To my homeschooling friends: Let's write to the senator; but let's make sure we have our fact straight!

I thought I should write a Post Script to my previous post about the Ohio State Senator who believes potential homeschoolers require greater scrutiny.

My point in showing the various factual errors in Matt Walsh's blog post was not to disagree with his goal. But it was to encourage homeschoolers, when we write to Senator Cafaro, to get our facts straight.

Oh. And one more fact to keep in mind: She is female. Walsh used the masculine pronoun when referring to her ("To make his case, Senator Capri Cafaro . . ."). It would be rather uncool to refer to her as a male!

If you want the wording of the actual legislation, go here.

Boy! If they placed that kind of regulation over the public schools, I think Walsh is correct: virtually all government schools would have been shut down long ago! (And can you imagine the backlog on Social Services to interview every teacher, every administrator, and every student in every school in Ohio?)

Nobel Prize in Physics won by homeschooler!

My friend Jill Evely brought this to my attention: Willard Boyle, co-inventor of the CCD (charge-coupled device; the primary device "at the heart of virtually every camcorder, digital camera and telescope in use today") and co-winner of this year's Nobel Prize in Physics, was homeschooled from preschool through 8th grade. Indeed, even today he credits his mother with being one of his most significant mentors.

For an entertaining and informative mini-biography, see the Science Canada website.

And for more about CCDs and their development, check out the Wired magazine article, More Than Meets the Eye: How the CCD Transformed Science.

--If you are reading this on Facebook, please know that it first appeared on my personal blog.

CHEC "Men's Leadership Summit" - "Homeschooling - Capturing the Vision," Part IV (The Principle of Relationships)

#10 in an ongoing series on Christian Home Educators of Colorado 2009 "Men's Leadership Summit" (otherwise known as the "The Vision of the Leadership Summit") held in Indianapolis, Indiana, at one of the hotels owned by Bill Gothard's group over the weekend of March 5-7, 2009. Previous post in this series: CHEC "Men's Leadership Summit" - "Homeschooling - Capturing the Vision," Part III (The Principle of Individuality). First post in the series: 2009 Christian Home Educators of Colorado (CHEC) "Men's Leadership Summit," Part I.

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The following content is Part IV (my divisions!) from Kevin Swanson's second speech at the 2009 CHEC "Men's Leadership Summit" ("MLS")--"Homeschooling - Capturing the Vision"--delivered on Friday, March 6, 2009 and available in full, audio form from ResoundingVoice.com.

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The Educational Principle of Relationships

Swanson's father sent him a news clipping a few years ago.

My dad . . . [is the chief researcher] for my radio show which airs . . . at kevinswanson.com. . . .

[T]his one [great little] story came in . . . about [a] family who was living in the inner city somewhere, and at some point, four years earlier, the dad--it was just the dad and a daughter--the dad just says, “I’ve got to get out of here; got to get out of these schools. It’s gonna ruin my daughter academically, character-wise. . . .”

So he just . . . goes and lives in the woods somewhere.

They live in the woods for four years, and the police just found them. They come in, and they test this 12-year-old girl. They give her the standardized test, and she tests out as a 12th-grade high school graduate. But here’s the clincher--here is the amazing thing. The curriculum--all the curriculum they had--was a Bible and a set of encyclopedias.

ETA on 5/22/09 at 10:18 PM: I'm not sure what we are supposed to take away from this.

1. Does he really mean that this girl had the true equivalent of a quality, 12th-grade education? She knew and understood high school algebra? Trigonometry? Biology? Chemistry? Physics? History? Music? . . . She had an appreciation for a full range of cultural heroes? She could comment intelligently on current events? . . .
   
   Was she really and truly a well-rounded person with the equivalent of an excellent (or, even, medium-quality) high school education?
   
   Or did the tests reveal, rather, that she was able, perhaps, to read on a 12th grade level? (I have no difficulty believing that.)
   
   But,
    
2. Supposing this young woman actually did exhibit the knowledge of an average 12th-grade high school graduate: Is that level of achievement--average--all that the average homeschool parents desire for their children? (I doubt it. Though it sounds as if that is the aspirational level of Kevin Swanson for his children.)
    
3. I am reminded of my comment, earlier today, about what we discussed last night with our daughter and son-in-law: about how Ralph Moody's mother had recognized the handicap under which her husband had labored due to his lack of book-learning. He was smart. He was skilled. He was a man of tremendous character. But his lack of academic training severely limited his ability in a number of areas.
   
   If our aspirations for our children are solely to become business-owning entrepreneurs (as it sounds as if Mr. Swanson wants for his son--and Mr. Swanson's son desires for himself), that is wonderful.
   
   But should the rest of us who have other aspirations for our children (or whose children have different aspirations for themselves): Should we simply lay these aside so we can fulfill Mr. Swanson's dreams?

It was around this time that we were at the CHEC conference. In fact, I had just gotten the story. We were at the CHEC conference, and my wife comes out of the vendor hall--which is like a lot of these huge conference vendor halls, where you have 150 vendors, and they’re all saying, "Buy my stuff. Buy my stuff. If you don’t buy my stuff, you’re giving your kids a sub-standard education."

Swanson overstates the case. I know of at least one vendor that has deliberately and studiously sought to avoid ever saying such a thing. Its name is Sonlight Curriculum.

Indeed, in order to reduce the pressure on potential buyers to "buy right now!", Sonlight doesn't even bring products to conventions that potential customers could walk away with.

Sorry to point out this overstatment on Swanson's part, but he pushed my button, and I figured I should protest.

My wife comes out and says, “Honey, shall I buy it all?”

Has that ever happened to any of you, where your wife goes, “Oh, what do I do? I've got to buy it all?”

ETA on 5/22/09 at 10:18 PM: No. And I know of no woman who would ever say such a thing.

*******
I get the sense Swanson is speaking in a highly derogatory manner, here. Is he expressing disdain for his own wife?

I had just read the story [about the man and his daughter], and I said, “Honey, here’s what you need to do: blindfold me, and I will walk randomly into the hall, and I’ll find six things, and we’ll give them [recording is unclear, but I think he says "we'll give them back our math"--JAH].”

Why is that? See, we’ve been sold a bill of goods that it’s gonna take thousands of dollars--and this is, by the way, the way that you get the government foot in education, anyway. They come in and they say it takes a professional. No wait. It takes $10,000. "You’ve got to get this really, really nice curriculum. . . . Look at the cover. Come on, look at it, huh? You’ve got to get the satellite feed. You’ve got to get this. You’ve got to get some professional teachers coming over by satellites. It’ll work really good."

But there’s something else . . . that is so much more effective in the education of a child.

Why is it that you have moms and dads--just ordinary moms and dads--that take that lousy 50 percentile and jack it up 36 percentile points, to 86?¹ How does that happen?

Does that happen because you’ve got experts out there who’ve been trained in four-year teaching colleges, by the millions, coming in and teaching your kids? No, they’re not experts.

Is it because they have the best curriculum? No, it’s not because they have the best curriculum.

What really clinched this for me was in the story, they interview the sheriff who investigated this case. He said what was incredible about the story was the unacceptable, impoverished conditions in which [the father and daughter] lived. They lived in this lean-to he had built next to a little creek, and it was really, really, really beat up. Sort of a rustic living. [The sheriff] said what was incredibly obvious was how unacceptable the living conditions were, but how close and loving a relationship they had.

You see, brothers, it’s the relationship that matters. That’s the core of it. That’s the heart of it.

ETA on 5/22/09 at 10:18 PM: The heart of it?

Important? Yes! No question.

Will it make a difference? Absolutely. No doubt.

But that relationship, by itself, is the heart of education? I don't know!

Forget the curriculum. Forget the trivium, classical unit study--whatever it is. It doesn’t really matter. Just go randomly grab something, please. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you have a four-year teaching certificate.

What matters is the relationship. What matters is focusing on what God considers to be the most important thing.

ETA on 5/22/09 at 10:18 PM: Again, I'm astonished that Swanson, the executive director and biggest public spokesperson for Christian Home Educators of Colorado can say such disdainful and unguarded comments about all the vendors who have ever gone into business to serve homeschooling parents.

But perhaps he reveals less about the majority of the vendors who come to his convention and more about people like himself, his buddy Doug Phillips, and their good friend Greg Harris, who all seem to delight in their ability to sell their wares as "non-profit ministries" to the homeschool audiences they gather.

I find myself unable to hold back from making another comment.

Swanson heaps contempt on the trivium, classical education, and so forth. None of these things matter, he says. "All you need," he seems to say, "is the Bible (and my four-book curriculum . . . and the other wonderful materials I have produced)."

But ignore his apparent exceptions reserved for the things he himself has produced (and for the other educational materials being sold directly by Christian Home Educators of Colorado?). [Interesting that this non-profit organization is going into direct competition with the companies that pay money to attend its conventions!]

I am struck--as I have noted before--that Swanson and Phillips and their pals are all very highly educated men. They have followed more than a haphazard, "pick anything" approach to "education." Swanson and Phillips and Baucham know their history. Yet they--and, here, Swanson in particular--pour contempt on everyone who would studiously attempt to follow such a path in order to prepare themselves for equal or even more effective service for the Kingdom. [Are these men, perhaps, concerned that others better than themselves might arise to take their places? --I find Swanson's and Phillips's negative comments about disciplined content-rich education particularly disturbing.]

But back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Swanson continues . . .

Now, when my wife came to me and said, “Honey, you’ve got to take this boy.” I really wasn’t sure what to do . . . because I work for a living. I’m a busy guy. Besides, for years I’ve been working to change the world. You guys have got to know the kind of guy I am.

Chris Klicka talked about the next generation being prepared to change the world. I was that next generation. I was ready to change the world. I ran for student body president at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. I was active in pro-life and stuff. I was active in Republican politics. I ran for governor of Colorado in 1994, and I had a little, screaming little boy who kept trying to get in my way.

ETA on 5/22/09 at 10:18 PM: Interesting that Swanson could even aspire to run for governor of Colorado. What the-Bible-and-an-encyclopedia-only-and-no-college-educated person could possibly hope, seriously, to run for governor?

As I was writing my book, The Second Mayflower, on how to change the world, there were these little fingers coming under the door, trying to get at me. He was screaming and yelling, and I couldn’t concentrate on changing the world, . . . until I realized that changing the world had everything to do with two things: one, changing the life of one little boy, and changing the life of this little boy.

You know, that’s what it’s about, brothers. You’ve heard it already from Chris, and you’re gonna hear it again from me.

I was that guy. I was too busy for my boy. But God says, “Tag. You’re it, man.” Because I’m sitting here--I’m not trying to impose my particular regimen on all you guys, here. I’m not trying to do that. I’m just saying, here was a boy surrounded by five women all day long, and he needed a man in his life. He’s 11-years-old and--I see this among a lot of homeschooled boys--[he needs] a man in his life. I could see my wife trying to fix these issues, and maybe this metaphor will help. It came to me a while back. She was out there trying to frame a house with a little, tiny, 6-ounce hammer, going dink-dink-dink, dink-dink-dink-dink, trying to get that first nail in: dink-dink-dink. And I’m sitting here with an 80-psi nail gun, watching her, going, “Too bad for you. I’m sorry about you. Keep working, honey. Keep working. Oh, I feel bad for you.”

Guys, I have an 85-psi nail gun, where I could get into that little boy’s life, and I could do something. I just knew that I could.

ETA on 5/22/09 at 10:18 PM: ????

What's this about his wife's little hammer and Swanson's supposed 80- or 85-psi nail gun? Why is he Mr. Big Bruiser and she has so little to offer?

Or does Swanson exhibit such swagger because he had been saddling her with the education of five children--by herself--and now, suddenly, he takes on the education of one?

Is he, suddenly, an expert on how to train boys because he has been doing some things with his one son?

His heart was crying out for me, and he had sins in his life that I had in my life.

I thought, “One and one makes two.” I put it together, and I knew that there was nobody--nobody on Planet Earth--not a pastor, not a youth group leader, not a Sunday school teacher, not a PE teacher--nobody on Planet Earth that could wade into this little boy’s life and do something for him like one man on Planet Earth. And that was me.

ETA on 5/22/09 at 10:18 PM: I am so happy to hear he decided to fulfill some of his responsibility as a father.

Based on what I hear of many men, Swanson is by no means alone in his former neglect of his son. Each one of us fathers needs to consider how we should interact with our kids most effectively. I am sincerely grateful for Swanson to challenge us with this need to be involved in our kids'--and especially, if possible, our sons' lives.

So God called me to this and for the last five or six years, that’s what we’re doing. We travel together. We don’t really homeschool. We car school and we office school and conference-room school. And we come out here and we school. We’re just schooling all over the place. It’s kind of all mixed up. Everything’s sort of integrated together.

I’m not really sure how it’s gonna work out. It’s really crazy. We just try to catch a little math in the car from time to time.

A couple years ago, we were traveling down Road 98 near our house. It’s all dirt, where we live. So we’re down this dirt road. I’m doing typical 65 miles per hour. My son turns to me and says, “Dad, I’m having a hard time with this trinomial over here. Can you help me, here, with this trinomial?”

So I start working the problem on the gearshift. I forgot that I’m driving the car. So I look up, and suddenly, we’re coming right to 1721. I hit the brakes, going, “Aggghhh.” We stopped right there by the ditch, and we didn’t fall in the ditch, so everything’s fine. "Okay, so let’s finish this problem, now. Let’s work it." That’s pretty much the way our homeschooling works.

ETA on 5/22/09 at 10:18 PM: And this is supposed to somehow show us how involved Swanson is in his son's life? That he "grabs a moment" from his otherwise busy life and almost kills the two of them while he works a problem with his son?

*******
I don't want to be too hard on Swanson, but I think it is worth asking: How is this model that he holds out for "the rest of us" supposed to work for the dad who has a different vocation than does Swanson?

Besides being the executive director of CHEC, Swanson is an entrepreneur and a pastor. I can see how having one of your children tag along might work in many situations for such a person. But what if a dad works in aerospace, or in a manufacturing job, at a meatpacking plant, or elsewhere where there is no way a child will be permitted to tag along? Is Swanson going to tell such a man he has to give up his job because anything else is to disobey Deuteronomy 6:6-8?

He seems to imply No. He says, "I’m not trying to impose my particular regimen on all you guys, here. I’m not trying to do that."

And yet. And yet. He seems strongly to imply we really are in sin if we don't do it in the same way he does.

So what is such a man to do? Give up his job? Feel like he's a failure as a dad if he doesn't give up his job?

Or, forget the problems associated with a dad who won't give up a job for which he is suited and that pays the family's bills. What if a father has two or three or four son? Would the kind of on-the-go lifestyle Swanson seems to advocate work for such a father?

I don't think so. Even if he had a job that would allow so many sons to stay by their father's side.

Imagine a man in very much the same circumstances as Swanson himself. Suppose his son were not as . . . ummmm . . . quiescent as is Swanson's son? Could dad serve his son in the manner Swanson has found he is able to? I don't think so! . . .

Please don't misunderstand my purpose, here.

I think it is wonderful that Swanson has found a "solution" that meets his and his family's needs at this time. But while it is wonderful that he has found a "solution" that works for him and his son, I think it is not workable for many--perhaps most--others. And I believe Swanson should recognize that and perhaps tone down or shade the way he seems to speak of his unique situation as a model for everyone.

It’s kind of a mess, but my son’s in my life, and that’s what matters. He is sitting right there, on the front row of my life, and I need his heart.

In Proverbs Chapter 23, it says, “My Son, give me your heart. Come close and observe my ways.” See, he’s inviting his son into his life. He says, “Son, come on. Sit right here in my office. I want you sitting right across from me, so you can listen to me when I raise my voice in impatience, and then I’ve got to ask forgiveness, and then I’ve got to deal with this issue, and deal with that issue.”

You know what, guys? It’s difficult. There’s accountability between him and I, and the sins that I see in his life are the same sins in my life. I’m all ready to correct him, saying, “Son, you’re speaking to your sisters in an impatient tone of voice. That sarcasm has got to stop.”

And I think, “He’s using the same sarcasm that I used with him yesterday.”

See, it’s a very difficult thing when you invite relationships into your life, guys. We have protected ourselves from relationships, to a great extent. I think one of the reasons is because it does bring sin to the surface. When you walk into somebody’s life--you start working with somebody--you begin to take a vital interest in their life. You want to see their success. You want to see them grow in Christ. Then, you realize that you’ve got the same issues. Now, you’ve got to deal with yourself. God is working in you, as He is working in him. He sometimes uses the work in you to effect the work that goes on in him.

Sometimes I look at [my son] and I think to myself, “He’s really irritating me, right now. Do I really like him? 'Kevin, do you love this person, here? Do you love him? After just what he did--after the way he blew that--after his disobedience--do you love this boy?'”

Then, I hear another voice, “Hey, wait, wait, wait. Here’s another question: do you love Me? Do you love Me?” Then, I put it together and I understand that I do love You because You first loved me. Then He says, “Well then, love him. Love him with all his warts and foibles and his sins and all the stuff that I see in your life. I want you to love him the way that I loved you, and feel.”

Brothers, relationships is the real core of the education of a child. As I plead for his heart, I recognize there are a lot of competing forces that go for a son’s heart. This happens all the time. This is not an automatic thing, to have your son’s heart. Sometimes it’s there; sometimes it’s not. You have to pray for it. You have to ask for it, and you have to spend the time.

ETA on 5/22/09 at 10:18 PM: Good stuff.

I think it’s a matter of quantity time, not quality time. Shepherding boys--somebody once said--a friend of mine had six or seven boys. He said it’s like duck hunting. You spend about three hours behind the blind for about 30 seconds of action. That’s kind of the way it is. You just hang out together, and you hang out together for hours upon hours upon hours, and then you get 30 seconds of action. You get a real good conversation, and you’ve got his heart.

ETA on 5/22/09 at 9:45 PM: Maybe.

--I liked this illustration, though, enough to blog it on Strategic Inheritance. I think there is a lot of truth there. Guys are not as prone to open, deep, soul-baring conversations as are girls and women (one of the reasons, in general, that I seem to prefer talking with women).

The world is after him. In fact, the Proverbs talk about binding the commandments of God around your neck and your wrist--taking the commandments of your father and tying them around your wrist. When it refers to the commandments of God, we know what that refers to. When it refers to the commandments of a father, brothers, it ultimately is the applications of a father. It’s the way the father incarnates and applies the Word of God to his family.

So what we learn, from our fathers, is a biblical application or enculturation of the commandments of God.

Let’s say there’s a son who says, “Dad, you talk about respect; you talk about honor. I’m with you there, Dad, but I don’t agree when you say I’ve got to say Yes, Sir or No, Sir. I’m not gonna tuck in my shirt at the table. I’m not gonna wear clothes that are clean and are presentable and respectful to my parents or to others. I’m just not gonna do that, because I don’t see anything in the Word of God about tucking in your shirt. Jesus never tucked in His shirt. They don’t have a Yes, Sir or No, Sir in the Bible, here. Dad, come on, you’re being legalistic with me.”

Okay. Your son gets all lawyer-like with you like that.

It’s because he doesn’t understand what the Proverbs are saying. When the Proverb says, Take the approaches, the dress, the attitudes, the perspectives, the language that your parents have incorporated, in order to apply the Word of God--in order to, as best as they can, express honor for others and for the parents--you just incorporate those into your own life. You tie those commandments around your neck and you walk in your parents’ ways, to the extent that they have, to the best of their ability, tried to bring about the commandments of God in their lives.

Now, as our sons honor us, and honor these applications--honor our culture--they will stand upon our shoulders. Now, if they dishonor, they will cut us off at the knees, and they will destroy the culture. So this is what we’re trying to do as we teach our children, as we are discipling our sons in the ways of God, and trying to apply the ways of God in our children’s lives.

Now, the last thing I have learned about these relationships is that I’m teaching my son how to live. My son is on the front-row of my life. He’s understanding the issues that I’m dealing with. He’s right there, and it’s hard, sometimes, to be transparent because if you’re transparent, and you’ve got a guy sitting at the front-row of your life, you’re gonna have to start stripping off layers of hypocrisy. You’re gonna have to start confessing your sins, in a humble sense, to your own son.

As we get older--as our sons get older, and they start walking beside us--we have to increase that transparency with our own sons. That’s difficult, and that’s a tug at my heart. That’s calling for humbling myself before my own son. But see, I don’t want to deal with his sins anymore, either. I want him to deal with his own sins.

When he was very young, he was behind me. I was fighting his battles for him. Now, he’s right beside me. I’ve invited him right beside me, and I see him battle. I can look at him across the entire room, and look in my son’s eyes, and tell when he’s battling with a sin; I know him that well. When he’s got pride in his life--I’ve been discipling him for six years; I can smell pride at 40 feet. I can tell when he’s got some selfish issues. I can tell when he’s starting to get this sin or that sin creeping up on him. I say, “Son, I want you fighting in this war. I want you engaged in the battle.” I hand him the sword, and he takes it, and I say, “Son, you stab it. Come on; bring the Word of God to bear. I want to see some blood on that sword. You’ve seen blood on my sword. You’ve seen me confess my sins. I want you to humble yourself, and I want you to start cutting out flesh, right there, right here. Let’s get on our knees, and let’s pray to God, that He would help us in this battle."

"Oh, God, help us” -- my son will pray in tears. “Oh, God, help me to overcome these things.”

Brothers, when you are in this kind of discipling relationship, you know that the stakes are higher.

I think somebody once said if you’re gonna teach somebody else’s children, you hardly ever raise your voice; you’re not getting angry. But somehow, you invite your own children into your life, and before you know it, you’re raising your voice. You’re getting upset. Sometimes, that’s anger, and sometimes, that’s just passion because you are impassioned that this child learn how not to be a scoffer as she studies her Algebra. You are intense. You want to see victory over these sins. You know what’s at stake.

Your heart is wrapped around that child because you’ve been walking with that child for the last 6 or 7 years, or 12 or 13 years.

So, brothers, there are times when you hit the wall; when you just hit the wall. We have corrected this sin for 478 times, and here we are, right together again; we’re correcting this child, on this sin, again. After all of these years that we’ve been working on it, here we are again, and that child turns to me and says, “Daddy, I can’t be good. I can’t be good.”

At that point, what do we say? "Yes! You got it! You can’t be good. Speak into the microphone. You can’t be good. Everybody, she can’t be good. But I know Somebody who can help you, there, and that is Jesus."

But what do you say, when they come to you and say, “Daddy, I don’t want to be good”? What do you say then? "O, God--O, God, help us now. There’s nothing I can do."

Brothers, we’ve got to come to the end of ourselves in the education of our children.

*******
I started with the question: are you qualified for educating your children? Are you qualified? Well, what do the experts say? The experts said, “Unqualified persons should not perform brain surgery, and they shouldn’t try to teach children.”

I agree.

But we’re not performing brain surgery. We’re performing heart surgery, and nobody’s qualified for that. Amen?

This, my friends, is why what you’re doing is impossible.

Once more--though I, personally, would probably speak to my kids using language that's a bit more direct than Swanson's metaphorical references to the Bible as the sword of the Spirit with which we need to "stab" sins--I sense Swanson is "right on" in his analysis, here. And he has a message, I'm afraid, too many fathers (including this one!) really need to take to heart.

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¹ Swanson says the 50th percentile is "lousy." It is not. It is simply what it is: it is the mathematical average of all samples in the (large) group of American students. Period. Exactly the mid-point. 50% of all participants score lower and 50% score higher.

Now. Any smaller group may enjoy a mid-point/average that is lower, higher, or the same as the larger/national average. In the case of homeschoolers, it seems, the average trends high, indeed, significantly high--as Swanson says, by an average of about 36%--so that homeschoolers' 50th percentile is the equivalent of the 86th percentile for all students who take these exams in the United States as a whole . . . and the improved averages are consistent across socio-economic, racial, and other factors. Return to text.

CHEC "Men's Leadership Summit" - "Homeschooling - Capturing the Vision," Part III (The Principle of Individuality)

#9 in an ongoing series on Christian Home Educators of Colorado 2009 "Men's Leadership Summit" (otherwise known as the "The Vision of the Leadership Summit") held in Indianapolis, Indiana, at one of the hotels owned by Bill Gothard's group over the weekend of March 5-7, 2009. Previous post in this series: CHEC "Men's Leadership Summit" - "Homeschooling - Capturing the Vision," Part II (Keep the PURPOSE in Mind). First post in the series: 2009 Christian Home Educators of Colorado (CHEC) "Men's Leadership Summit," Part I.

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The following content is Part III (my divisions!) from Kevin Swanson's second speech at the 2009 CHEC "Men's Leadership Summit" ("MLS")--"Homeschooling - Capturing the Vision"--delivered on Friday, March 6, 2009 and available in full, audio form from ResoundingVoice.com.

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Having stressed the need for education to have practical implications, Swanson moved on to what he called the "Principle of Liberty" or "Principle of Individuality":

The Word of God says, “If the Son shall make you free, you will be free, indeed.” [John 8:36 --JAH] . . .

Guys, . . . [t]here is nowhere in the Word of God where we read a 12-year-old has got to be reading Aristotle. There is nowhere in the Word of God where it says a 13-year-old has got to be able to read.

Parents that come to me and say, “Oh, Mr. Swanson, my little Joey is 9 years old, and he can’t read, and we have been bolting him to a desk, like the Department of Education tells us to, four compulsory hours, every single day, for 172 days out of every year, and he just sits there and he vibrates. He’s got ADD and ADHD and ABD – American Boy Disease – and everything else. What do I do?”

I say, “Here’s what you do: when that little boy is young, you just let him go out and plow the fields with dad all day long. Let him fish for an hour in the afternoon. He can come home; you read to him a little bit and put him to bed. Do that until he’s 11-, 12-, 13-, 14-years old. And don’t give him any television, whatsoever. And don’t give him any of those drugs.

"You come back to me when he’s 13-14 years old, and we’ll talk about whether he’s ready to learn how to read.”

Okay, now. Is there anybody in this room, right now, that says, “Oh, that’s illegal! Oh, the Department of Education’s gonna come after us, now!”?

No, brothers – if the Son will make you free, you will be free, indeed.

You are the parent, here. You are the father and the mother. There’s nobody who knows that child and loves that child more than you do. So if you come to me and you say, “My little boy can’t read. He’s not ready to read until he’s 13. Yes, his little sister’s reading at 3." --I say, “Great! Big deal about the little sister; that’s the way it is for her. She’s got gifts and talents and abilities that God has given her, and that’s just fine.”

See, my daughter, Emily, is a zero at math. And it was frustrating for me. At first, I was really getting all tight inside because she was slipping behind. Being as I like math and all . . . she was not performing. And I was getting pretty stressed about it.

We left Saxon Math in the dust, and we went with Math-U-See. We have the little block things, and you put the little block things together, and you can feel them and touch them.

That didn’t do any good.

Then we had her in CalcuLadders for a while, where the CalcuLadders – you just keep repeating it over and over again: "3+3=6. 1+1=2. . . ."

"It doesn’t matter what it means, just say, '1+1=2.' Just memorize that. . . . Whenever you see a one and one together, do something like this."

We worked on that for a while. And then, after a while, just out of the blue, Emily gets it. Just out of the blue. I don’t know how she got it; she just got it.

What I found is that children do not learn on a nice neat little line like this. Some learn like this. Some learn like this. Some learn like this. Some don’t learn anything for 14 years, and [then suddenly] they pick it up.

And some are like Rebecca, just the other day.

Rebecca has learned math very nicely, and then, my wife came to me and says, “Rebecca, yesterday, forgot everything she’s ever learned. Five years, gone.”

I said, “Well, just start over again, I guess. We’ll go back to one. It’s okay.”

Then, a couple weeks later, she picks it up.

It’s just the way it works.

Every child is completely different, guys. . . .

My little Rebecca Joy . . . My other kids are way ahead in some of their subjects (whatever ahead means). But on the standardized tests . . . In Colorado, we’ve got to take the standardized tests.

My older children were doing the 95s and 99s, and Rebecca Joy comes along, and she does the 56s. Of course, I’m Executive Director of Christian Home Educators of Colorado. I want to do something for the average.

You heard about Brian Ray’s study. You know, [homeschoolers a]re at the 86th percentile, and right now, [Rebecca Joy] has taken our average down to, like, 72. So, "Come on! Let’s go!"

I was concerned about this, but see, Rebecca Joy is just completely different from the other children. She’s just a very artsy person. She walks like this. She’s got a style to everything. She does dishes in an artsy sort of way, with her fingers up and stuff. It usually takes a little more time, but she’s got to do it artistically. It’s got to be right.

I’m watching her doing the standardized test. One year, I’m coming to her – she’s doing the fifth grade – and I’m coming to her. I say, “Okay, now I’m gonna watch and see how this happens.” Well, she’s doing this test, and she is – before she gets on with things, she’s got to do these little drawings on the margins of the tests. I’m sitting there going, “Honey, this is a timed test. Can’t we get on with things, here?” But she has to make it very pretty first.

That’s just the way she is. And you can’t rush her through these things, otherwise she gets all tight inside.

So we’d send the tests in for grading, and, do you know: they don’t actually even bother looking at the margins of the tests? The machines just kind of [ignore that kind of stuff].

Ask yourself: Is that fair? Is that right? My little girl, Rebecca Joy, has been so blessed by God with these talents, gifts and abilities, and these machines are not looking at her drawings! I just think that’s wrong. We ought to be respecting the talents and abilities that God has given.

By the way, at one point I was gloating over my son’s – he had the 99. He got the 99, and I’m saying, "Too bad they didn’t give us the decimal point – could have [come out as] 99.99 or something."

My wife, she nails it. She says, “Yeah, but you notice that they didn’t give him a mark on character, there, anywhere.”

What did we just say was preeminent in the education of a child, per God? Does anybody remember that far back? I think it was something to do with character, right? Isn’t that right?

Where are our priorities? What are we doing?

See, we have the wrong system, here. We have the wrong system.

You know that it’s parents that know and love their children the best, normatively. So I think it makes perfect sense why God has established the paideia of a child, and placed that child in the hands of parents. Moreover, the Principle of Relationships, I think, is the key issue, here.

--We'll continue on the theme of the Principle of Relationships in my next post in this series.*******
Once more: I think this is great content, good stuff we need to pay attention to.

I'm not sure I want to encourage parents to ignore all academic education for their "ADD, ADHD, ABD" sons until they are young teens. But, even there, I think Swanson is offering a useful counterbalancing/antidote to the extreme pro-academic perspective too often advocated in our world today.

Just last night, as we have been doing rather frequently lately, when our daughter and son-in-law came over, we read a few more chapters in Ralph Moody's astonishingly wonderful autobiographical Little Britches series of books.

We stopped at a certain point. Ralph's father dies in the first volume and we are halfway through volume 2. It seems a number of men in the community were smitten by Mrs. Moody. "So why is she so uninterested in them?"--the question seemed to hang in the air.

An interesting question. The men were all successful in their own ways. But none of them were educated (we're talking "book learning"). "Book learning" is obviously a high priority for Ralph's mom. (She won't let him drop out of school at 11 years old, though that would have been his preference and it was still legal in Colorado back in 1910 when this story takes place.)

"But Ralph's dad hadn't graduated from high school . . . "

"No."

So we talked about it.

Mrs. Moody was clearly not looking merely for a "successful" man--someone who could make lots of money and provide a (physically) comfortable life for her and her children. She wanted a man of high character.

And Mr. Moody--Ralph's father--had obviously been such a man. Maybe not school-educated. But he was smart and he had good character.

So she had married him.

But she had also recognized the handicap under which he had labored due to his lack of education.

So. My point: I agree with Mrs. Moody of a hundred years ago that I prefer character over book learning. But, frankly (honestly), I'd prefer both.

I wanted both in my wife.

If I were a woman, I would want both in the man who would be my husband.

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Back to the primary subject of Swanson's speech, however: I agree with him: Parents (and other educators) need to concentrate on their children's (or students') unique, individual characteristics and pay less attention to whatever "the norm" is. Find your kids' strengths and maximize them rather than seeking to make them conform to the way "everyone else" is.

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One last comment.

For what it's worth.

This comes from something I learned from Dan Sullivan in his Strategic Coach program program. It's explained rather thoroughly in the book Unique Ability and developed also in Now, Discover Your Strengths.

Basic idea: You don't have to become "good" or even "excellent" at the things where you lack natural ability. Indeed, you will waste a lot of time and energy (both physical and emotional) if you concentrate on improving your abilities in areas of weakness. Rather, you need to find ways to "manage around" your weaknesses so you can concentrate on your strengths to use them and make them stronger. Concentrate on your unique abilities rather than your myriad weaknesses.

--If everyone concentrated on maximizing their ability to use their strengths (what Christians might call "gifts"), the world would be a better place, indeed.

--For a little more on this last theme, see my post on the Strategic Inheritance blog titled Family wealth, unique abilities, and personal resumés and/or my post, right here on John's Corner, titled Strengths & Talents: Finding one's life mission or purpose.

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Next post in this series: CHEC "Men's Leadership Summit" - "Homeschooling - Capturing the Vision," Part IV (The Principle of Relationships).

CHEC "Men's Leadership Summit" - "Homeschooling - Capturing the Vision," Part II (Keep the PURPOSE in Mind)

#8 in an ongoing series on Christian Home Educators of Colorado 2009 "Men's Leadership Summit" (otherwise known as the "The Vision of the Leadership Summit") held in Indianapolis, Indiana, at one of the hotels owned by Bill Gothard's group over the weekend of March 5-7, 2009. Previous post in this series: CHEC "Men's Leadership Summit" - "Homeschooling - Capturing the Vision," Part I (Character in Academics). First post in the series: 2009 Christian Home Educators of Colorado (CHEC) "Men's Leadership Summit," Part I.

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The following content is Part II (my divisions!) from Kevin Swanson's second speech at the 2009 CHEC "Men's Leadership Summit" ("MLS")--"Homeschooling - Capturing the Vision"--delivered on Friday, March 6, 2009 and available in full, audio form from ResoundingVoice.com.

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Swanson spoke about the need to apply the knowledge one learns. Academic training ought to issue forth not merely in head knowledge, but practical knowledge. Thus,

[D]oing . . . is essential. In fact, brothers, if you guys are sitting through two or three days of these talks, and you guys are just absorbing a few things, but you’re not gonna go out there and do anything, you might as well have not have come to this conference. It’s just the way it works. It’s the way it works with the preaching of the Word of God. It’s the way it works with education; with knowledge and wisdom of any sorts, whatsoever. If we’re not doers of the Word, we’re wasting our time. What happens in education is you get, again, this very, very distinct separation from the inculcation of knowledge and the application of it.

We see this again and again, and this really came home to us one night. . . . We’re going to bed – the kids have been in bed for an hour – and [my wife i]s going, “Emily forgot to do her grammar today!” Kinda this panic thing. “What are we gonna do? The Department of Education’s gonna come and get us.”

I kinda got into the flurry of the whole thing for a minute or two. I said, “Well, let’s just get Emily out of bed and we’ll work –” which was kind of a stupid idea, on the outset. Then, sort of some better sense came back, and I said, “What was Emily doing all day, if she wasn’t doing her grammar?” She was doing something. It was at the time where Emily was writing a lot of letters.

My wife comes back: “She was writing a letter to grandma.”

She was writing a letter to grandma. That’s why she didn’t do her grammar today. She was writing a letter to grandma.

It was a three-page, single-spaced type [letter]. For a 9-year-old, that’s not bad, right? But she was writing the chronicles of the Swanson life, which is actually – turned out to be a little bit embarrassing because she liked to go through everything that happened in our house. But she was writing this letter to grandma.

So before we got everybody out of bed, I said, “Okay, stop. Stop. Why do we do grammar?” It’s one of those questions, right, that comes to your mind, occasionally. Not very often, but occasionally, you get the obvious question: "Why do we do grammar?"

Is it so that when you’re 25 years old, you get out of bed and say, “Oh, it’s time to do grammar, today. I’ve prepared, all my life, to do some grammar”? No.

The reason you study grammar is so that you can write letters to grandma. Duh.

But see, in our minds, we have so separated these things, brothers. It’s like we’re learning how to ride a bike by "taking Bike" for 12 years. We have Bike 101, Bike 102, Bike Accident Recovery Workshop, Bike Metallurgy, Bike Statics, Bike Dynamics. We get all the Bike, and yet, for 12 years, we’ve never really gotten on the bike.

When, a thousand years ago, we took education out of the real-life situation of family and church and business, and we put it on a sterile little island out here in the middle of nowhere called schools, where teachers teach, and where people say, “If you can’t work, teach. If you can’t teach, write a textbook,” and where, when you graduate, A students wind up teaching on the island, and B students wind up working for C students. You see, this is something fundamentally wrong with education. It’s fundamentally wrong.

We’ve got to bring the knowing and the doing together – the knowledge and the faith and the character into the academics of the education of our children, and teach them the fear of God as the beginning of wisdom and knowledge.

I think it begins with worship in the classroom – the worship of the living God in the classroom.

*******
I'm not exactly sure what he means or where he intended to go with that last sentence. (He didn't follow up on it. He immediately transitioned to another topic.)

I agree, we want to worship God--indeed, we want to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to the LORD, which is, we are told, spiritual [or rational/reasonable] worship (Romans 12:1). We want to "love the LORD [our] God with all [our] heart and soul and mind and strength" (Mark 12:30). We want to "pray without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 5:17). "In everything," we want to "give thanks" (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

So, no question, since education, too, falls under life (offering bodies as living sacrifices) and has something to do with our hearts and souls and minds (and, possibly, strength); and since we don't want to cease praying or fail to give thanks in education anymore than in anything else: then I absolutely agree that worship is--or ought to be--integral to our educational regimen. May that be.

I "simply" don't understand why Swanson seemed to "throw in" that last comment at the end of his discussion of (what I thought was his bigger thematic element) the idea--as best as I could understand his point--that our educational program needs to seek practical application and not mere theoretical understanding.

I believe it can be very helpful to have the theoretical understanding. But, ultimately, the theory must give way to application.

Good stuff, it seems to me!

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Next post in this series: CHEC "Men's Leadership Summit" - "Homeschooling - Capturing the Vision," Part III (The Principle of Individuality).

A Great Teacher

I just read a wonderful book, Tuesdays With Morrie. It's the moving story of a 37-year-old man who reconnects with his most significant professor from college . . . at the very moment that the professor is dying from ALS--Lou Gehrig's Disease. They spend 14 Tuesdays together discussing the most important issues of life.

Something about the book makes me think, with joy, of my relationship with my children. And it makes me think, too, with sadness, about my relationship with my father.

I love the book's final lines. They affirm to me why no parent should ever not want to homeschool.

. . . Okay. Forgive me. Let me put that positively.

The final lines affirm to me why all parents should want to homeschool their children . . . and why I feel the pleasure of continuing in relationship with my children now that they are all "out of the house" and forging ahead with their own lives . . . yet my wife and I are still involved with them. What a privilege!

Have you ever really had a teacher? One who saw you as a raw but precious thing, a jewel that, with wisdom, could be polished to a proud shine? If you are lucky enough to find your way to such teachers, you will always find your way back. Sometimes it is only in your head. Sometimes it is right alongside their beds.

The last class of my old professor’s life took place once a week, in his home, by a window in his study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink flowers. The class met on Tuesdays. No books were required. The subject was the meaning of life. It was taught from experience.

The teaching goes on.

Educational Choices: How Far Diversity?

I made an oblique reference, yesterday, to the Academia Semillas del Pueblo Charter School in Los Angeles. "Chartered by the [Los Angeles Unified School D]istrict in 2001, the institution is backed by MEChA [Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán], a radical student group with the stated goal of returning the American Southwest to Mexico," WorldNet Daily reported last year.

The principal of the school, Marcos Aguilar, is quoted as saying that the "white way, the American way, the neo liberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction. And so [the school] isn't about an argument of joining neo liberalism, it's about us being able, as human beings, to surpass the barrier."

We consider this a resistance, a starting point, like a fire in a continuous struggle for our cultural life, for our community and we hope it can influence future struggle. . . . We hope that it can organize present struggle and that as we organize ourselves and our educational and cultural autonomy, we have the time to establish a foundation with which to continue working and impact the larger system.

Cause for concern?

"Not at all!" claims Gustavo Arellano in "Raza isn't racist," an Op-Ed piece in the Los Angeles Times.

I can testify that, without a doubt, MEChA, is harmless.

Sure, the organization's founding documents, the Plan de Santa Barbara and the Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, call for a Chicano homeland. But few members take these hilariously dated relics of the 1960s seriously, if they even bother to read them. Little of the modern-day MEChA remains separatist, other than the occasional Che-spouting junior and a few cute mestizas with Aztec names like Citlali who sport Frida ponytails, black-frame glasses and Chuck Taylor high-tops.

MEChA's primary objectives are not secessionist but educational (get as many Latino high schoolers into the universities as possible and help them stay there) and cultural. For many Mexican American students, MEChA is their family by proxy, a support network for those of us who were the first in our families to graduate from high school, let alone college.

The open-borders philosophy expressed by many Mechistas isn't born from an irredentist ideology but from their experience of having relatives divided by borders. All that raza clatter isn't racism, it's the traditional way immigrants climb the success ladder — through solidarity and education.

Please read the rest of his article to understand the full range of evidence he brings for his claims.

Perhaps Arellano is speaking the truth. Perhaps, as he says, "a few indige-nazis are stains sullying a noble organization."

Maybe. Indeed, I'm rather inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Interesting to me, however, that, in his article, he begins that last sentence I quoted with a reference to Islam: "It doesn't help MEChA's case that Semillas del Pueblo Principal Marcos Aguilar, a former UCLA Mechista, once dismissed the importance of Brown vs. the Board of Education during an interview, adding that 'the white way, the American way, the neoliberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction,'" he says. "Or that members of Pasadena City College's MEChA chapter recently destroyed an entire run of the campus newspaper because they considered the paper's coverage of one MEChA event inadequate.

"But, as in Islam, a few indige-nazis are stains sullying a noble organization." [Emphasis added. --JAH]

And that brings me to my true reason for posting.

I've been reading Mark Steyn's America Alone.

At one point (pp. 71-73) he writes,

In 2005, a twenty-three-year-old American citizen named Ahmed Omar Abu Ali was charged with plotting to assassinate the president. . . . [A]ccording to the Associated Press report in the New York Times, he "was born in Houston and moved to Falls Church, Va., where he was valedictorian of his high school class." . . .

Neither the Times nor the AP had space to mention that the . . . high school Mr. Abu Ali attended was the Islamic Saudi Academy, funded by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It's on American soil but it describes itself as "subject to the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia" and its classes are based on "the curriculum, syllabus, and materials established by the Saudi Ministry of Education." So what does it teach? No room for American history, but that's not so unusual in Virginia high schools these days. Instead, the school concentrates on Wahhabi history and "Islamic values and the Arabic language and culture," plus "the superiority of jihad." By the eleventh grade, students are taught that on the Day of Judgment Muslims will fight and kill the Jews, who will find that the very trees they're hiding behind will betray them by saying, "Oh Muslim, oh servant of God, here is a Jew hiding behind me. Come here and kill him." Beats climate change and gay outreach, or whatever they do in the regular Falls Church high school.

Here is a standard Saudi Ministry of Education exercise, as taught in the first grade at that Virginia academy and at other Saudi-funded schools in the Western world:

Fill in the blanks with the appropriate words:

Every religion other than __________ is false.
Whoever dies outside of Islam enters _________.

Correct answers: Islam, hellfire.

And what do America's president and the secretary of state and the deputy secretary of this and the undersecretary of that say in return?

The Saudis are our ________.

. . . The Saudis are our friends. No matter how many of us they kill.

The Germans and Japanese had to make do with Lord Haw-Haw and Tokyo Rose. If only they could have had Third Reich Academies in every English city and Hirohito Highs from Alaska to Florida and St. Adolf's Parish Church in every medium-sized town around the world.

Fifty pages later, Steyn notes that people in Europe who raise concerns about the threat of unassimilated Muslims--even Muslims (or former Muslims) themselves who raise such concerns,

are either murdered, forced to live under armed guard, driven into exile overseas, or sued under specious hate-crimes laws. Dismissed by the European establishment, they're banished to the fringe.

He illustrates his point with the story of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born Dutch parliamentarian who "spoke out against the ill-treatment of Muslim women, a subject she knows about firsthand." She

found herself under threat of death. Her neighbors, the justice system, and the Dutch government reacted to this by taking her to court, getting her evicted from her home, and announcing plans to revoke her citizenship. Boundlessly tolerant Europe, which finds it so hard to expel openly treasonous jihad-inciting imams, finally found one Muslim it's willing to kick out.

And I am reminded of the case of Melissa Busekros, a German girl who, after falling behind in her public school, was brought home by her parents to be taught there. The police, in what some observers called a SWAT-style raid, entered the Busekros' home on February 1st this year and took Melissa to a mental institution for treatment of what authorities called "school phobia."

Since then, having turned 16, Melissa has been permitted to return home. Her case, however, is not yet closed. See also "German Homeschool Girl Free for Now."

The question for run-of-the-mill, patriotic (i.e., non-revolutionary) homeschoolers of any nationality: how far can the state go in permitting unrestricted, unsupervised, unexamined diversity of education before there are real, serious consequences?

Another question for all of us who are non-Muslim: How far will our states (and by "states," I am referring not merely to the kinds of entities that seem to be subsumed under larger bodies like the federal government of the United States of America, but to those larger bodies themselves: the federal government of the USA, and the EU, etc.) . . . --How far can and will our states go in permitting radical Islamists to push their agendas within their schools before they decide "enough is enough"?

(Putting the question directly: Why is it that those who teach Christian doctrines in their (home)schools seem to come under crushing state scrutiny, yet those who teach doctrines that are wildly at odds with the kind of freedom that the West has enjoyed, now, for many years . . . these others seem to get off scot-free? --Actually, I have few doubts about the answer to that question. But we'll leave that discussion for another time.)

Alternative education in Germany returning to Nazi-era repression?

It appears as if the legal status of homeschooling in Germany is about equivalent to what it was in Nebraska, United States, back in the mid-80s. (Yes, people in Nebraska were being put in prison for homeschooling back in the mid-80s.)

Check out "POLICE STATE, GERMANY: 'Youth worker' lies about homeschool student". I see it as a pretty intractable problem.

How can a government, rightly (I think) concerned about "parallel societies" [think unassimilated Muslim fundamentalists, by way of example] . . . --How can a government deal with its legitimate concerns while also permitting freedom of conscience, freedom of inquiry, and freedom to pursue alternative perspectives?

"The revenge of the failures"

The Superintendent of Public Edition for Mississippi recently urged greater regulation of homeschoolers. Bruce Shortt, the guy who instigated a proposal that all Southern Baptists should remove their kids from public schools, wrote an acerbic reply. I've copied, below, probably the most useful tidbits:

[T]he same education bureaucrats who consume an annual cash flow of roughly $600 billion to achieve previously unknown levels of semi-literacy and illiteracy among otherwise normal American children feel compelled from time to time to abandon their diligent pursuit of intellectual mediocrity to offer proposals for regulating homeschool parents.

The latest outbreak of education bureaucrat compassion comes from Mississippi.

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[I]f Bounds really wants to characterize a failure to educate as "child abuse," then what is to be said of him and his bureaucrats who are responsible for a school system in which a catastrophic failure to educate is the norm? According to the U.S. Department of Education's National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, often known as "The Nation's Report Card," Bounds' bureaucrats have failed Mississippi's children and taxpayers as follows:

1. Reading: 82 percent of Mississippi's fourth-graders cannot read at grade level, with 52 percent not being able to read at even a basic level. By eighth grade, 82 percent of Mississippi's children still cannot read at grade level, with 40 percent being unable to read at even a basic level.

2. Mathematics: 81 percent of fourth-graders are below grade level in math, with 31 percent lacking even a basic grasp of mathematics. By eighth grade, math illiteracy is burgeoning in Mississippi: 86 percent of students are below grade level in math, with 48 percent lacking even a basic understanding of mathematics.

3. Science: 88 percent of fourth-graders are below grade level, with 55 percent lacking even a basic knowledge of science. By eighth grade, 86 percent of Mississippi's children are below grade level, with an amazing 60 percent lacking a basic grasp of the subject.

Lest anyone be under the impression that the NAEP has unusually high academic standards, testimony before the Board of Governors for the NAEP indicates, for example, that the "advanced" mathematics questions for the eighth-grade NAEP are at best comparable to fifth grade questions in Singapore's math curriculum. [That's one of the math programs our company, Sonlight Curriculum, carries! --JAH]

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And just where does the performance of Superintendent Bounds' Mississippi education bureaucracy put Mississippi's children nationally? Dead last in fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math (tied with Alabama), and third from last in fourth-grade math and eighth-grade reading. Note that Bounds' schools manage to produce these prodigious levels of academic failure by spending roughly $7,000 per student per year, an amount that would pay tuition at many, many excellent private schools. One shudders to think what Bounds' "educators" might accomplish with even more money.

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As it turns out, in a basic battery of tests that included writing and mathematics, homeschooled children whose mothers hadn't finished high school scored in the 83rd percentile while students whose fathers hadn't finished high school scored in the 79th percentile. Bear in mind, too, that children in Mississippi public schools do not on average come close to doing this well on any legitimate, nationally normed test.

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By attacking homeschool parents, Bounds is playing a familiar game. The goal is to distract the public's attention from the abject failure of the public schools for which he is responsible. After all, no government school system so thoroughly fails to educate as Bounds' schools. . . . Bounds wants the public to believe that the same bureaucrats who daily busy themselves producing massive illiteracy in Mississippi's public schools should have more power over homeschool parents, even though homeschooling parents are already doing a magnificent job with their children.

For the complete article, see http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53622