compulsory. It involves force from top to bottom: The state forces children to attend its schools (or state-approved alternatives). It forces taxpayers—whether or not they use the schools—to pay for them. It dictates what is taught in the classroom through its mandatory curriculum. And it dictates how teachers are to teach the content, through its requirement and control of teacher certification.

Because a government school system violates rights in such a fundamentally crucial area of life—education—it constitutes, as Madison said of a religious establishment, “a dangerous abuse of power.” Government should never be in the business of forcing or controlling the mind—and nowhere is this principle more important than with respect to the education of young minds. Unfortunately, many Americans today willingly accept this dangerous abuse of power.

Although most parents embrace the responsibility of feeding their children and wouldn’t dream of letting the government dictate what will be put in their children’s bodies, they relinquish the responsibility of educating their children and permit the government to dictate what will be put in their children’s minds. Few Americans see that this is what they are doing, but this is what they are doing. Consider how this all begins. . . .

_______________________________
What do you all think?

I've been gathering notes I've titled "A Case for Homeschooling" due to the state coming after my family recently partially for not asking permission to teach my children at home, nor for reporting to "them".

Per the United States Republic Declaration of Independence:
“. . . to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed . . . “
“Where rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rule making or legislation which would abrogate them.”; Miranda v. State of Arizona, 86 S.Ct. 1602 at 1636, 384 U.S. 436 at 491 (U.S.Ariz.1966)

The 'Highest Court' in the Land (possessing Original Jurisdiction) has ruled that "No State can make any laws or rules that abrogate the Peoples’ Rights or the Supreme Law of the Land".

How have we come to this? I've heard of many stories of bishops (including my own) or other local church leaders condemn home schooling urging members to place their children's minds in the care of the "state". This is something I just can't wrap my mind around.

[BroJones]

Our Branch President and his wife home-school their beautiful children. And they are awakened to our awful situation (Ether 8).

His counselors are also awakened, and the one young enough to have children at home does home-schooling.

A couple in a nearby ward have had pressure from their Bishop to NOT home-school... They have talked about "moving" to our Branch (probably renting in our area). This is an important issue to them.

Lezlee and I did home-schooling for the younger children, as we awoke.

[lundbaek]

I have great respect for those families that homeschool their kids. I wish we could have done it but we were just not up to it.

[Benjamin_LK]

A side note, a lot of school districts have disappointing standards academically speaking. Some kids can advance ahead of the curriculum, that was the main argument of my father, who is an atheist, but after having tested out of a lot of classes in the University, I am inclined to agree.

[Dave62]

"A couple in a nearby ward have had pressure from their Bishop to NOT home-school... They have talked about "moving" to our Branch (probably renting in our area). This is an important issue to them."

:-\ What has this got to do with your Bishop?

[Silas]

I have been in favor of homeschooling for a long time but it wasn't until my wife started working at a public school that she became determined to homeschool our kids. If any Bishop ever tries to put pressure on us not to I would simply inform him that my wife and I are the only ones who have both the responsibility and the authority to make those decisions. Just directly and politely inform him that it is none of his business.

[Benjamin_LK]

I have been in favor of homeschooling for a long time but it wasn't until my wife started working at a public school that she became determined to homeschool our kids. If any Bishop ever tries to put pressure on us not to I would simply inform him that my wife and I are the only ones who have both the responsibility and the authority to make those decisions. Just directly and politely inform him that it is none of his business.

I probably wouldn't mind homeschooling, as the academic standards are often a disappointment, and I could get the kids ahead of average by the time they reach college, much less high school, with AP Credit.

[dauser]

Years ago the average cost of a child in public school was $8.00 an hour.

I do not know what the average current cost to the taxpayer is today.

I do know that public education is the biggest expense to our state's budget.

The more students private and homeschooling and the fewer students on academic public assistance will relieve widows who are having their homes devoured by taxation, tax liens, confiscations to build and maintain such government synagogues.

Personally I do not think teaching socialism to vulnerable children before they are 8 years old is worth the monies spent.

Giving students something they do not earn destroys personal incentive.

I think of all the teachers and support personnel that could be producing value to our communities instead of wasting all that time and recourses on the indoctrinating children in socialism, atheism, humanism etc.

Communities are impoverished financially and morally by government union installations.

The people should teach government what to think and what to believe...the government should not teach the people what to think and what to believe.

The creator exceeds the creature...the people are the creator of government and government is our creature...

[moonwhim]

[Strawberry]

Celestial Education - Michelle Stone



Here is a little summary from here: http://www.latter-dayhomeschooling.com/ ... stone.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Michelle Stone divides learning into 4 Basic Time Frames.

Ages 0-8: The Satan-free years. Children can't be wicked during this time, and they can't be tempted by Satan. This is when they need to learn that they are Children of God. This is where their value lies, not in worldly successes and failures. This is a time to shelter children from any place where they may feel the influence of Satan. Although children do not have the gift of the Holy Ghost during this time, we may act out many of his roles. We are their protectors, comforters, teachers, and companions. We should be gentle. Children are so malleable. That is why we want to keep them close.

Ages 8-12: The Years of the Spirit. Children are learning to listen to the Spirit. Make your home like an MTC. Teach them to seek, recognize, and obey the Holy Ghost. As we practice listening to the Spirit, it's like tuning a dial. His voice gets clearer. If a thought comes, telling us to do something good, we should follow through with it. During this period, children begin to have time away from their parents (achievement days, scouts, etc.)

Teenagers: The Critical Years. A teenager's critical learning is to discover their personal missions and to prepare for them. It's about finding out what Heavenly Father wants them to do. This is the period when they receive their Patriarchal Blessings. Joseph Smith was a teenager when he was called to his life's mission.

Service Stage. When the parent-directed stages are complete, it is time for children (who are now adults) to complete the mission that God has sent them to do.

Other nuggets of wisdom from Michelle Stone:


Pray always is literal. We can have a constant, ongoing conversation with God.
It's easier for the Lord to steer a moving ship than a still one.
Charity=Zion in our Hearts.
Temporal and Spiritual are linked.
Education should help us to become like God.



This resonates SOOOOOOOOOO strongly with me. Does it with you?

[Strawberry]

As I mentioned in the "A letter to the bishop" thread viewtopic.php?f=19&t=32040" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; - I would be sharing some research I have found (and believe me, I have LOTS more, this is just a tidbit) in regards to why it is okay if children don't learn to read till they are 7, 8, 9 or even older, and what harm forcing children to learn formal academics before they are developmentally ready does. I would LOVE to know peoples thoughts on what I'm sharing. It is so opposite of what the government schools (at least from what I have seen and experienced personally, being a part of that for 13 years) teach and how they operate.



And, regarding how we teach our children – why the oldest three didn’t learn to read till they were at least 8 years of age - we do not prevent them from learning to read if they are ready and we don't force them before they are. Here are a few studies on the matter that explain our stance (and we certainly don’t expect you to read all of these):

H. McCurdy, “The Childhood Pattern of Genius”
The Smithsonian Institution’s recipe for genius and leadership: (1) Children should spend a great deal of time with loving, educationally minded parents; (2) Children should be allowed a lot of free exploration; and (3) Children should have little to no association with peers outside of family and relatives. Formal reading and the usual school work until the child is 8 years old produces better physical and emotional heath and guarantees a much greater possibility of later success." Dr. Raymond Moore


Factors such as how life experience, cognitive ability to attach meaning to experience, maturing of visual perception, mental and physical development and anthropometric maturity readiness play in. Typically this all comes together at about ages 8-10. These all add to an increased ability to learn without undue stress and strain. (I'm not just quoting the study, I'm speaking from experience of teaching 3 of my 6 to read and watching them take off like a rocket from there).

The above comes from Frostig, M. 1968; Lefever, W.; and Whittlesey , J. 1963 Disturbances in visual perception . Journal of educational research 57:160-162 [91, 150, 152, 156]

"responsibilities for home duties and for self-care, matched to the child's abilities were found by Milner to be positive factors in learning to read." Milner, E. A. 1951. Child Development 22:95-112 [45, 107, 108, 109]

“The ability to print and match a particular sound to a specific letter (phonics) in children predominately a left-sided (analytic) brain activity. Developmentally, the left side of the brain doesn’t fully start to develop or myelinate until ages 7 to 9 years. When we teach children to read or write at an earlier age, we stress their mind and their body. (Susan R. Johnson, M.D., F.A.A.P.)

“up to 80% of all school children are considered to have some learning disability. Learning is our most natural state, so when 80% of children are considered learning disabled, it’s time to change our paradigm.” Natural Center on Health Statictics U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

“Child development experts agree that the only thing shown to optimize a child’s intellectual potential is a secure, trusting relationship with their parents.” Mate, Gabor. 1999. Scattered, How ADD Originates and What You can Do about It. E.P. Dutton
Kluger, Jeffrey and Alice Park. 2001. The quest for a Super Kid. Time Magazine, April 20, 2001 p. 53 and Benson, Peter. 1999. All Kids Are Our Kids. President of the Serach Institute in Minneapolis. Public Agenda Poll.


An associate of mine who has a PhD in reading shared this with me - Maryanne Wolf, director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University wrote a book called Proust and the Squid: The Story and the Science of the Reading Brain. She shares that "Learning to read begins the first time an infant is held and read a story. How often this happens, or fails to happen, in the first five years of childhood turns out to be one of the best predictors of later reading." She believes in a natural progression of capabilities being attained before effective reading can be possible. This development of fundamental brain functions cannot be rushed and varies from individual to individual. Wolf states that this process takes at least five years and could be up to eight years, boys typically being slower.

Just a little more of the letter..........We have been charged of the Lord to teach our children correct principles and we will be held accountable before God for the discharge of these obligations (see The Family a Proclamation to the World). We have a right to receive revelation from God in how we raise our families (3 Nephi 27:29 Therefore, ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you; for he that asketh, receiveth; and unto him that knocketh, it shall be opened.), as well as in how we live gospel principles. We have been prayerful and extraordinarily studious in how we are going about raising our family. We are not perfect. I recognize that the church has no official stance on how children are taught in regards to their secular education; that is up to personal revelation.

[karend77]

My children did not get homeschooled but I volunteered in the schools and worked part time in the schools to assure my children got the best teachers and I had a voice. We supplemented education at home. We werent afraid of educating the teachers if we felt they taught something incorrectly, but we made sure we had the materials to back it up. Most thanked us.

Becuase of the good experience with excellent teachers my daughter got a degree in teaching. However, after teaching in the public education system for a few years she became discouraged. The system has degraded far worse than any of us could have imagined. I have watched excellent teachers retire because they cant stand it any longer. There are a few public "magnet" schools that are ok, but only unaffordable private schooling is the other safe option (other than home schooling).

Now that my daughter has her own children she has decided to home school them. I am very grateful she is choosing this path. Many in her ward are doing that too (southern state). However, here in Happy Valley, parents are blissfully sending their kids off to be indoctrinated (oops..."educated" :-s ). Common Core is alive and well in Utah.

[BroJones]

Now that my daughter has her own children she has decided to home school them. I am very grateful she is choosing this path. Many in her ward are doing that too (southern state). However, here in Happy Valley, parents are blissfully sending their kids off to be indoctrinated (oops..."educated" :-s ). Common Core is alive and well in Utah.

We home-schooled the younger of our children, in Utah, and it worked out well I think.
We would home school ALL of them (I think- they have choice too) if we had it to do over.

[lundbaek]

Our 3 school age grandkids are in a charter school American Leadership Academy, and we and their parents are very happy with it thus far. Heritage Academy in Arizona has expanded to 3 branches and parents I know are very happy with it as well.

[Watcher]

I can't believe that your bishop is interfering in what is a matter of personal choice, a sacred choice that is given by God to you to decide as a parent. He has NO right whatsoever to do that.

LOL - I am pretty conservative when it comes to church stuff, but that is a bishop I would respectfully tell to go pound rocks.

[Strawberry]

Our 3 school age grandkids are in a charter school American Leadership Academy, and we and their parents are very happy with it thus far. Heritage Academy in Arizona has expanded to 3 branches and parents I know are very happy with it as well.

The two of my children that are in private school use curriculum from American Heritage Academy for at least one of their classes. Love it!

[Strawberry]

I can't believe that your bishop is interfering in what is a matter of personal choice, a sacred choice that is given by God to you to decide as a parent. He has NO right whatsoever to do that.

LOL - I am pretty conservative when it comes to church stuff, but that is a bishop I would respectfully tell to go pound rocks.

I think we have, in a nice way. It just shocks me how plainly obvious things are and how blind people still are. Of course, I'm sure I'm blind on some obvious things too and am grateful when the shades are taken off so I can see things as they really are.

Here is something I came across today - I don't believe everything I read on the internet, but I do believe children in government schools are being indoctrinated, taught Satans plan and groomed to be good little slaves, vs liberty loving, God fearing individuals that I'm trying to raise my children to be.



Public Schools Are Preparing America’s Children For Life In A Police State
Posted on February 18, 2014 by Michael Snyder

Public SchoolsOur children are the future of America, and our public schools are systematically training them to become accustomed to living in a “Big Brother” police state. All across the United States today, public schools have essentially become “prison grids” that are run by control freaks that are absolutely obsessed with micromanaging the lives of their students down to the smallest detail. As you will read about below, students all over the country are now being monitored by RFID microchips, their lunches are being inspected on a daily basis by school administrators, and the social media accounts of students are being constantly monitored even when they are at home. Of course these sorts of things do not happen everywhere just yet, but on the path that we are on it is just a matter of time. At this point, many of our public schools very closely resemble “totalitarian dictatorships”, and so if the United States ever slips into totalitarianism the students of today will actually feel very comfortable under that political system.

I went to public schools all my life, so I have experience in this area. Sadly, things have gone downhill quite a bit since those days. For example, one thing that was unheard of back when I was in high school was “active shooter drills”. They are being held in school districts all over the nation today, and they often involve the firing of blanks and the use of fake blood. The following is from a recent NBC News about these drills…

In a cramped, carpeted amphitheater in the basement of Troy Buchanan High School, 69 students are waiting to die.

“You’ll know when it pops off,” says Robert Bowen, the school’s campus police officer. “If you get engaged with one of the shooters, you’ll know it.”

“When you get shot, you need to close your fingers and keep ‘em in,” adds Tammy Kozinski, the drama teacher. “When the bad guy and the police come through, they’ll step all over you, and who will be saying they’re sorry?”

“Nobody!” the students cry in unison.

This isn’t a bizarre, premeditated mass murder or some twisted sacrifice led by a student cult. These are the 20 minutes preceding an active shooter drill, the 13th one Missouri’s Lincoln County school district has staged in the past year.

You can read the rest of that article right here, and a YouTube video about these drills is posted below…

Fortunately, the students participating in the active shooter drills in Missouri know in advance what is happening.

In other instances around the country, that is not the case. In fact, sometimes teachers are not even told what is going to happen. Just check out the following example from New Jersey…

About 50 teachers at a New Jersey school experienced a terrifying moment when a shooting rampage turned out to be a drill, but the teachers didn’t know it.

It happened Aug. 28 at the Phillipsburg New Jersey Early Learning Center.

A man burst into the library and started shooting. But the gun didn’t have any bullets, just blanks.

Teachers took cover under child-sized tables, crying and trembling.

“People are crying. The girl next to me is trembling and shaking. You heard people crying. You heard other people praying. It was pretty dramatic,” one teacher said.

Could you imagine your own children being put through something so traumatic?

And of course “active shooter drills” are far from the only way that our public schools are being transformed into prison camps. Just consider the following list…

-Public schools in some parts of the country are beginning to use RFID microchips to track school attendance. (Link)

-Some public schools are now systematically monitoring the social media accounts of their students. (Link)

-Listening devices are being installed in classrooms all over the nation. (Link)

-Bureaucratic control freaks are checking student lunches at many schools to ensure that they are “balanced”. (Link)

-Students are being suspended from school for simply making gun gestures with their hands. (Link)

-Some public schools do not even allow parents to walk their own children to class. (Link)

school-lockdown

This next set of examples comes from one of my previous articles…

-A few years ago, a class of 3rd grade students at one Kentucky elementary school were searched by a group of teachers after 5 dollars went missing. During the search the students were actually required to remove their shoes and their socks.

-At one public school in the Chicago area, children have been banned from bringing their lunches from home. Yes, you read that correctly. Students at that particular school are absolutely prohibited from bringing lunches from home. Instead, it is mandatory that they eat the food that the school cafeteria serves.

-The U.S. Department of Agriculture is spending huge amounts of money to install surveillance cameras in the cafeterias of public schools so that government control freaks can closely monitor what our children are eating.

-A teenager in suburban Dallas was forced to take on a part-time job after being ticketed for using bad language in one high school classroom. The original ticket was for $340, but additional fees have raised the total bill to $637.

-It is not just high school kids that are being ticketed by police. In Texas the crackdown extends all the way down to elementary school students. In fact, it has been reported that Texas police gave “1,000 tickets” to elementary school kids over a recent six year period.

-A 17 year-old honor student in North Carolina named Ashley Smithwick accidentally took her father’s lunch with her to school. It contained a small paring knife which he would use to slice up apples. So what happened to this standout student when the school discovered this? The school suspended her for the rest of the year and the police charged her with a misdemeanor.

-A 6 year old girl in Florida was handcuffed and sent to a mental facility after throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school.

-In early 2010, a 12 year old girl in New York was arrested by police and marched out of her school in handcuffs just because she doodled on her desk. “I love my friends Abby and Faith” was what she reportedly wrote on her desk.

-There are actually some public schools in the United States that are so paranoid that they have actually installed cameras in student bathrooms.

-Down in Florida, students have actually been arrested by police for bringing a plastic butter knife to school, for throwing an eraser, and for drawing a picture of a gun.

-The Florida State Department of Juvenile Justice has announced that it will begin using analysis software to predict crime by young delinquents and will place “potential offenders” in specific prevention and education programs.

-A group of high school students made national headlines a while back when they revealed that they were ordered by a security guard to stop singing the national anthem during a visit to the Lincoln Memorial.

-In some U.S. schools, armed cops accompanied by police dogs actually conduct surprise raids with their guns drawn. In this video, you can actually see police officers aiming their guns at school children as the students are lined up facing the wall.

-Back in 2009, one 8 year old boy in Massachusetts was sent home from schooland was forced to undergo a psychological evaluation because he drew a picture of Jesus on the cross.

Are you starting to get the picture?

Our public schools are systematically training our children for life in a police state, and hardly anyone is complaining about it.

We are heading down a very dangerous road, and at the end of that road we would end up like other totalitarian regimes such as North Korea.

If you think that you would like to live in a truly totalitarian regime, just consider what a new UN report that was just released says is going on in North Korea right now…

The commission documents crimes against humanity, including “extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation.”

So why don’t the people of North Korea rebel?

Well, one prison camp survivor that escaped said that “we became so used to it that we didn’t feel anything”…

One witness, a survivor of a North Korean prison camp, told the commission of seeing a guard beat a nearly starving woman who had recently given birth, then force the woman to drown her baby.

Others told of being imprisoned for watching soap operas, trying to find food for their families, traveling without permission or having family members considered suspect by the government.

“Because we saw so many people die, we became so used to it,” one prison camp survivor told the commission. “I’m sorry to say that we became so used to it that we didn’t feel anything.”

Perhaps you think that such a thing could never happen in America, but the truth is that we are also becoming very accustomed to the emerging Big Brother control grid which is being constructed all around us.

And the youth of today are sadly ignorant of what this nation is supposed to look like. In fact, in the video posted below activist Mark Dice discovers that many students at one college in California cannot even name any of the Bill of Rights when they are asked to do so…

So is there any hope for the next generation of Americans?

Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below…

U.S. Public Schools Are Rapidly Being Turned Into Indoctrination Centers And Prison CampsMichael Snyder is the Editor of End of the American Dream.

http://www.dcclothesline.com/2014/02/18 ... e-state-2/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Watcher]

I haven't had time to read that article you just posted yet, but I am definitely going to. From what I scanned, I will be in agreement. We homeschool our 5 - none of them have ever been to school (other than a once-a-week coop school). The biggest reason we do it (aside from the inferior academics, the peer pressure, the idiot culture of the school system) is the indoctrination of the children to prepare them to live in the NWO/police state.

Here is an example that I think you will enjoy:

We live in the far north of the state of Vermont (supposed to be liberal, right?), but we live right on the border with New Hampshire (supposed to be one of the most conservative in the USA, right?). We visited down in southern NH one Sunday, and heard a sister bear her testimony. She was a public school teacher who had just returned to teaching, and was substituting at a local elementary school.

Anyhow, she told in her testimony how the school had just recently changed its policy on how to call the kids in from recess. In the past, the teacher had blown a whistle and yelled freeze, and all the kids where supposed to freeze in place, and then when called walk over the the line to go inside. However, kids (especially boys) were still continuing to chase balls, run, etc ... and they were afraid that "one of the kids dutifully standing still might get hurt by those continuing to play." So she said that they had instituted a great new system: now, when the teacher blew the whistle, all the kids had to kneel down, facing the school. This allowed the teachers to quickly see anyone who was not complying. She (the LDS sister) continued on with her testimony - apparently unbothered by this.

After a little research at home, I learned that this system was being used in Texas, where it had aroused several protests by parents, and in other parts of the country. It reminds me of a Nazi system that was trained into the populace during those years - if facing a fugitive in a crowd, the Gestapo would give a single upon which all the Germans in the crowd would drop and lie on the ground, leaving only the fugitive standing/running. Careful and unobstructed aim could then be taken, and the miscreant eliminated.

This recess system would NEVER fly in Vermont, where independence is taken very, very seriously. We have an active and vital secession movement, and we are allowed to open carry/concealed carry, no permit of any kind, nothing needed to buy any kind of gun, etc...
I personally don't see any problem at all with having the children kneel down and worship the school at the end of recess.

[karend77]

Watcher- Your account is probably one of the more scarier posts I have read in awhile - yikes! I would definitely be a parent protesting if this happened in my neighborhood school.

[Chip]

Here is a really interesting snippet from an Ayn Rand interview on Donahue in 1979. Just watch one minute worth:

http://youtu.be/3u8Jjth81_Q?t=38m44s

She says a lot of profound things in 60 seconds about the current nature of "education". I totally agree with her.

After watching that clip a few times, I realized that the lady initially asking a question to Ayn Rand was brainwashed into thinking that she and her children's lives were thoroughly parameterized by The System, who she blindly supposed Ayn Rand was a part of. No understanding of agency there. Ayn Rand was like a prophetess sent to clear the air on man's agency.

[Strawberry]

Here is a great talk on TED called "How Schools Kill Creativity". Resonates with me. I am having trouble imbedding it - here is the link - http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_s ... creativity" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. If anyone can figure it out that would be wonderful.




Here is the transcript:

Good morning. How are you? It's been great, hasn't it? I've been blown away by the whole thing. In fact, I'm leaving. (Laughter) There have been three themes, haven't there, running through the conference, which are relevant to what I want to talk about. One is the extraordinary evidence of human creativity in all of the presentations that we've had and in all of the people here. Just the variety of it and the range of it. The second is that it's put us in a place where we have no idea what's going to happen, in terms of the future. No idea how this may play out.

0:56 I have an interest in education -- actually, what I find is everybody has an interest in education. Don't you? I find this very interesting. If you're at a dinner party, and you say you work in education -- actually, you're not often at dinner parties, frankly, if you work in education. (Laughter) You're not asked. And you're never asked back, curiously. That's strange to me. But if you are, and you say to somebody, you know, they say, "What do you do?" and you say you work in education, you can see the blood run from their face. They're like, "Oh my God," you know, "Why me? My one night out all week." (Laughter) But if you ask about their education, they pin you to the wall. Because it's one of those things that goes deep with people, am I right? Like religion, and money and other things. I have a big interest in education, and I think we all do. We have a huge vested interest in it, partly because it's education that's meant to take us into this future that we can't grasp. If you think of it, children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065. Nobody has a clue -- despite all the expertise that's been on parade for the past four days -- what the world will look like in five years' time. And yet we're meant to be educating them for it. So the unpredictability, I think, is extraordinary.

2:24 And the third part of this is that we've all agreed, nonetheless, on the really extraordinary capacities that children have -- their capacities for innovation. I mean, Sirena last night was a marvel, wasn't she? Just seeing what she could do. And she's exceptional, but I think she's not, so to speak, exceptional in the whole of childhood. What you have there is a person of extraordinary dedication who found a talent. And my contention is, all kids have tremendous talents. And we squander them, pretty ruthlessly. So I want to talk about education and I want to talk about creativity. My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status. (Applause) Thank you. That was it, by the way. Thank you very much. (Laughter) So, 15 minutes left. Well, I was born ... no. (Laughter)

3:28 I heard a great story recently -- I love telling it -- of a little girl who was in a drawing lesson. She was six and she was at the back, drawing, and the teacher said this little girl hardly ever paid attention, and in this drawing lesson she did. The teacher was fascinated and she went over to her and she said, "What are you drawing?" And the girl said, "I'm drawing a picture of God." And the teacher said, "But nobody knows what God looks like." And the girl said, "They will in a minute." (Laughter)

4:03 When my son was four in England -- actually he was four everywhere, to be honest. (Laughter) If we're being strict about it, wherever he went, he was four that year. He was in the Nativity play. Do you remember the story? No, it was big. It was a big story. Mel Gibson did the sequel. You may have seen it: "Nativity II." But James got the part of Joseph, which we were thrilled about. We considered this to be one of the lead parts. We had the place crammed full of agents in T-shirts: "James Robinson IS Joseph!" (Laughter) He didn't have to speak, but you know the bit where the three kings come in. They come in bearing gifts, and they bring gold, frankincense and myrrh. This really happened. We were sitting there and I think they just went out of sequence, because we talked to the little boy afterward and we said, "You OK with that?" And he said, "Yeah, why? Was that wrong?" They just switched, that was it. Anyway, the three boys came in -- four-year-olds with tea towels on their heads -- and they put these boxes down, and the first boy said, "I bring you gold." And the second boy said, "I bring you myrrh." And the third boy said, "Frank sent this." (Laughter)

5:22 What these things have in common is that kids will take a chance. If they don't know, they'll have a go. Am I right? They're not frightened of being wrong. Now, I don't mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative. What we do know is, if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original -- if you're not prepared to be wrong. And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong. And we run our companies like this, by the way. We stigmatize mistakes. And we're now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. And the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities. Picasso once said this -- he said that all children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. I believe this passionately, that we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out if it. So why is this?

6:21 I lived in Stratford-on-Avon until about five years ago. In fact, we moved from Stratford to Los Angeles. So you can imagine what a seamless transition that was. (Laughter) Actually, we lived in a place called Snitterfield, just outside Stratford, which is where Shakespeare's father was born. Are you struck by a new thought? I was. You don't think of Shakespeare having a father, do you? Do you? Because you don't think of Shakespeare being a child, do you? Shakespeare being seven? I never thought of it. I mean, he was seven at some point. He was in somebody's English class, wasn't he? How annoying would that be? (Laughter) "Must try harder." Being sent to bed by his dad, you know, to Shakespeare, "Go to bed, now," to William Shakespeare, "and put the pencil down. And stop speaking like that. It's confusing everybody." (Laughter)

7:34 Anyway, we moved from Stratford to Los Angeles, and I just want to say a word about the transition, actually. My son didn't want to come. I've got two kids. He's 21 now; my daughter's 16. He didn't want to come to Los Angeles. He loved it, but he had a girlfriend in England. This was the love of his life, Sarah. He'd known her for a month. Mind you, they'd had their fourth anniversary, because it's a long time when you're 16. Anyway, he was really upset on the plane, and he said, "I'll never find another girl like Sarah." And we were rather pleased about that, frankly, because she was the main reason we were leaving the country. (Laughter)

8:24 But something strikes you when you move to America and when you travel around the world: Every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects. Every one. Doesn't matter where you go. You'd think it would be otherwise, but it isn't. At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and the bottom are the arts. Everywhere on Earth. And in pretty much every system too, there's a hierarchy within the arts. Art and music are normally given a higher status in schools than drama and dance. There isn't an education system on the planet that teaches dance everyday to children the way we teach them mathematics. Why? Why not? I think this is rather important. I think math is very important, but so is dance. Children dance all the time if they're allowed to, we all do. We all have bodies, don't we? Did I miss a meeting? (Laughter) Truthfully, what happens is, as children grow up, we start to educate them progressively from the waist up. And then we focus on their heads. And slightly to one side.

9:21 If you were to visit education, as an alien, and say "What's it for, public education?" I think you'd have to conclude -- if you look at the output, who really succeeds by this, who does everything that they should, who gets all the brownie points, who are the winners -- I think you'd have to conclude the whole purpose of public education throughout the world is to produce university professors. Isn't it? They're the people who come out the top. And I used to be one, so there. (Laughter) And I like university professors, but you know, we shouldn't hold them up as the high-water mark of all human achievement. They're just a form of life, another form of life. But they're rather curious, and I say this out of affection for them. There's something curious about professors in my experience -- not all of them, but typically -- they live in their heads. They live up there, and slightly to one side. They're disembodied, you know, in a kind of literal way. They look upon their body as a form of transport for their heads, don't they? (Laughter) It's a way of getting their head to meetings. If you want real evidence of out-of-body experiences, by the way, get yourself along to a residential conference of senior academics, and pop into the discotheque on the final night. (Laughter) And there you will see it -- grown men and women writhing uncontrollably, off the beat, waiting until it ends so they can go home and write a paper about it.

10:58 Now our education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability. And there's a reason. The whole system was invented -- around the world, there were no public systems of education, really, before the 19th century. They all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism. So the hierarchy is rooted on two ideas. Number one, that the most useful subjects for work are at the top. So you were probably steered benignly away from things at school when you were a kid, things you liked, on the grounds that you would never get a job doing that. Is that right? Don't do music, you're not going to be a musician; don't do art, you won't be an artist. Benign advice -- now, profoundly mistaken. The whole world is engulfed in a revolution. And the second is academic ability, which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence, because the universities designed the system in their image. If you think of it, the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they're not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn't valued, or was actually stigmatized. And I think we can't afford to go on that way.

12:07 In the next 30 years, according to UNESCO, more people worldwide will be graduating through education than since the beginning of history. More people, and it's the combination of all the things we've talked about -- technology and its transformation effect on work, and demography and the huge explosion in population. Suddenly, degrees aren't worth anything. Isn't that true? When I was a student, if you had a degree, you had a job. If you didn't have a job it's because you didn't want one. And I didn't want one, frankly. (Laughter) But now kids with degrees are often heading home to carry on playing video games, because you need an MA where the previous job required a BA, and now you need a PhD for the other. It's a process of academic inflation. And it indicates the whole structure of education is shifting beneath our feet. We need to radically rethink our view of intelligence.

12:55 We know three things about intelligence. One, it's diverse. We think about the world in all the ways that we experience it. We think visually, we think in sound, we think kinesthetically. We think in abstract terms, we think in movement. Secondly, intelligence is dynamic. If you look at the interactions of a human brain, as we heard yesterday from a number of presentations, intelligence is wonderfully interactive. The brain isn't divided into compartments. In fact, creativity -- which I define as the process of having original ideas that have value -- more often than not comes about through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things.

13:32 The brain is intentionally -- by the way, there's a shaft of nerves that joins the two halves of the brain called the corpus callosum. It's thicker in women. Following off from Helen yesterday, I think this is probably why women are better at multi-tasking. Because you are, aren't you? There's a raft of research, but I know it from my personal life. If my wife is cooking a meal at home -- which is not often, thankfully. (Laughter) But you know, she's doing -- no, she's good at some things -- but if she's cooking, you know, she's dealing with people on the phone, she's talking to the kids, she's painting the ceiling, she's doing open-heart surgery over here. If I'm cooking, the door is shut, the kids are out, the phone's on the hook, if she comes in I get annoyed. I say, "Terry, please, I'm trying to fry an egg in here. Give me a break." (Laughter) Actually, you know that old philosophical thing, if a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it, did it happen? Remember that old chestnut? I saw a great t-shirt really recently which said, "If a man speaks his mind in a forest, and no woman hears him, is he still wrong?" (Laughter)

14:51 And the third thing about intelligence is, it's distinct. I'm doing a new book at the moment called "Epiphany," which is based on a series of interviews with people about how they discovered their talent. I'm fascinated by how people got to be there. It's really prompted by a conversation I had with a wonderful woman who maybe most people have never heard of; she's called Gillian Lynne -- have you heard of her? Some have. She's a choreographer and everybody knows her work. She did "Cats" and "Phantom of the Opera." She's wonderful. I used to be on the board of the Royal Ballet in England, as you can see. Anyway, Gillian and I had lunch one day and I said, "Gillian, how'd you get to be a dancer?" And she said it was interesting; when she was at school, she was really hopeless. And the school, in the '30s, wrote to her parents and said, "We think Gillian has a learning disorder." She couldn't concentrate; she was fidgeting. I think now they'd say she had ADHD. Wouldn't you? But this was the 1930s, and ADHD hadn't been invented at this point. It wasn't an available condition. (Laughter) People weren't aware they could have that.

15:50 Anyway, she went to see this specialist. So, this oak-paneled room, and she was there with her mother, and she was led and sat on this chair at the end, and she sat on her hands for 20 minutes while this man talked to her mother about all the problems Gillian was having at school. And at the end of it -- because she was disturbing people; her homework was always late; and so on, little kid of eight -- in the end, the doctor went and sat next to Gillian and said, "Gillian, I've listened to all these things that your mother's told me, and I need to speak to her privately." He said, "Wait here. We'll be back; we won't be very long," and they went and left her. But as they went out the room, he turned on the radio that was sitting on his desk. And when they got out the room, he said to her mother, "Just stand and watch her." And the minute they left the room, she said, she was on her feet, moving to the music. And they watched for a few minutes and he turned to her mother and said, "Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn't sick; she's a dancer. Take her to a dance school."

16:50 I said, "What happened?" She said, "She did. I can't tell you how wonderful it was. We walked in this room and it was full of people like me. People who couldn't sit still. People who had to move to think." Who had to move to think. They did ballet; they did tap; they did jazz; they did modern; they did contemporary. She was eventually auditioned for the Royal Ballet School; she became a soloist; she had a wonderful career at the Royal Ballet. She eventually graduated from the Royal Ballet School and founded her own company -- the Gillian Lynne Dance Company -- met Andrew Lloyd Weber. She's been responsible for some of the most successful musical theater productions in history; she's given pleasure to millions; and she's a multi-millionaire. Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down.

17:38 Now, I think ... (Applause) What I think it comes to is this: Al Gore spoke the other night about ecology and the revolution that was triggered by Rachel Carson. I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity. Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mine the earth: for a particular commodity. And for the future, it won't serve us. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we're educating our children. There was a wonderful quote by Jonas Salk, who said, "If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on Earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish." And he's right.

18:32 What TED celebrates is the gift of the human imagination. We have to be careful now that we use this gift wisely and that we avert some of the scenarios that we've talked about. And the only way we'll do it is by seeing our creative capacities for the richness they are and seeing our children for the hope that they are. And our task is to educate their whole being, so they can face this future. By the way -- we may not see this future, but they will. And our job is to help them make something of it. Thank you very much.

[Hyrcanus]

I definitely think a strong case can be made for home schooling, but I also think that the practical execution is often pretty bad. I had home schooled friends growing up that couldn't read or write at 8 years old, couldn't do multiplication at 9 and failed a GED exam multiple times at 18. I also had home schooled friends that were grades ahead of their peers across the board. It all comes down to the parents.

[Looking Forward]

/couldn't read or write at 8 years old, couldn't do multiplication at 9 and failed a GED exam multiple times at 18.

Then there are others who like above, are very gifted and intelligent. Age really doesn't mean anything when it comes to learning; it comes with time and learning style.

[Rose Garden]

There's some scary stuff in this thread. Of course, it's not the norm, but it's still scary to think that those things could happen at all.

As for me, I don't like public school because they act like they own my kids. My kids liked the social interaction and I agree that an environment where kids can be together with others is great. But I didn't like the idea that the school could dictate so much of my kids life and I had to check them out and so forth to take them home.

[Strawberry]

CTS - I hear you - it is frightening, the government believes it owns our children. - there is a supreme court ruling that says something similar to this "When you drop your child(ren) off at the schoolhouse door, you are then giving the public school authority to act in your stead via something called "in loco parentis" which is Latin for "in place of the parents." I know I have the exact ruling wording somewhere in my many pages of notes

Most of you know CPS came to my door - sent by a member of my ward. The only complaint we got this time was concern that perhaps all of the children couldn't read and I'm supposedly "homeschooling" them. So, in light of that I had a conversation with the bishop in person then e-mailed him. The truth is (Hyrcanus) I have 6 children, the 3 oldest can read, none of them learned to read till they were 8 or older. My 9 year old is still working on it, it's been more of a struggle for her than the others. She has a private tutor as well as me. The other two LOVE to read and do so voraciously. Once they learned to read they quickly caught up to their peers who learned to read at age 5 or 6. Same thing in math - quickly caught up. I talked with a lady who is a medical doctor and has a masters in teaching as well. She shared with me (others have shared the same thing with me as well) that it only takes about 3 years for children to learn all that children learn in grades K-8. 3 years!!!!!!! So, I'm not terribly worried about late readers or those late to math.

Anyway, this is what I shared in regards to education in the letter to the bishop:


The ultimate purpose of the adversary, who has “great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time,” is to disrupt, disturb, and destroy the home and the family. Like a ship without a rudder, without a compass, we drift from the family values which have anchored us in the past. Now we are caught in a current so strong that unless we correct our course, civilization as we know it will surely be wrecked to pieces. Moral values are being neglected and prayer expelled from public schools on the pretext that moral teaching belongs to religion. At the same time, atheism, the secular religion, is admitted to class, and our youngsters are proselyted to a conduct without morality. (Boyd K. Packer, Ensign, May 1994 P. 19)


“The home is the first and most effective place to learn the lessons of life: truth, honor, virtue, self-control, the value of education, honest work, and the purpose and privilege of life. Nothing can take the place of home in rearing and teaching children, and no other success can compensate for failure in the home.”
― David O. McKay



Let us never lose sight of the fact that education is a preparation for life -- and that preparing for life is far more than knowing how to make a living or how to land on the moon. Preparing for life means building personal integrity, developing a sound sense of values, increasing the capacity and willingness to serve. Education must have its roots in moral principles. If we lose sight of that fact in our attempt to match our educational system against that of the materialists, we shall have lost far more than we could possibly gain. (Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson, p. 297)



And, regarding how we teach our children – why the oldest three didn’t learn to read till they were at least 8 years of age - we do not prevent them from learning to read if they are ready and we don't force them before they are. Here are a few studies on the matter that explain our stance (and we certainly don’t expect you to read all of these):

H. McCurdy, “The Childhood Pattern of Genius”
The Smithsonian Institution’s recipe for genius and leadership: (1) Children should spend a great deal of time with loving, educationally minded parents; (2) Children should be allowed a lot of free exploration; and (3) Children should have little to no association with peers outside of family and relatives. Formal reading and the usual school work until the child is 8 years old produces better physical and emotional heath and guarantees a much greater possibility of later success." Dr. Raymond Moore


Factors such as how life experience, cognitive ability to attach meaning to experience, maturing of visual perception, mental and physical development and anthropometric maturity readiness play in. Typically this all comes together at about ages 8-10. These all add to an increased ability to learn without undue stress and strain. (I'm not just quoting the study, I'm speaking from experience of teaching 3 of my 6 to read and watching them take off like a rocket from there).

The above comes from Frostig, M. 1968; Lefever, W.; and Whittlesey , J. 1963 Disturbances in visual perception . Journal of educational research 57:160-162 [91, 150, 152, 156]

"responsibilities for home duties and for self-care, matched to the child's abilities were found by Milner to be positive factors in learning to read." Milner, E. A. 1951. Child Development 22:95-112 [45, 107, 108, 109]

“The ability to print and match a particular sound to a specific letter (phonics) in children predominately a left-sided (analytic) brain activity. Developmentally, the left side of the brain doesn’t fully start to develop or myelinate until ages 7 to 9 years. When we teach children to read or write at an earlier age, we stress their mind and their body. (Susan R. Johnson, M.D., F.A.A.P.)

“up to 80% of all school children are considered to have some learning disability. Learning is our most natural state, so when 80% of children are considered learning disabled, it’s time to change our paradigm.” Natural Center on Health Statictics U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

“Child development experts agree that the only thing shown to optimize a child’s intellectual potential is a secure, trusting relationship with their parents.” Mate, Gabor. 1999. Scattered, How ADD Originates and What You can Do about It. E.P. Dutton
Kluger, Jeffrey and Alice Park. 2001. The quest for a Super Kid. Time Magazine, April 20, 2001 p. 53 and Benson, Peter. 1999. All Kids Are Our Kids. President of the Serach Institute in Minneapolis. Public Agenda Poll.


An associate of mine who has a PhD in reading shared this with me - Maryanne Wolf, director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University wrote a book called Proust and the Squid: The Story and the Science of the Reading Brain. She shares that "Learning to read begins the first time an infant is held and read a story. How often this happens, or fails to happen, in the first five years of childhood turns out to be one of the best predictors of later reading." She believes in a natural progression of capabilities being attained before effective reading can be possible. This development of fundamental brain functions cannot be rushed and varies from individual to individual. Wolf states that this process takes at least five years and could be up to eight years, boys typically being slower.

We have been charged of the Lord to teach our children correct principles and we will be held accountable before God for the discharge of these obligations (see The Family a Proclamation to the World). We have a right to receive revelation from God in how we raise our families (3 Nephi 27:29 Therefore, ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you; for he that asketh, receiveth; and unto him that knocketh, it shall be opened.), as well as in how we live gospel principles. We have been prayerful and extraordinarily studious in how we are going about raising our family. We are not perfect. I recognize that the church has no official stance on how children are taught in regards to their secular education; that is up to personal revelation.

So, to each his own. I feel that as a society we get so caught up in markers - they must be doing X by this age or something is wrong, neglect, disability....... It is not necessarily so. We need to trust and rely on God more, trust the children. We don't take an infant and push them to walk when they are 6 months old, create a class for them to learn to walk. We provide the correct environment, guidance and love and they learn to walk. Perhaps that's over simplifying things, but we are born with a thirst for knowledge. I don't know that it always has to be micromanaged, perhaps some, but not as much as it is generally speaking.

I appreciate your all engaging in this discussion with me.