I have updated two posts below. Yesterday I was working on an elaborate post called "Shadows are falling." While I was bouncing around in my Firefox tabs, finding new links and inserting them in the post, I ran into a problem that closed my browser for me and erased everything in the browser based TypePad "Compose a new post" form. My fault really… the proper way to compose a post is offline and then cut and paste into the blog-tool form. My excuse was that I had no idea it would be such a lengthy post. It was quite impressive really. Sad that it evaporated. Anyway, I created a new post with that title and it took me an entirely different direction out of the starting blocks. The common point of departure for these posts was the Gulf of Tonkin resolution as the official beginning of the American war in Viet Nam.
I’ve updated last night’s post to include a link that was in the earlier post, a link to a 1994 column by Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon that describes the climate of journalistic credulity that helped us slide into that war. They end their column with a quote from Sydney Schanberg: "We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to
believe that this time the government is telling us the truth."
My second update is to the post relating to the deserved come-uppance of that scabrous barnacle on the vessel of American journalism, Ben Domenech. This pissant’s resignation from the Washington Post before the paper had to fire him because of his plagiarism was wonderfully reported by Tim Rutten in an online column for the LA Times. Since Domenech is "a poster child" for the home school movement, and his ethics mirror those of the modern Republican party, I think it’s important to spread the word of his rapid rise and fall. An excellent blogger on home schooling, Daryl Cobranchi, criticized my post as an example of copyright infringement. Since Sandhill Trek is not for profit and represents an effort to be transparent, and since I aim for proper attribution and "fair use," I would take issue with the accusation of infringement (especially since it comes from a third party). Even so, my attribution was a little sloppy, and while I had linked to the source I hadn’t included the author’s name. I’ve updated that post to credit Tim Rutten for his insightful work.
In general I think home schoolers and "libertarians" have abandoned their responsibilities to the community at large. There may be a "selfish gene" (or "shellfish jeans" or whatever), but the "libertarian" meme certainly doesn’t stand up to rigorous ethical scrutiny. Creation of a safe and nurturing place for all of us and our children is certainly not possible if we withdraw from the community and isolate ourselves from community interests. That said, I’m sure that public education, "the school system," has stagnated in many communities. The challenge for those communities is for the citizens to find a way to address the issues rather than avoid them.
Gee, Frank, have parents who send their kids to private school “abandoned their responsibilities to the community at large?”
And, while touring colleges with La Princessa, we met two home-schooled kids (at Knox). We came up with the image that saying “home schooling” is like saying, “car” — you know it has 4 wheels and an engine, but are you talking about a coupe, a sedan, a station wagon? A Mercedes or a Kia? Those two kids declined to be identified as “home schoolers” because of the intense variation in the quality of the movement.
“The challenge for those communities is for the citizens to find a way to address the issues rather than avoid them.” I don’t disagree, but — the issue for many home schooling families is time. If your kid isn’t learning to read in first grade, you don’t have the years neccessary to force a change in the way ed schools prepare teachers. You’ve got to get your kid help now. (Or in the case of the two kids I met at Knox, one was ready for calculus around the end of sixth grade; the other was composing classical music in fifth grade…the public schools were coming up empty).
I’m reading American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips. It’s depressing.
So many private schools are religious, and so much home schooling is done by the christian fundamentalist right-wing theocrats that on balance I THINK the country would be better off with neither. OTOH, kids in Milwaukee who get vouchers to go to a Catholic school when the neighborhood school is totally inadequate to meet their needs are clearly better off than they would be without a voucher program, and kids who are home schooled by qualified parents who address their children’s specific needs that the community public system would not address are better off too. The challenge is in defining those needs, defining what “adequate” means, building community systems that reward kids with excellent education across the range of needs… it’s not easy, but one of the challenges that the home schooling and the charter school movement brings is the disintermediation of funding for good public schools. An even scarier challenge of course, is the fact that these christian fundamentalists are in many ways no different from the muslim fundamentalists, their schooling no better than the AK-47 training and Koran memorization that goes on in Pakistan on the Afghan border. These American christian madrassas need to be revealed and uprooted.
“In general I think home schoolers and “libertarians” have abandoned their responsibilities to the community at large. There may be a “selfish gene” (or “shellfish jeans” or whatever), but the “libertarian” meme certainly doesn’t stand up to rigorous ethical scrutiny. Creation of a safe and nurturing place for all of us and our children is certainly not possible if we withdraw from the community and isolate ourselves from community interests. That said, I’m sure that public education, “the school system,” has stagnated in many communities. The challenge for those communities is for the citizens to find a way to address the issues rather than avoid them.”
There are two levels of responsibility at work here; to the community and to our children. My first – and I argue my most important job – is to raise my children to be well-adjusted happy adults. The second is, yes, to the community.
I think we’re doing okay by the community. My wife owns a small business downtown. We pay taxes. She’s a member of several business-civic groups promoting Menasha in general and business in the area in particular. We vote. Heck we were even precinct captains last national election.
We don’t, in general, isolate ourselves from the community any more than most parents do, and less than some. We’re not avoiding issues – granted neither are we seeking out the ones relating to the school system.
It’s not a quality issue that we have with the local schools – they do a fine job. We think we can do better until at least the 8th grade.
Granted you were speaking to ‘the general’ and I’m talking about ‘the specific’ but … I don’t know about the masses and what they’re up to. I just know me and mine. I don’t think we’re that unique.
I think AKMA and Margaret are home schooling parents too. There are plenty of you home schoolers out there whom I respect. And Domenech is no worse than a lot of public schooled kids, in fact he is arguably better trained than many. The character flaw that got him in trouble… well, if he had had a range of teachers it is possible that he would have experienced a range of compassion or at least concern, and that some of that guidance might have been better directed and more influential than his own parents could be.
Besides, you have an excuse for your libertine – umm, I mean LIBERTARIAN perspective. You are, after all, part of a private enterprise project to take us into outer space using nanotechnology.