Best Valedictorian Speech Ever?

I was impressed enough to believe this was a fake, but I found the YouTube of Erica Goldson reading it at her graduation.

YouTube here.

Coxsackie-Athens Valedictorian Speech 2010

Here I Stand

Erica Goldson

There is a story of a young, but earnest Zen student who approached his teacher, and asked the Master, “If I work very hard and diligently, how long will it take for me to find Zen? The Master thought about this, then replied, “Ten years . .” 
The student then said, “But what if I work very, very hard and really apply myself to learn fast — How long then?” Replied the Master, “Well, twenty years.” “But, if I really, really work at it, how long then?” asked the student. “Thirty years,” replied the Master. “But, I do not understand,” said the disappointed student. “At each time that I say I will work harder, you say it will take me longer. Why do you say that?” 
Replied the Master, “When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path.”

This is the dilemma I’ve faced within the American education system. We are so focused on a goal, whether it be passing a test, or graduating as first in the class. However, in this way, we do not really learn. We do whatever it takes to achieve our original objective.

Some of you may be thinking, “Well, if you pass a test, or become valedictorian, didn’t you learn something? Well, yes, you learned something, but not all that you could have. Perhaps, you only learned how to memorize names, places, and dates to later on forget in order to clear your mind for the next test. School is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.

I am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer – not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition – a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it. So, I wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned it, but what will come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost? I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I’m scared.

John Taylor Gatto, a retired school teacher and activist critical of compulsory schooling, asserts, “We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness – curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids into truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then. But we don’t do that.” Between these cinderblock walls, we are all expected to be the same. We are trained to ace every standardized test, and those who deviate and see light through a different lens are worthless to the scheme of public education, and therefore viewed with contempt.

H. L. Mencken wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. … Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim … is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States.

To illustrate this idea, doesn’t it perturb you to learn about the idea of “critical thinking.” Is there really such a thing as “uncritically thinking?” To think is to process information in order to form an opinion. But if we are not critical when processing this information, are we really thinking? Or are we mindlessly accepting other opinions as truth?

This was happening to me, and if it wasn’t for the rare occurrence of an avant-garde tenth grade English teacher, Donna Bryan, who allowed me to open my mind and ask questions before accepting textbook doctrine, I would have been doomed. I am now enlightened, but my mind still feels disabled. I must retrain myself and constantly remember how insane this ostensibly sane place really is.

And now here I am in a world guided by fear, a world suppressing the uniqueness that lies inside each of us, a world where we can either acquiesce to the inhuman nonsense of corporatism and materialism or insist on change. We are not enlivened by an educational system that clandestinely sets us up for jobs that could be automated, for work that need not be done, for enslavement without fervency for meaningful achievement. We have no choices in life when money is our motivational force. Our motivational force ought to be passion, but this is lost from the moment we step into a system that trains us, rather than inspires us.

We are more than robotic bookshelves, conditioned to blurt out facts we were taught in school. We are all very special, every human on this planet is so special, so aren’t we all deserving of something better, of using our minds for innovation, rather than memorization, for creativity, rather than futile activity, for rumination rather than stagnation? We are not here to get a degree, to then get a job, so we can consume industry-approved placation after placation. There is more, and more still.

The saddest part is that the majority of students don’t have the opportunity to reflect as I did. The majority of students are put through the same brainwashing techniques in order to create a complacent labor force working in the interests of large corporations and secretive government, and worst of all, they are completely unaware of it. I will never be able to turn back these 18 years. I can’t run away to another country with an education system meant to enlighten rather than condition. This part of my life is over, and I want to make sure that no other child will have his or her potential suppressed by powers meant to exploit and control. We are human beings. We are thinkers, dreamers, explorers, artists, writers, engineers. We are anything we want to be – but only if we have an educational system that supports us rather than holds us down. A tree can grow, but only if its roots are given a healthy foundation.

For those of you out there that must continue to sit in desks and yield to the authoritarian ideologies of instructors, do not be disheartened. You still have the opportunity to stand up, ask questions, be critical, and create your own perspective. Demand a setting that will provide you with intellectual capabilities that allow you to expand your mind instead of directing it. Demand that you be interested in class. Demand that the excuse, “You have to learn this for the test” is not good enough for you. Education is an excellent tool, if used properly, but focus more on learning rather than getting good grades.

For those of you that work within the system that I am condemning, I do not mean to insult; I intend to motivate. You have the power to change the incompetencies of this system. I know that you did not become a teacher or administrator to see your students bored. You cannot accept the authority of the governing bodies that tell you what to teach, how to teach it, and that you will be punished if you do not comply. Our potential is at stake.

For those of you that are now leaving this establishment, I say, do not forget what went on in these classrooms. Do not abandon those that come after you. We are the new future and we are not going to let tradition stand. We will break down the walls of corruption to let a garden of knowledge grow throughout America. Once educated properly, we will have the power to do anything, and best of all, we will only use that power for good, for we will be cultivated and wise. We will not accept anything at face value. We will ask questions, and we will demand truth.

So, here I stand. I am not standing here as valedictorian by myself. I was molded by my environment, by all of my peers who are sitting here watching me. I couldn’t have accomplished this without all of you. It was all of you who truly made me the person I am today. It was all of you who were my competition, yet my backbone. In that way, we are all valedictorians.

I am now supposed to say farewell to this institution, those who maintain it, and those who stand with me and behind me, but I hope this farewell is more of a “see you later” when we are all working together to rear a pedagogic movement. But first, let’s go get those pieces of paper that tell us that we’re smart enough to do so!

Burdens and Blessings

I have held off blogging about The Enigma in the hopes that she would blog for herself; such a thing would be extremely challenging, and I've seen some kids do it who are then attacked by their commenters as being fakes.

There is a process called "facilitated communication" by which one person holds the brain-injured person's hand at the wrist and this helps the brain-injured person "type out" a message on a board. The reaction from the casual bystander is to think the facilitator is doing it, not the brain-injured person. (Of course, anyone who tried to force The Enigma to do anything would realize how silly an idea that was.)

You can read about one aspect of the controversy here. The Enigma is one of those kids who has gradually gained independence in facilitation. For some things, she doesn' t need any help at all any more.

In the previous post, Troop mentioned something about having crosses to bear, and it reminded me of a discussion I'd had with a friend when The Enigma was around ten. He was talking about a basketball player or movie star who had a handicapped kid (maybe adopted one, even).

"They say it's a blessing? Is it?"

"What?"

"Having a special needs child. Celebrities are always talking about what a blessing it is."

"Are you nuts?"

I thought—and I still think—this is just a stupid celebrity thing. I mean, what are they going to say: "Every day is a soul-crushing burden"? (Not that I have felt that way, but I've certainly seen parents who did.)

It's hard to enumerate the costs. Financially ruinous, of course, several times. (Most recently, shortly after being reduced to a part-time employee, The Enigma incurred a $12,000 dental bill.) My own health shot (or at least diminished), as I've spent 15 years tending her at nights because she doesn't sleep well. (Health experts disagree on a lot of things, like nutrition and exercise, but they all seem to agree that not getting enough sleep will kill you.)

To say nothing having missed many of the joys of a normal life with her, and feeling that loss acutely as each of her siblings grow up.

A blessing?

But then, it has to be said that if the condition is horrible, some of the fallout has been decidedly positive. The Enigma attended a special school where they said their ABCs and motored her through doing cut-outs; at twelve, with the help of the Institutes, we put her on a home program, where she ultimately developed the ability to comprehend over 20 different languages.

So, her siblings also have been homeschooled. The Boy was a particular beneficiary as he could've skated through school on charm.

Also, looking into alternative approaches to handling The Enigma's condition led to the elimination of my allergies, and seems to have The Boy on the road to recovery for his diabetes.

Now, I've come to understand The Enigma somewhat better over the years. We don't really understand these kids—I'll get into why in a later post, but curiously tantalizing fact is that blood tests on them have revealed compounds similar to hallucinogens—and it's true that they are alien to us, in the sense of their experience and intelligence. (Homo sapiens bases its idea of intelligence on the ability to speak.)

But even respecting that difference, let's not pretend that brain injury is not a deficiency. Even if it results in hyper-intelligence in certain areas (as I believe it does, which is something else I'll get into later), let's not go down the deaf route of declaring some kind of legitimate lifestyle choice.

It's a challenge. And a struggle. But as Troop points out, there are many crosses to bear. If there's a sin, it's allowing yourself being defined by the burdens rather than the blessings.

The Bitter Homeschooler

This came to me in an e-mail. I think it's kind of funny, and while there's a lot of truth, I've never felt bitter about the questions. Intriguingly, most normal folk are mildly interested by the concept. Teachers on the other hand split between very supportive and rather indignant. (Without fail, the indignant ones are hard-core union-lovin' Leftists.)

1. Please stop asking us if it's legal. If it is (and it is) it's insulting to imply that we're criminals. And if we were criminals, would we admit it?
2. Learn what the words "socialize" and "socialization" mean, and use the one you really mean instead of mixing them up the way you do now. Socializing means hanging out with other people for fun. Socialization means having acquired the skills necessary to do so successfully and pleasantly. If you're talking to me and my kids, that means that we do in fact go outside now and then to visit the other human beings on the planet, and you can safely assume that we've got a decent grasp of both concepts.
3. Quit interrupting my kid at her dance lesson, scout meeting, choir practice, baseball game, art class, field trip, park day, music class, 4H club, or soccer lesson to ask her if as a homeschooler she ever gets to socialize.
4. Don't assume that every homeschooler you meet is homeschooling for the same reasons and in the same way as that one homeschooler you know.
5. If that homeschooler you know is actually someone you saw on TV, either on the news or on a "reality" show, the above goes double.
6. Please stop telling us horror stories about the homeschoolers you know, know of, or think you might know who ruined their lives by homeschooling.You're probably the same little bluebird of happiness whose hobby is running up to pregnant women and inducing premature labor by telling them every ghastly birth story you've ever heard. We all hate you, so please go away.
7. We don't look horrified and start quizzing your kids when we hear they're in public school. Please stop drilling our children like potential oil fields to see if we're doing what you consider an adequate job of homeschooling.
8. Stop assuming all homeschoolers are religious.
9. Stop assuming that if we're religious, we must be homeschooling for religious reasons.
10. We didn't go through all the reading, learning, thinking, weighing of options, experimenting, and worrying that goes into homeschooling just to annoy you. Really. This was a deeply personal decision, tailored to the specifics of our family. Stop taking the bare fact of our being homeschoolers as either an affront or a judgment about your own educational decisions.
11. Please stop questioning my competency and demanding to see my credentials. I didn't have to complete a course in catering to successfully cook dinner for my family; I don't need a degree in teaching to educate my
    children. If spending at least twelve years in the kind of chew-it-up-and-spit-it-out educational facility we call public school left me with so little information in my memory banks that I can't teach the basics of an elementary education to my nearest and dearest, maybe there's a reason I'm so reluctant to send my child to school.
12. If my kid's only six and you ask me with a straight face how I can possibly teach him what he'd learn in school, lease understand that you're calling me an idiot. Don't act shocked if I decide to respond in kind.
    
13. Stop assuming that because the word "home" is right there in "homeschool," we never leave the house. We're the ones who go to the amusement parks, museums, and zoos in the middle of the week and in the off-season and laugh at you because you have to go on weekends and holidays when it's crowded and icky.
    
14. Stop assuming that because the word "school" is right there in homeschool, we must sit around at a desk for six or eight hours every day,just like your kid does. Even if we're into the "school" side of education (and many of us prefer a more organic approach) we can burn through a lot of material a lot more efficiently, because we don't have to gear our lessons to the lowest common denominator.
    
15. Stop asking, "But what about the Prom?" Even if the idea that my kid might not be able to indulge in a night of over-hyped, over-priced revelry was enough to break my heart, plenty of kids who do go to school don't get
    to go to the Prom. For all you know, I'm one of them. I might still be bitter about it. So go be shallow somewhere else.
    
16. Don't ask my kid if she wouldn't rather go to school unless you don't mind if I ask your kid if he wouldn't rather stay home and get some sleep now and then.
    
17. Stop saying, "Oh, I could never homeschool!" Even if you think it's some kind of compliment, it sounds more like you're horrified. One of these days, I won't bother disagreeing with you any more.
    
18. If you can remember anything from chemistry or calculus class, you're allowed to ask how we'll teach these subjects to our kids. If you can't,thank you for the reassurance that we couldn't possibly do a worse job than your teachers did, and might even do a better one.
    
19. Stop asking about how hard it must be to be my child's teacher as well as her parent. I don't see much difference between bossing my kid around academically and bossing him around the way I do about everything else.
    
20. Stop saying that my kid is shy, outgoing, aggressive, anxious, quiet, boisterous, argumentative, pouty, fidgety, chatty, whiny, or loud because he's homeschooled. It's not fair that all the kids who go to school can be
    as annoying as they want to without being branded as representative of anything but childhood.
    
21. Quit assuming that my kid must be some kind of prodigy because she's homeschooled.
    
22. Quit assuming that I must be some kind of prodigy because I homeschool my kids.
    
23. Quit assuming that I must be some kind of saint because I homeschool my kids.
    
24. Stop talking about all the great childhood memories my kids won't get because they don't go to school, unless you want me to start asking about all the not-so-great childhood memories you have because you went to school.
    
25. Here's a thought: If you can't say something nice about homeschooling, shut up!
    

I found the source of this. It's by Deborah Markus, and was originally published here.

Today Is Not That Day, Part 5

Well, actually, yesterday wasn't that day. Pardon my lag.

The President gave a speech to all the little prisoners yesterday. You know the ones I'm talking about: The ones sentenced to 12 years of school?

I don't care what he said. Well, I do care what he said, but it's not the issue. (This is like health care: It wouldn't matter if it were perfect and free, it's not an appropriate task for government. The injury added to the insult is that it will mediocre and overpriced.)

I wouldn't always be against a speech being played in class; Pearl Harbor or 9/11, for example, the President could come out and say something, and that'd be appropriate. But just casually? Like this? Feels like Orwell.

I could make another point, too, about how the government education system creates people who are unable to survive on their own and feeds into the government welfare system, which fosters an inability to survive—and how despite all this neither system can be meaningfully reformed or eliminated—but this would just bring us to healthcare again.

The Boy Gets A "B"

The Boy was very pleased to discover he'd received a "B" in his first college course. I'm--well, I come from a family where "A"s were expected, and barely noted, but I was pleased because there was a lot of work and pressure associated with this grade. He went from keeping his own schedule and deadlines to keeping someone else's very quickly.

And what's more, he learned stuff. He can talk about movies now in a fairly erudite fashion. I often found more than a bit of disconnect between classes I learned from and classes I got "A"s in.

Anyway, I learned stuff, too, about what he needs work on. And, not surprising, it's just more reading and writing. That's what education used to be, mostly: reading and writing. And, mostly we're talking form and style, with a few grammatical/punctuation issues. The content of what he wrote was pretty damn good. (He wrote a "memoir" of himself from the perspective of his shoes. Funny guy.)

Homeschooling or not, exposing your kid to a college class ahead of time is probably a good idea. Recommended.

Cons of Homeschooling?

No, this isn't about homeschoolers who have gone to jail, but about the negatives to homeschooling, as put forth in this article.

Some of these are kind of dubious as negatives, IMO. Like the first two: having to accept your kids the way they are and them having to accept you, and having to accept full responsibility for your life and actions. I mean, you can avoid those things a little if your kids go to school, but mostly you're just fooling yourself if you think that you can get away with doing them for long, no matter who you farm your kids out to during the day.

And I'm sure the writer of this knows that perfectly well.

A lot of these are matters of courage. And a fairly mild sort of courage at that (but not one to be disqualified). Having to answer a lot of questions, angst, paving your own way and standing up alone are all matters of courage. There is a chance that some petty bureaucrat will decide to destroy your life, of course, which is not insignificant. But we all face that threat, increasingly, and it's not going to get any better if we all keep our heads down and do what our masters want.

So that just leaves a few other issues.

Do you have to be more resourceful than ever? Maybe. But it's never been easier. You don't have to go to libraries, museums, parks, or anything else, because you have more at your fingertips than the wealthiest, most powerful people in the world had 30 years ago. And that information can make it that much easier and cheaper to go to libraries and museums and parks as you wish.

Do homeschoolers have to struggle with balance more? No, not really. They perhaps have to struggle with balance differently from other parents. It's funny, though: Even back when The Boy was at a regular school, and I signed him up for scouts, I was sort of dismayed that scouts was an excuse for father-and-son time.

I already spent tons of time with him, even back then. (His younger sisters had not yet been born, I was making great cash part time, and even working at home some days.) I was trying to expose him to things I had no experience in! I've never needed an excuse to spend time with my kids, or a structured occasion (like scouts), but the issue of spending time is an interesting one I'll come back to at the end.

Working parents have to juggle their work and other schedules with their kids' school and extracurricular activity schedules, homework! (And most parents seem to be spending more time actually educating their kids through homework than the schools are doing) That's a serious balancing act!

But then, Takahashi is talking about becoming so consumed with homeschooling that you forget your own interests, which I think isn't such a big problem once you find your homeschooling groove. Part of becoming consumed by your child's education stems from the structure of traditional schooling. There's a competitiveness, a race condition in every class, in every year, and with the entire track from nursery school on.

You're missing out in part of the fun if you just map traditional school on to homeschooling. The Flower loves her Egyptology, and her butterflies, and her engineering projects, and while she works consistently on her basics, it's really the extra time pursuing the things she loves that will fuel the passion for learning we're all born with.

Remember, a homeschooling parent has 365 days a year to draw on. That's more than double the number of days for some public school years. Private school years are traditionally shorter, in fact, because a public school gets paid to run while a private school costs money to run. And most of the days they do attend school are wasted.

So, you know, you're not exactly competing against the Jesuits, if your goal is just to give your kid a better education. (And you can beat the Jesuits, too, pretty easily, if that's what you want to do.)

Which actually brings me around to the point I wanted to touch on back with my scouts story. Homeschooling requires self-discipline.

The home/school/work segregation enforces a certain structure. This structure is a good substitute for actual self-discipline. I've seen my mother in and out of work over the years, and when she has a job, she's a machine--not only does she do her job, she produces in the other fields she's interested: Quilts get made, bread gets baked, races get run, clothing sewn, whatever. This is quite apart from excelling in her work, which she does.

When she's out of work, she seems to have no time for anything. And it's impossible to find out what she's done with her time. It took me a long time to figure it out, but without the structure of a job, she tended to fritter and fuss. (I'm much the same way.)

Homeschooling requires you to create the discipline for your children--something most would agree many parents go light on these days, but you also have to create, you know, prarie style discipline. You need to make sure the work gets done at the times it can best be done. (Doing intellectual work in the mid-afternoon, e.g., is usually a bad idea.)

Academics, chores, extra-curricular responsibilities all have to be managed by you well enough so that you can teach the kid how to handle them, and ultimately let them take over those responsibilities so you can go back to slacking.

In the meantime, you have to get plenty of rest, eat right, exercise--you know, be an adult. That has to be, by far, the biggest insurmountable "con" of homeschooling. We're at a bread-and-circuses point in our culture, where nobody has to grow up or do anything they find unpleasant.

If you're homeschooling, you're going against that, doing work you don't need to to produce kids who are also going to tend to embrace work habits that are archaic. You're an ant in a world of grasshoppers, basically.

But, well, somebody has to keep the world going.

Freeblogging!

The inimitable Freeman Hunt has had a blog for quite some time, but I never linked to it because she didn't blog much. But since the new baby came around she's stepped it up a bit, so I added her to the roll. She has a couple of posts I wanted to call out, too.

Item the first: He Is Not Coming. This is a rather depressing and scathing indictment on modern society, not entirely undeserved. But I'm not sure I agree with the conclusion. How many people 235 years ago fit the mold that Freeman outlines? A small percentage, to be sure. We have a much smaller percentage today, to be sure, but we also have one-hundred times as many people (in this country). The percentage can afford to be smaller--with the only rub being that there has to be an appreciative audience.

I believe a segment of the audience is getting more receptive with each passing day.

Also, while The Boy and I are looking at learning Latin (on Victor Davis Hanson's advice), I would note that the Founders did not know the language of relativity, of computing, of information science and so on. The game has changed and education needs to reflect that. Today, the primary skill may be knowing how to sip from the firehose.

The past had its festering effete as well, even if today universal education and socialism has allowed them to spread their disease as a philosophy.

Finally, I'm not sure we need a "he". I think we need--and may have--a "we". That's where the "he"s and "she"s will come from. We don't need a revolution: We need a hundred revolutions. The rot came from the top down; the cure will come from the bottom up. Economics may work better supply-side; liberty must needs be demanded.

Item the second: Freem also linked to a blog called "Life is Not a Cereal" with an entry on what to do if your homeschooling kids get "school envy".

Homeschoolers are not immune to "grass is greener"-itis. This is almost entirely resolved by acquainting them with the realities of industrialized schooling? Yes, those kids get to have recess. But, yes, they must take it, whether they want it or not, it is always an exact amount of time, and hell, you never know when you're going to be stripsearched.

As the entry also points out a little bit of consumerism can take the edge off: Let the kids buy "back to school" supplies or lunchboxes, for example.

Finally, it's not unheard of for homeschoolers to let their kids take the senior year of high school. Certainly there's nothing wrong with that, though it's preferable that they have their college degrees first.

Anyway, check out Freem's blog. Oh, especially these pictures from her grandfather from 1952. She claims they're military but they look an awful lot like The Thing From Another World to me....

You See, Bob, It's A Problem Of Motivation

One of the advantages of home-schooling is that you can motivate your child idiosyncratically. In fact, education should be idiosyncratic: Just logically, you want to maximize what your child learns, so you should really direct it as gingerly as possible.

A simple example is reading material. The most successful English classes I had gave broad parameters for reading material. Meanwhile, the books that everyone has to read, are often loathed for the rest of the student's life. And very often (kaffcatcherintherye) they're more about what the teacher thinks will be important and long-lasting versus what actually is.

And, of course, what is important? There are a lot of gray areas.

But I think it's generally safe to agree that the reading and writing material handed out to early grade-schoolers is pretty worthless. (Same with music handed out to people learning the piano, too! It's almost like they want reading or playing to be boring.)

So, how to motivate a first- or second-grade reader? Reading's not so much an issue for The Flower. She likes to read in bed at night.

But writing is more of a problem. First of all, it's an obsolete skill! (No, really, The Boy's notes all have to be typed!) But setting aside the issue of writing-by-hand, there's a matter of what to write.

What motivates The Flower? What makes her want to write and re-write and write some more?

Contracts.

She's drawing up contracts delineating her rights and responsibilities, what services will be rendered against what the rumener-- renumer-- what she's gonna get paid.

Another lawyer.

Well, The Boy went through that phase, and it's passed. So, there's always hope.

The Boy Goes To College

We had planned to send The Boy off for the winter session, but it's a really, really big deal around here to get a 13-year-old in. The Dean has to give personal permission, papers must be signed, oaths sworn, etc. This all magically vanishes at 14.

Bureaucracy is a wondrous thing.

Not complaining, mind you: There's still plenty 'round here to teach him.

Anyway, The Boy is at his first class today. Summer session is a dicey time to start. Classes are relatively intense (two hours a day, every day) and, of course, you have the "teacher factor" magnified. An easy teacher is probably going to be extra easy in the summer, while a harder teacher is going to concentrate all the work he'd normally give into half the time.

He wanted to take a business or economics class--he's got his eye on an MBA before 20--but they were full. I suggested the cinema class. I figure that it will be interesting, and I hope not to grueling--but it will get him used to being on campus. (And get him some legit university credits.)

Update to come shortly.

Links You May Have Missed, But Probably Would Like To See, If Only You Knew About Them

These are for me as much as you. I'll thank me later. Mostly from Twitter.

Via Freeman Hunt : The blog of Milton Friedman's "Free To Choose" PBS series. Funny that for all the PBS crap I got shown in school, this wasn't among the viewing options.

Via Andy Levy via Allahpundit: Face transplant story with pictures. Amazing.

More on the voucher situation from the WSJ: "If, however, you are a pol who piously tells inner-city families that public schools are the answer -- and you do this while safely ensconcing your own kids in some private haven -- the press corps mostly winks."

Also, today is not the day where I wish I sent my kids to public school.

27% of all marketers suck? Sounds a little low to me.

Funny and short: Why copywriters should be native speakers.

Cringely talks about the future of television on the Internet. It's interesting.

Hot: Bill Whittle schools John Stewart on the history behind Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The beauty of being a useful idiot is that you never have to research and you never have to say you're sorry. Because, damn the facts, you're right, and Harry Truman was a war criminal.

Lastly, Tabitha Hale aka Pink Elephant Pundit has started doing a radio show/podcast/audio blog/whatever the hell the kids these days are calling it. Episode One is here. I was going to listen to it, but there's, like, the entirety of "Walk This Way" at the front and that used up any time I had, plus confused me.

The Children Are Our Future: They'll Be Paying All The Bills, After All

There are some things that just make you say, "Really?" Like, when the teamsters union gets all pissy because Mexican trucks are allowed on our roads, and then you find out that there's a whopping 97 Mexican trucks on American highways.

So, because one group was mildly threatened, draconian measures have been taken, resulting in draconian retaliation. I'd wonder who can blame countries that retaliate by hiking up tariffs--and countries around the world apparently are reacting to the various little Smoot-Hawleys the President is building--but I'd hope that someone, somewhere, in charge of some country gets that while one-way free trade isn't fair, by blocking it, you only hurt yourself.

But the one that gets me the most is this beauty: Obama cancelled a successful voucher program in DC, including 200 scholarships already sent out. The most powerful lobby in the state, maybe in the country, controlling the lives of millions upon millions of students, regardless of how poorly they educate them, was threatened by a handful of poor souls who had managed to escape.

So they had to uproot these kids. Give them a taste of the good life, then take it away. And who's taking this opportunity away? People who send their own children to private schools, quite possibly the same ones these kids will not be going to.

Politics is always stupid. It's a shame that it's often mean as well.

I Just Know That Someday...

...I'll think to myself "Gee, I wish I sent my kids to regular school."

Today is not that day.

I guess they have a zero-tolerance poop policy. Note that the teacher called the parent to ask why the teacher's room was stinky. As if the parent would know, in a class of 15, 20 or 30 kids all the possible sources of odor.

Sonnets and Hosannas

As I grow old(er), I tend to be more convinced of the correctness of core traditional values, but equally so of the correctness of limited government. Hector and I have wrestled over religion before but for right now, I believe that the current Church is too enervated to roll back the tide of libertine-ism.

And, I should note, I'm not really anti-libertine-ism. I think there are probably some people who do the least damage they're likely to do if left to pursue their own self-gratification.

It just seems to be lacking as a social survival strategy.

I was taken by the use of this sonnet in Adventureland. (Shakespeare's sonnets are like the "Twilight Zone"s of poetry, they always have a twist ending.) You may recall that the main character sites this sonnet as the reason for his virginity; to wit, that he decided he'd rather forgo sex than have it with someone he didn't want to be slave to her desires. (My favorite, by the way, has always been sonnet #130, which I take as a 16th century "FACE" to other poets.)

Now, it's probably not a good idea to encourage kids to pattern their romantic lives after the poetry of 16th century courtiers, much less said courtiers' actual lives. But it occurred to me that a possible secular solution to licentiousness might be self-esteem.

But wait, you cry! Schools focus on self-esteem! If this were to be true, wouldn't our children already be experiencing the benefits?

At which suggestion, I point and laugh. And then feel a little bad for you that you don't know what self-esteem really is, or that it can't be given through trophies or awards, but must come from actual accomplishment.

Anyway, lacking a connection to their history, lacking any real knowledge or skills, young adults end up not valuing themselves. What's more, without getting puritanical or priggish, they don't seem to know from junk.

Now, again, I'm not particularly anti-junk. But I think a steady diet of junk food, junk art, junk accomplishments is naturally going to lead to junk sex, junk jobs and a complete bafflement as to what the hell happened--how one ended up with a junk life.

In Adventureland, the lead has a sense of not wanting his life to be junk. And it's telling (and accurate, I think) that those around him particularly mock him for those things that he values. (You know, you can't really be mocked for something you don't care about, which if you think about it, puts a different spin on a lot of "comedy" today.)

Adventureland is cast in the mold of an '80s teen sex farce, which only gave a fleeting nod (at best) to anything not junk. (They were junk, after all.) But that atmosphere pervaded the '70s, and into the mid-'80s, when AIDS put a damper on things.

Not just sex, either. If I were to try to capture that atmosphere, it would be a kind of nihilistic, materialistic, hedonistic world where good acts of individuals were overpowered by evil organizations. "If only," the zeitgeist seemed to say, "there were no religions or corporations, we could all live in harmony and do what we wanted until we died, because that's all there is or ever will be."

It's a seductive philosophy--I mean that in the way that a Twinkie is seductive or a $10 whore: That is, if you're trained to simply take the quickest, easiest, fastest way to satisfy an urge--or worse, you don't even have an inkling that there is another way, then the conclusion seems logical. Inevitable.

So, the extraordinary thing is how people immersed in this do end up valuing things that the pervasive social message says they should not. It wouldn't surprise me to survey kids like that and find real accomplishments compared to their peers. (I don't, by the way, mean to draw any kind of absolute there.) How does someone like James end up the way he does? And how is he able to stick to his guns? (I actually think the current system puts women at a serious disadvantage sexually, but that's another topic for another day.)

It also wouldn't surprise me to find that a strong education with an emphasis on historical traditions and an increasing emphasis on skills would reduce the amount of junk sex, and certainly the number of junk lives.

Which makes this one of those things that I write that seems stupidly obvious by the time I finish.

Have I Mentioned Lately...

...that homeschooling rocks?

Have you been following this story? The girl's gonna be in college by the time the issue gets settled. Wait, no, she'd be 19 now and already in college.

It's not just the thought of adult authority figures demanding your child debase herself, it's the fact that they she was an honor student who gave no reason for them to mistrust her--and that's precisely why they mistrusted her!

Lack of evidence of guilt = evidence of a criminal mastermind!

Should anyone this stupid be in charge of any sort of education?

Outliving Your Usefulness, Idiots

While many of Althouse's commenters are threatening to leave or, more humorously, to strike, she did attract a useful idiot recently who goes by the name of Rob Prideaux. (If it's this guy, and I think it is, he's a photographer of no small talent.) The funny thing, of course, is that the useful idiots outlived their usefulness, by outliving the empire they served (knowingly or not).

Mr. Prideaux appeared in this thread about Condi Rice being objected to by one of Stanford's finest, in defense of the academic system and liberals in general. Of course, many fine commenters at Althouse are liberal and not a few work in the university system, so there's not much there there as far as defending the system from evil conservatives goes.

Prideaux's argument began thus: "...how did all the neocons make it through university free of the indoctrination? How did the free market capitalists make it out with their free market theories intact?" In other words, to this fellow, if anyone escapes the system without an anti-free market mindset, that exonerates the system; it proves that the indoctrination doesn't exist, or if it does exist, isn't very effective and therefore not important.

He continues on this same vein, "What I think I'm saying is this: hyperbolic statements about all-powerful, unavoidable left wing indoctrination throughout the educational system are also dishonest." Of course, no one actually argues that there is "all-powerful, unavoidable left wing indoctrination throughout the educational system", only that there is left wing indoctrination and that the left is heavily overrepresented in the system, and given a freedom to indoctrinate that is one-sided.

To support his argument, he points to election results and says (my encapsulation of his argument), "See! If this indoctrination were going on, the Democrats would win by wider and wider margins! Since they don't, QED, no indoctrination." And he means this sincerely, which is the sad thing.

McCain--the allegedly not liberal candidate--was talking about the government buying up bad mortgages in his final gasps. And, of course, Obama went on to replace George W. Bush, who spent eight years expanding government worse than Clinton did. (But not worse than Clinton wanted to, which tells you something about any given party getting control of the legislative and executive branches.)

GHW Bush wasn't much better, if at all, and even Reagan could only hold "the beast" level. His big idea, and the one that launched the Republicans in to power in '94, was the radical notion that government could and must be shrunk. "The era of big government is over," lamented Clinton, with a fired-up Republican Congress at his back.

But even then, in what now we might refer to as the "salad days", the minds of people have been thoroughly indoctrinated to believe that, e.g., the government not handing out checks to poor people is a bad thing. It's unthinkable that the government not manage retirement of old people. It's monstrous to suggest that health and medicine be beyond the government's scope of activities.

The liberal indoctrination is so thorough that it's political suicide to suggest reforming social security, even while everyone agrees the plan is doomed (except for the short period when W was trying to reform it and the Democrats decided suddenly that it was just hunky dory).

More tragically, a smart--and I think honest, though you can never tell--guy like this is so thoroughly indoctrinated with leftist ideas that he can't tell the difference between education and indoctrination. He thinks there isn't any.

I'm pretty sure that would give Goldstein conniptions. In this view, education is basically indoctrination by whomever holds the power. There is no neutrality or objectivity. This viewpoint has, of course, destroyed the humanities, but we've seen it infiltrate Math, as well. The very concept that education is a matter of transferring data and establishing logical processes is alien to such people: All that matters is the outcome being the one we want and how it is arrived as is unimportant!

Of course, progressives believe their own viewpoints to have been soundly reasoned and beyond reproach. It is not they who are shackled by false ideas that they refuse to evaluate, but everyone else. And so, when Prideaux tried to get me to compromise the definition of education, and to back up the idea that left-wing indoctrination began as a deliberate action by enemies of classical liberalism, I wrote:

Actually, no, I don't allow that there's any overlap between education and indoctrination; in fact, I hold the two to be diametrically opposed. It is the difference between observation and evaluation. It does not even matter if the evaluation is correct!

I don't really have time to go into detail about how this happened but you can see this at Hector's place to get a sense of what was going on. This is the tail end of the effort (which has no survived the empire itself by over 15 years).

It's not a small subject and universities are only part of it, but they're an important part.

If you haven't checked out Hector's link, you should: The Soviet Union's plot to destroy America through subversion was focused on education, media and government. It's probably the biggest under-reported "open secret" around, and it'll stay buried because, as Mr. Prideaux said in response:

@Blake -

I understand now.

Goodbye.

I mean, seriously, you don't suggest to someone that they are, in fact, the tool of Stalin's ghost and expect them to go "Wow! Yeah, that makes sense now!" You don't expect them to admit that, yeah, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg really were spies, that whatever his personal flaws were, McCarthy wasn't as paranoid as he's made out to be, or even something simple, like their hero JFK hated Communists and would've found the stances of the modern left to be appalling.

It's amazing, really, that anyone does.

Although he's older than I am, this Lilek's piece about Reagan is representative of how I felt through many of those years. It takes a decade or more for most of us just to shake off the indoctrination and group-think that came from the media air being saturated with a consistently leftist point-of-view.

Leftist indoctrination in education wasn't nearly as bad back then but leftism saturated the media--there was no talk radio, there would be no right-wing movies until Reagan had been in office a couple of years (and we were also saturated with nuclear war fantasies, like Watchmen), and even hokey conservative TV values were more or less gone (with the notable exception of Mr. Carson). You could say that Reagan created the mind space (via Goldwater) that allowed non-progressive ideas to flourish (and in some cases, i.e., his repeal of the "fairness" doctrine created the real space for it).

If progressivism, leftism, communism, socialism, collectivism, and all these other failed -isms do finally die, I think it will not be with a big revelation. It will be a gradual (and sheepish) movement away from once fiercely held ideas, to the point where, well, you won't be able to find anyone willing to admit they voted for Obama.

Click!

A disadvantage I have when it comes to teaching my children is that I, myself, was taught very little. No one can really explain how I learned to read--skeptical nursery teachers pulled a thick book from the shelf to prove my father wrong and were shocked--and I had a grasp of positional math when I was shy of four, and I received an adding machine for Christmas. (Whether I learned from the machine or knew some other way and simply demonstrated on the machine, I don't recall. I remember finding the whole thing very intuitive.)

Being an autodidact has its advantages when you couldn't possibly focus on the slow-moving lessons teachers deliver. (Most repeated embarrassment in school for me was "read aloud" time: When the teacher called on my I was pages and pages ahead. No clue where I was supposed to pick up.) My parents at least leaned toward the same style of learning so it never occurred to them to teach, I don't think.

My kids are not like that at all, and it's fascinating to me to watch them struggle with things, and then suddenly click into it. The Boy, brilliant though he was (and is), struggled with reading till he was relatively old. I've noticed this with a lot of kids not my own, too: Montessori schools apparently have a at-your-own-pace approach, and I knew a kid who didn't "click" till she was eleven or twelve. And then, became a very good reader overnight.

From what I've heard my mom describe, she didn't really click until she was in college. (She was a mathematician which, as rare as it is now for a girl, was way rarer back then. But she clicked on a college reading course for children's literature, and probably would have changed her major had she been a little bolder.)

On the other hand, the Institutes is all about teaching babies to read; they view the time as lost and, more importantly, consider the early age critical to reading quickly and, for lack of a better word, I'll use natively.

If you read natively, you're not reading "in your cortex", basically. Late learners tend to sub-vocalize or to hear a voice reading to them. Intriguingly for me, I used to never hear that voice as a youngster, but I did as a I got older. (Now it sort of comes and goes, depending on various environmental factors.)

I started reading music at about four years old--playing piano, and even though I was not very good at piano and a very sporadic player, that knowledge survived and worked when I took up the guitar, and then later in music classes where you had to read scores for various reasons. There was no conscious process at all.

It's not at all limited to traditional school subjects either. Being a good fighter involves something not quite conscious--or cortical, perhaps, is a better word. If you're a programmer, you confront new paradigms all the time. If you're a painter, there's a point where your cortex shuts off and you just draw what you see.

Anyway, today reading clicked with The Flower, and she did a couple of months worth of work in an afternoon. So, victory there. Now she's on to math. She has a real competitive streak as far as her schoolwork goes: She likes to time herself doing the work and try to beat her own best times.

One of the things they don't do at the Institutes is run down the professional teacher. It's amazing, they say, given twenty to thirty different kids with different levels of understanding and abilities that they manage to teach any one to read.

And looking at my kids, I'd have to agree. They've all been wildly divergent. That in itself has been incredibly educaitonal for me, and I hope if my kids take something for the future, it'll be that understanding they can apply when they raise their own kids.

Good Sports

Confession time: I have amblyopia (the funny brain defect with a goofy name). You know, that condition Linus Van Pelt had where he had to wear an eye-patch. It's not an eye thing, though; structurally, the eye is fine.

It's the brain that's wonky.

You'd never know to look at me that my vision was not perfect. (And, in fact, my vision is excellent, except for lacking certain data about distances.) So my father could be forgiven for considering me clumsy, since I used to walk into walls all the time. And certainly, when childhood games moved out of the wrestling/grappling territory and into things with fast-moving small objects, it's understandable that I wouldn't be favored for teams, nor would I for the most part tend to enjoy it much.

And it's understandable that I might have an idea that, maybe, I'm not that athletic, though I did fairly well in archery and the sport seemed to improve my vision somewhat.

Once I had vehicular freedom--critical for here in the "Southland", since nothing is near anything else--I followed a girl into a martial arts studio. And with a great deal of work (martial arts is not something I was a natural at) and applying my strengths (the ability and willingness to apply tactics even if not comfortable or natural for me, since nothing was comfortable or natural at first), I managed to become a fair competitor and ultimately get my blackbelt. Somewhat ironically, I also picked up my sense of team dynamic (something "team sports" in school was supposed to achieve, somehow, and never did).

So, was I (am I) athletic? The martial arts worked for me because they aren't, in the final analysis, visual. They're tactile. With a fair assessment of distance, you're only concerned with angle and level of attack. Once you close in, your eyes are useless; you have to go by feel.

But if I wanted to go play basketball, I'd have a hard time. Even with a lot of practice, I'd be a drag even in a relatively casual situation. (I mention this because there are local "mom's leagues" which are relatively low-entry, but not really "dad's leagues".) Baseball would be even worse. Tackle football would be okay--I could be a lineman once I trained myself not to kick people who were charging at me--but that's not very common.

I mention this because The Boy is in a similar situation. His vision is just fine, but during the years when most kids were learning to play ball, he had no energy. Now that he feels much better, the fact that he's strong and fast and agile doesn't change the fact that he's not very adept at team sports. (I'm pretty sure he wouldn't even try now.) At his age, the die is cast: The boys who play those sorts of sports are very good at them, and dreaming of scholarships and lucrative contracts.

So he swims and lifts weights and shoots which only require him to improve himself and he'll have plenty of outlets for his athleticism (oh, he fences, too), but the window for those big-time sports is fairly closed. (And he won't be interested in them for some time, if ever.)

Of course, the importance of this is questionable. It's not like I was expecting him to be a baseball/football/basketball star and to support me in a lavish lifestyle. (No, I expect him to be a financial/business genius and support me in a lavish lifestyle from that.) I found a niche, and he will, too, probably in the martial arts (he likes boxing).

As a parent, though, I hate to see a door closed for what seems to be an arbitrary reason: He could certainly play any of those sports, except for the intense demands that require those sports to be performed at a particular level beyond a certain age.

It's one reason I'm happy to see the the Flower engaging in those sports (well, not football, which I think they discourage boys from playing, these days) and encouraging her to work outside of her comfort zone. It's a light touch: She's suspicious of parental praise and resistant to practicing.

But with luck, she'll be able to comfortably play these games for the rest of her life.

Great Expectations

Does Not Appear To Be Working To Full Potential was the named of my hypothetical autobiography, according to a little internet meme I ran with last year, because that's what I was most likely to be given as a "comment" on my report cards in school.

'deed, I used one notebook for most of my years in college, and the notebook is mostly filled with doodles and...other things that I scribble.

For my first semester in (community) college, I took classes back-to-back with no gaps, exceeding the number of credits allowed--had to get a permit--and scored a 4.0. My attendance was good and I was interested, and I've generally found that taking notes comes between me and the lecturer. I think I read the texts, but don't really recall. They were not very good. They gave me $50 and put me on the honor roll, both things which struck me as odd.

For my second semester (at the local U), my sister was there, too. I did the same tactic: Took classes in a solid block, every day, exceeded the allowed limit, got the permit, and came away with a 3.75-ish. This devastated my sister who had a screaming fit: "It's not fair! He doesn't even study!" she yelled. My sister has always been obsessed with fairness.

(Some time in high school I had taken to putting my report cards on the refrigerator just so my mom, who was otherwise occupied, could see them. It had never provoked any sort of reaction before.)

But there was a funny thing about this second semester, which was grueling in a lot of ways, because I was working two days a week after school, trying to keep up the martial arts training (several hours five days a week) and trying to build a relationship (seven days a week). I got mono and--oh, what's that really awful liver disease?--hepatitis.

Yes, I had some ridiculously easy classes (logic, nutrition) and once again, I didn't take much in the way of notes, but just relied on being present and aware. But I had one class, sight singing, which was a one-unit class--and I spent more time on that class than on any other, and still I got a B.

Like all my music classes, there was a requirement to perform. That is, you had to actually do something to get out of a class with a good grade. (The community college I went to had a very sane practice: There were four levels, and you had to get As in all of them, but it could take you as much or as little time as you needed, as long as you got them all in the two years. There was a drummer who got through all four levels of rhythmic dictation in a month, but was stuck on the first level of melodic dictation when I last saw him.) Usually, this was not terribly challenging for me.

In sight singing, you look at a sheet of music and sing it. This also wasn't too big a deal at first, even though I'd never done it before. (A lot of the other musical stuff I had was easy because it was similar to things I'd been doing for years.) We started out with rather plain Classical music, then moved to the more chromatic stylings of the Baroque and early Romantic eras. We ended with some complex Renaissance polychromatic counterpoint--which I loved--and with 20th century music, which I didn't love so much and which was very challenging.

And so it was, I spent hours trying to master this skill for this one unit course. And ultimately I had to decide that it wasn't worth the amount of time it was going to take to get an "A". That is, I couldn't sacrifice all that needed to be sacrificed in order to do it.

So I got a "B"--but that "B" meant more to me than most of my other grades. It never occurred to me to be upset that someone else had it easier--had perfect pitch or a long history of training. I just put it on the list of "things to master at a later date when I have more time."

My sister has numerous talents that I don't possess. She's a natural performer--as comfortable on the stage as I am uncomfortable--and an extrovert, charismatic and popular, fearless and athletic. And while it's true that academics have seldom been challenging for me, I've had to work hard in a lot of areas to achieve anything of note, and way harder in some just to appear vaguely normal.

It's common--and fine--to be a bit envious of those for whom success seems to come easily in areas that you have to struggle. I said a few choice words to kids who could come into the dojo and deliver a kick to the head on the first day. But always keep in mind a lot of what seems like easy success wasn't easily attained at all: It just looks easy because it was successful.

I can write a program in lightning time while others are still trying to figure out what to do because I started thirty years ago. As a kid, I put in lots of hours. I put in hours and hours playing and writing music, too, and studying martial arts, and writing millions of words (and reading tens of millions).

So if that stuff looks effortless now, it's because there was lots of effort expended in the past.

The impetus for this little essay was this article tweeted to my attention suggesting that my sister's viewpoint has won out. Students believe that working hard should positively impact their grades.

This is the very essence of a cargo cult and misunderstanding. "I was always told that if I study hard I should get better grades!" Well, yes, but...but...but....the point is, if you study hard, you learn the material better and better grades come as a result.

The work is not the point: The product is the point. Get better results and you'll, you know, get better results. What sort of debilitating philosophy is this? How hard I try is more important than the results I produce? Is this what kids are taught?

What about the whole "growing up" part where we learn we can't always achieve our goals? Or for a more "Darwinian" view: When do kids learn that certain tactics are ineffective and they need to adopt new ones? How do they learn what "bad" is?

There's a sense that effort should equal reward directly. These are the "expectations" talked about in the linked article. I'm no Dickens' expert, but I always thought "Great Expectations" referred to the expectations others had for you--the level you were supposed to rise to, not rewards you expect from society.

This is not one of those things that makes me think, "Gee, I should send my kids to school."

Homeschooling and Subversion

I've been twittering lately; although I've been on Twitter for a year or so and aware of it for longer, I hadn't figured out what it's for until lately. (It's kind of a rogue comment thread or a slow chat, where you read various short messages from people throughout the day. Ultra-mini-micro blogging, if you like, without the central blogging personality.)

Anyway, I won't name names but one twitterer is homeschooling and wondered aloud (twittered) if she was teaching subversion. Since Twitter doesn't lend itself to responding to something really old (you know, like 16 hours or more) I thought I'd respond here, since it's also worthy of more than 140 characters.

The answer is, yes, you are teaching subversion. There is no way around this, and there's really no political angle to it either: Conservative or liberal, if you are homeschooling you are saying that the state-run school is not adequate to the task it sets for itself.

Whether this is because they teach poorly, or the wrong things, or the social aspect--it doesn't matter. "Universal education" is one of the first social programs--one of the first ways our government set out to accumulate power for itself, and it has been the most disastrous.

You could say the same thing is true for private schools, except the government has its hooks in those as well. They try to get their hooks into homeschools also by mandating curricula and testing, but fortunately for the homeschool crowd, government competence isn't boosted in the policing area either.

More importantly, however, you are probably not using the same tactics used by schools to control children. (At least, I hope you're not.) There was a time where schools controlled children through appeals to morality. That is, you were expected to be moral, to work hard, to fulfill expectations: Your sin was not using the opportunity your forebears had given you.

Not to idolize too much, of course, because the threat of physical force was there and very real. And even in bygone days, homeschooling could be quite superior to even the little red schoolhouse.

Schools now are half-prison/zoos and half re-education camps. They're so bad at the education part, only the most deluded die-hard school promotrs will even try to suggest that a child gets a better education at school. Mostly they say, "Well, what about socialization?"

Ah, yes, what about socialization? Isn't it important that your child learn to get along with others? To experience the peer pressure that demands conformity? That promotes consumerism as the highest goal? Isn't it important, in other words, that your child learn to "go along to get along"?

How else will he learn to take orders from the government and his corporate masters? How else will he know happiness, if not by being able to buy the exact same stuff as everyone else, and like the exact same stuff as everyone else? How will he learn the correct things to think? (I've mentioned here the argument I had with a woman who disliked my approach of presenting data to children and letting them work out their own opinions: "What if they end up thinking the wrong things!")

When we did the Creative Wealth financial program (about a year ago), The Boy was one of two kids (out of 120) who was willing to really speak out. Over the years, and especially as a teen, The Boy has become less gregarious than he was a child, so he was markedly different from the other boy speaking out. His drive to speak came from a desire to express an opinion, or to point out what he saw as a logical flaw, not as a desire for attention. (He's sort of at the "shun attention" phase, actually.)

I'm not patting myself or any other homeschooling parent on the back, here, but I am saying that there is an implicit message in homeschooling, and few parents are going to work as hard to recreate the soul-crushing dynamic--that confluence of peer pressure, absolute authority, and bad education--at play in a school. It's something you couldn't do if you wanted to, I don't think.

The result is going to be someone with enough independence--and a very good starting example--to challenge the status quo, the state, or anything else that most people end up thinking of as immutable and irresistable.

In other words, a subversive.

Proud of the Pride

If I seem a little prouder than usual of The Boy it's because he's been doing some work this week.

His boss is a long-time friend of mine, so a day of work would've been as a favor to me. But my pal has had him come back three days and wants him for the rest of the week, which means that he's doing good work. The Boy actually went to bed early tonight to be rested for another full day tomorrow.

He'll have to scramble a bit to make up the time on his history. He's doing the '60s and '70s this month, and he has till the end of the month to get it done, but with work and Christmas, this'll be challenging.