On Sun, 26 Dec 2004 17:24:32 UTC, "Steve" wrote:

I have met (US and other) families in the Philippines and the Pacific
Islands who have home schooled out of necessity (lack of comprehensive
western education). We considered it while living in the Philippines for 8
years with 3 school age children but opted for an international school
(another story).

Do tell...
Chris

--

WaIIy wrote:

suggest that all kids' learning abilities are not equal, the proven
solution of tracking has been rejected.


Of course, everyone is reduced to the lowest common denominator in
order
to avoid hurt feelings and "self-esteem".
As the (socialist) Minister for Education said in Denmark a few years ago
"If one child can`t learn it, then NO child should learn it"

"Chris Lasdauskas" wrote in message
news:mPcurcJnILSl-pn2-WRHg7dJwntVU@localhost...
On Sun, 26 Dec 2004 17:24:32 UTC, "Steve" wrote:

I have met (US and other) families in the Philippines and the Pacific
Islands who have home schooled out of necessity (lack of comprehensive
western education). We considered it while living in the Philippines for
8
years with 3 school age children but opted for an international school
(another story).

Do tell...
Chris


Chris, if your referring to my last comment in this thread, here goes::

We enrolled 2 of our 3 sons in one of the international schools. The name
was Magellan's (unsure of spelling) International School. This would have
been in 1979, during Marshal Law, under Marcos..

The school bus picked up our children in the BF Homes sub-div. outside of
Makita. The first thing I noticed was an armed guard on the bus and was
somewhat surprised but not impressed.

Given sometime to consider the political situation, I realized that by
enrolling my children in an international school, with the children of
international public official and wealthy business people.. The guard was to
prevent possible hijacking of the bus and kidnapping of these children..
With only a single guard, I felt at most he might only start a gun battle
(with his one or two bullets) or at least, surrender the children to the
hijackers.

Although there were never any kidnapping attempts at this school I heard of
attempts at other schools where the children of wealthy family attended.

We moved out of Manila, to the rural province and enrolled them in a
Catholic school. Not the best quality education but a lot safer. When our
oldest son reached the age of 12 we moved him back to the states for
traditional schooling and the following year we all moved back.

Overall, the Philippines is a nice place and the people are wonderful but
life is too short and children need to be exposed to "both the East and
West", but not under the barrel of a gun.

How did my children do after a mixture of education and culture?? All were
high achievers in their high school years with various honors and awards.
One graduated from UCSD with a dual degrees (if that is the proper term),
another from San Fran. State followed by a Masters from Samuel Merritt and
the third from UC Berkley and a MMA from Syracuse U..

My experience and opinion, FWIW.

Steve
s/v Good Intentions

On 31 Dec 2004 09:26:03 -0600, Dave wrote:

On 30 Dec 2004 22:16:19 +0700, "Chris Lasdauskas"
said:

Yes, but we all benefit from OTHER people's children getting an
education too...

Ah, the old trickle-down theory.


Actually, not red-side trickle-down economics,
but blue-side "Altruism pays off for the long-sighted"

Brian W

On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 15:26:03 UTC, Dave wrote:

On 30 Dec 2004 22:16:19 +0700, "Chris Lasdauskas"
said:

Yes, but we all benefit from OTHER people's children getting an
education too...

Ah, the old trickle-down theory.


well, yes, partly, but I was thinking more like - do you benefit from
your doctor, lawyer or mechanic's education? Can you be sure that that
poor, illiterate kid, wouldn't, if educated, turn into a Nobel winning
scientist, a future president or what have you?

Some also believe that there is a strong negative correlation between
education and crime (especially blue collar) ie an educated person is
less likely to mug you; hence we ebenfit from a genrally higher level
of education. (Exactly how that should be provided is a different
question)

Chris
--

On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 13:06:26 UTC, Harry Krause
wrote:

Chris Lasdauskas wrote:
AUSTRALIAN?
Oh the shame .....

Chris


If you're from there, you must know of her...

well, sure isn't she J Smith's brother? (Australia is slightly bigger
than a small town!)

she claims to be the
inventor and manufacturer of a diesel outboard motor with the brand name
of Taipan. The only photo anyone has ever seen of such an outboard makes
it appear as if someone bolted an old. small Japanese truck diesel to a
homemade lower unit and covered both in rusty steel painted white.

Never heard of it. But it may exist.

Naturally, when I found out the "brand name," I thought of Clavell's
novel, but it turns out a taipan is a particularly nasty Australian
snake. Seems to fit, eh?

No comment. Taipan's are one of the 3 or 4 most deadly snakes on the
planet, and one of the few aggressive enough to actually chase a
person to bite them.

Chris

--

On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 15:38:04 UTC, Dave wrote:

On 30 Dec 2004 22:16:17 +0700, "Chris Lasdauskas"
said:

I AM a teacher - and in the 'east' - the kids that do well TEND to be
the ones who have parents that give a damn. About them and about
their education. The kids that don't get that TEND to not do as well
as they could.

Correlation is not, of course, causation. It may perhaps be that smarter
parents TEND to have smarter kids and also TEND to be more involved in their
kids' education.


That's true. But I seem to remember that some of the studies addressed
that and were able to argue for causation as well.

My gut feeling is that parent involvement (given a reasonable learning
environment) counts for a lot.-- even if it as simple as 'modelling'
something like reading a lot, kids tend to benefit from that.

Chris

On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 17:03:41 UTC, "Steve" wrote:


but opted for an international school
(another story).

Do tell...
Chris


Chris, if your referring to my last comment in this thread, here goes::

We enrolled 2 of our 3 sons in one of the international schools. The name
was Magellan's (unsure of spelling) International School. This would have
been in 1979, during Marshal Law, under Marcos..

The school bus picked up our children in the BF Homes sub-div. outside of
Makita. The first thing I noticed was an armed guard on the bus and was
somewhat surprised but not impressed.

Who would be?

I teach in Jakarta, as you may be aware there have been some bombings
here over the last few years, including a grenade thrown in to the
Australian International School compound. Folowing this several of the
larger schools set up full security fences and paid the armed forces
to provide protection. Several of the parents moved their children
from those schools to ours because they didn't want their kids
educated surrounded by machine guns (and I mean machine guns, in
sand-bagged nests, not just automatic rifles). That aside, all schools
here have security guards to protect the kids from the perceived
threat of abduction - which does happen, but not as often as people
think. Any kid at a private school, not just international schools, is
a target as the parents are udoubtedly much richer than the general
populace. To give you an idea the 'minimum wage' in Jakarta is about
US$ 75 per month or US$900 per year (and many people earn way less
than that), this is supposed to support a husband wife and several
kids. Kids in our secondary school cost around 10 x that per year in
school fees (and that would be a pretty typical fee for the other
better 'internationally-foccused' private schools too, while the big
international schools are about US$ 13-15,000 per year), so the
kidnappers deduce that kids at these schools come from wealthy
families and they are an attractive target - one ransom could be 10 or
more years work....

My experience and opinion, FWIW.

Thanks, it was interesting and I'm glad your kids turned out well, and
hopefully happy!

Steve
s/v Good Intentions


Chris




--

Frank wrote:
....snip...
Rather than recommend a curriculum, I'm gonna recommend that you look
into unschooling. Check unschooling.com and/or just google the term.
....snip...

Self-followup:

If the unschooling.com website is too radical for you, or even if
you're uninterested in the concept, you might wanna try a little book
called _The Teenage Liberation Handbook_.

Good luck,

Frank

On 31 Dec 2004 09:26:03 -0600, Dave wrote:

On 30 Dec 2004 22:16:19 +0700, "Chris Lasdauskas"
said:

Yes, but we all benefit from OTHER people's children getting an
education too...

Ah, the old trickle-down theory.

Interesting choice of words. The public school system MUST continue
(and fixed of course). The alternative is the world of 1800, when only
the wealthy and some of the working class got an education.

Today's schoolkid is tomorrow's nurse, daycare worker and bum-wiper at
the Senile Old Sailors' Rest. I want that person to be able to
read...I'm funny that way.

Given our failure to cover our societal bets by reproducing enough to
replace ourselves (guess we had boats to buy and cars to drive), I
would suggest we put an immediate priority on ALL education...because
the private and public school kids seem dimmer as a group than they
used to be.

R.