Homeschool Hacks

Bullying in the School System

Summer at Mom is Teaching wrote a brilliant article on bullying. Go read it!

From her article-

"I don’t want to teach my sons to deal with bullies. I want to teach them that this behavior is unacceptable, that hurting others in any way does not make them “cool”, that they don’t have to fit into the crowd and that standing out does not have to be painful, and that they do not have to become the kind of adults that use words that hurt as much as fists. They can be better. If that means keeping them out of the bully-rich environment until they have a solid foundation built up and a strong enough personal base to stand up to those who use power-over, then good. They will be strong er for it in the long run."

Is anyone tired of hearing how we should put our kids in school to socialize them? Middle School and High School are artificial environments that children are expected to 'get through'. It is ridiculous to feel we need to expose our children to this simply because most children are forced to deal with it! The school experience for most children has nothing to do with real-life in adulthood. I say we start laughing when we are asked, "What about socialization?" I say the proof is in the pudding, as my grandmother used to say.

CA Homeschoolers in danger

From the AP-

Court: Credential Needed to Home School

7 hours ago

LOS ANGELES (AP) — California parents without teaching credentials cannot legally home school their children, according to a recent state appellate court ruling.

The immediate impact of the ruling was not clear. Attorneys for the state Department of Education were reviewing the ruling, and home schooling organizations were lining up against it.

"Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children," Justice H. Walter Croskey wrote in a Feb. 28 opinion for the 2nd District Court of Appeal.

Noncompliance could lead to criminal complaints against the parents, Croskey said.

An estimated 166,000 students in California are home schooled, but it was not known how many of them are taught solely by an uncredentialed parent.

To earn a five-year preliminary teaching credential in California, a person must obtain a bachelor's degree and complete multiple examinations.

Until now, California allowed home schooling if parents filed paperwork to establish themselves as small, private schools; hired a credentialed tutor; or enrolled their child in an independent study program run by an established school while teaching the child at home.

The ruling stems from a case involving a Los Angeles-area couple whose eldest child reported "physical and emotional mistreatment" by the father, court papers said.

The father, Phillip Long, vowed to take the case to the state Supreme Court.

"I have sincerely held religious beliefs," he told the Los Angeles Times. "Public schools conflict with that. I have to go with what my conscience requires me."

More developing....

Homeschool Graduates Have Higher College GPA

With homeschooling on the rise in the U.S., colleges and universities are gaining a better understanding of home education and actively recruiting homeschoolers. In this short article from Family.org, Chris Klicka with the Home School Foundation says "homeschoolers are very self-disciplined and they have mastered the tools of learning – reading, writing and arithmetic so they can apply themselves virtually in any subject.”

“Several of the universities, over the last few years, have done surveys of their student body and have found that the homeschool graduates in their student body have a higher grade-point average,” says Klicka.

Not exactly scientific research, but it's nice to see the point being made that when a child grasps "the tools of learning," success in whatever he chooses to pursue is likely to follow.

homeschoolers, college, GPA