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