On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 01:40:13 -0400, rhys wrote:

Thanks for this. Normally, I don't post salty language, but I've just
added Venezuela to my list of ****ing dumps I won't be visiting by
sail.

So far:

Indonesia
All of the Red Sea
Venezuela
Parts of Brazil
Parts of Africa
Parts of Central America (Costa Rica's still OK, and possibly Belize)
U.S.A. if the jumped-up mall cops running "Homeland Security" think I
might visit Cuba at some undefined point and decide that's reason to
steal my boat.


Hi,
Having sailed through the Red Sea and parts of Indonesia, don't write
off all of these two great places. The only part of the Red Sea route
where pirate attacks have occurred is in the Gulf of Aden. The Red Sea
itself is very safe apart from having US helicopter gunships hovering
just above one's mast top without identifying themselves and radio
warnings on VHF of the danger of being fired upon by approaching US
warships if we come within 2 miles of them or their convoys in
international waters. Oman, Sudan, Egypt, Eritrea and Aden are very
welcoming and safe, even for those US flagged yachts who traveled
through the year we did (March 2003). By the way, with the "war on
terror", why is it that these patroling warships never respond to a
call for help by yachts and ships under attack but demand that a yacht
identify itself in international waters?

Parts of Indonesia are quite safe, especially the southern part of the
island of Borneo. In other parts one must simply refuse to pay extra
"fees".

I understand that some parts of the US are not safe to visit as there
is a danger of being robbed, mugged or murdered and that some
officials are somewhat corrupt. Perhaps I am misinformed by the news
reports that I have seen and the televised scenes of several police
beating an unarmed black man on the ground. Possibly they were part of
an elaborate Chinese/North Korean plot to discredit the land of the
free and the home of that most advanced piece of democratic
legislation - the Patriot Act, and extraterritorial imprisonment of
foreign nationals. Forgive me for this but I have been wanting to have
a moan for a while now.

prodigal1 wrote in :

My in-laws home-school their kids in a Baptist ghetto.
They're 2 years behind their peers in basic skills and if it ain't about
Jesus, it ain't bein' discussed in the home. OMG!!!! Are all
2.5billion of the Chinese and Indian's going straight to hell because
"they don't _know_ Jesus"? Going to get kinda crowded down there don't
you think?


My point, exactly. Noone is protecting the kids in these Jesus Ghettos
from the brainwashing. My next door neighbor is 35. He was brought up in
a World Church of God ghetto by a domineering mother. He's all screwed up
from it and no amount of counseling has helped him heal the scars she
caused him all his young life.

He'd have been much healthier screwing around with Mary Lou under the
football bleachers than having his head blown off by the Guilt Freaks For
Jesus.

--
Larry

You know you've had a rough night when you wake up and your outlined in
chalk.

On Sat, 18 Jun 2005 08:52:27 -0400, Larry W4CSC
wrote:

prodigal1 wrote in :

My in-laws home-school their kids in a Baptist ghetto.
They're 2 years behind their peers in basic skills and if it ain't about
Jesus, it ain't bein' discussed in the home. OMG!!!! Are all
2.5billion of the Chinese and Indian's going straight to hell because
"they don't _know_ Jesus"? Going to get kinda crowded down there don't
you think?


My point, exactly. Noone is protecting the kids in these Jesus Ghettos
from the brainwashing. My next door neighbor is 35. He was brought up in
a World Church of God ghetto by a domineering mother. He's all screwed up
from it and no amount of counseling has helped him heal the scars she
caused him all his young life.

He'd have been much healthier screwing around with Mary Lou under the
football bleachers than having his head blown off by the Guilt Freaks For
Jesus.



Hmmm...the statistics that I've stumbled across suggest that religous
schools in general produce students that score ahead of regular school
students on measures of academic achievement.

I expect Larry has the data to back his views. He couldn't be
operating simply on the basis of opinion even prejudioce, surely?

:-)

Brian Whatcott

Whoa, guys! You call me on "sweeping generalizations" then reduce all
homeschooling to radical right-wing self-flagellating flat-earthers
brainwashing their kids in ghettos. Let's try to find a little balance
here. I certainly agree that *that* is not education; public school is
infinitely superior. Ok? Larry, I couldn't agree more that I'd rather
see a kid "discovering life" under the bleachers than having the kind
of experience you related.

Prodigal, you admit that you didn't even go to school in the US; but
you're arguing with my comments. I not only attended school here, I was
a teacher. Briefly. I admire teachers; I detest bureaucrats. Guess who,
IMO, runs the schools and sets policies? I was pretty happy with my
kids' school system. They attended for about three years. After first
grade, they were, as you guessed, in gifted classes, where the entrance
requirement was 98th %ile, i.e. MENSA level. (Where's Jax when you need
him?) But homeschooling is much more fun and much more flexible.
Whether a kid is "gifted" (however you define that) or not has no
bearing on it. I *like* being with my kids. If you don't really like
kids, homeschooling is definitely not the way you wanna go.

Yes, I admit that, by the common school system definition, I was gifted
(triple nine), as was my wife; and both girls are 99-plus, as well as
they can measure that at their age. I had a wonderful education,
courtesy of the Jesuits, not the US public school system. My wife's
comments about her education in the US public school system can't be
repeated in polite company.

But agruing about giftedness is just a distraction. *Every kid*
deserves to be nutured, not squashed. By your own admission, you are
ignorant of the US school system. Don't take my opinion, then; look
into it yourself. It's *at least* as bad as I paint it. There's a
Japanese saying which applies perfectly to the way we "school" kids:
the nail that stands up gets hammered down.

Frank - IMO, FWIW, YMMV, etc.

Self-followup. I find this tendency ("hammering down") to be a general
one in society, not confined to the school system alone. I add a poem
by our favorite capitalization-impaired poet, ee cummings:

to be nobody but yourself in a world whcih is doing its best, night and
day, to make you everybody else
means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and
never stop fighting

Thanks, Larry. "Boat-schooling" is something we'll be doing after '08
if the plans hold...picture Skip Gundlach with a seven year old and
twenty years younger!

R.

On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 09:21:59 -0400, Larry W4CSC
wrote:

"Frank" wrote in
roups.com:

But to move away from politics... Homeschooling at sea! I can't wait!
The kids are pretty excited, too.



Here's a good link I found:
http://www.doe.k12.ga.us/schools/homeschools.asp

I have some liveaboard friends who home schooled two boys with a program
from the Univerity of Nebraska-Lincoln:
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Independence Study High School
Tel: (402) 472-2175
Fax: (866) 700-4747
mentioned on this website. Both boys went on to earn masters degrees being
automatically accepted at UNeb upon successful completion of the remote-
controlled high school. I looked at some of the correspondence materials
they used. Most impressive. World travelers, the boys got lots more
experience at sea than any kid in the finest private school in the country.
What they lacked was socialization with their generation, as do most home
schoolers, which is not good.

On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 15:13:53 -0400, prodigal1 wrote:

Frank wrote:
Thanks, Larry,

We're John Holt-style *un*schoolers.

sweeping generalizations about school snipped

The "socialization" I'd be more concerned about is the programming they
get in US society to be unquestioning little consumers. It isn't the
schools that teach kids to be sheep. It's so-called "popular culture"
which is of course nothing more than advertising for consumer goods.

It's not much different anywhere in the Western world, but it's worst
(or most developed a system of persuasion, depending on your POV) in
North America. We figure that an important side benefit of living on a
boat (with occasional school terms ashore in foreign countries) will
help our kid develop the critical thinking skills so he can make his
own choices.

As a marketer/advertising writer, I know how most "choices" are
illusory. Life at sea is a good teacher, by contrast, on how to think
clearly and rationally while maintaining a mystical relationship with
nature and the sea.

R.

Hah! For me, picture Skip but with two pre-teen girls and a foot
shorter.

rhys wrote in
:

As a marketer/advertising writer, I know how most "choices" are
illusory. Life at sea is a good teacher, by contrast, on how to think
clearly and rationally while maintaining a mystical relationship with
nature and the sea.


Could you have become a "marketer/advertising writer" if you'd spent YOUR
childhood at sea on correspondence courses?....or would you have become one
of those poor slaves hauling out someone's nasty engine from the bilges?

In other words, name 4 very successful people you know who were home
schooled at sea by correspondence course....It's an interesting search.

--
Larry

You know you've had a rough night when you wake up and your outlined in
chalk.

Larry W4CSC wrote:

rhys wrote in
:


As a marketer/advertising writer, I know how most "choices" are
illusory. Life at sea is a good teacher, by contrast, on how to think
clearly and rationally while maintaining a mystical relationship with
nature and the sea.



Could you have become a "marketer/advertising writer" if you'd spent YOUR
childhood at sea on correspondence courses?....or would you have become one
of those poor slaves hauling out someone's nasty engine from the bilges?

When people do something they really love, they tend to excell at it.
Life at sea doesn't have to consist entirely of just boat related
things. There are correspondence courses and ways to learn almost
anything, considering books, the internet, satellites, etc.

The key advantage of unschooling is that the person is doing something
they really are enthusiastic about. When people do things they love they
tend to master it and move on to other things, or just have fun the rest
of their lives mastering what they mastered, and making a good living at
it even.

The key problem on a boat is the child needs to have opportunities to
explore what interests them. This could present some major challenges to
the homeschooling parent on a boat.

In other words, name 4 very successful people you know who were home
schooled at sea by correspondence course....It's an interesting search.

Plenty of very successful people have been homeschooled and unschooled.
You have a point about it being more rare and difficult on a boat, but
it's not impossible. What if they decide to *facilitate* the child's
schooling by, say, going to places for the sake of the that sometimes?


--
Stephen

-------

For any proposition there is always some sufficiently narrow
interpretation of its terms, such that it turns out true, and
some sufficiently wide interpretation such that it turns out
false...concept stretching will refute *any* statement, and will
leave no true statement whatsoever.
-- Imre Lakatos