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).

More recently I had friends who set off to the So. Pacific with a
preschooler, with plans to use the Calvet School course material. However,
prior to their departure, I observed that this child was going to be a hand
full. I hesitate to use the term "soiled" but IMHO, could have used a firm
hand in a structured school enviornment. The parents had yet to demonstrate
this "firm hand".

In the subsequent years I read many emails that express their frustration in
dealing with this childs schooling.. Since I haven't heard of this problems
in the last year, I'm assuming (if I should) that the problems have been
resolved.

Jeff, the age of your sons is not the ideal age for removing them from their
"good ole school days" routine and a great deal will depend upon how
excepting they are of your plans. And how involved. I know you have cruised
with them for the past couple of summers and can only assume that they
enjoyed this more than they might have enjoy the routine summer activities
back home.

Having met you a couple years ago, I was left with the impression that you
would make an excellent mentor and teacher and I have no doubt that all
would benefit from your proposed adventure.

Best regards (and hope to share a few anchorages this summer).

Steve
s/v Good Intentions

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 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 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




--

Tamaroak wrote:

My bride and I are considering taking a year off and doing the Great
Circle Route/Loop, a mere 5000 miles around the east coast, the Erie
Canal and the Tenn-Tom. We would take our boys who will be 14 and 15 and
home schooling them on the boat, using a prepared curriculum and a
satellite Internet connection.

Does anyone out there have any experience in this type of adventure?

I have not done this myself. I have observed many parents who have
done so in the course of living on the boat.

There's a program on TV about a dentist from Canada who took his
children on a circumnavigation (boat was called Ocean Wanderer and
that's the name of the series) starting when they were small. One
of them has become a professional golfer I believe, and the other one
has gone back to sea on a bigger boat because she thought she was too
young to really appreciate the initial part of the trip. They had
some problem with the boy (both children adopted) because he wasn't
very interested in schooling. Part of it I think was that the mom was
unsure of herself in this venue. It's kind of a hokey show IMHO, but
some of it is interesting.

I've met another couple from Canada who did a year on the boat - they
are teachers and took a year's sabbatical. They had two boys about
the ages of yours - one in middle school and one in 9th grade. The
journal of their trip on Carellen is here.
http://www.angelfire.com/sd/humpboattrip/
We met them in the Dismal Swamp
http://www.angelfire.com/sd/humpboattrip/ where the bow of our boat is
just visible on the left of their boat, and again in Oriental and then
again in St. Augustine.

There was a couple with a boat like ours (Jean Marie) that did a
circumnavigation with girls that were 10 and 14 and both of them
seemed to have turned out well.

Friends of mine who both taught middle school (and were very good
teachers BTW) until they retired early due to the restrictive policies
no child left behind, and lack of support for the teachers or any
possibility of discipline for the kids who did and said just exactly
what they wanted, took their grandchild down to the Bahamas with them
(she was living with them full time as her mom had no time for her)
last winter, and after they got back, she did better in school than
she has ever done before. They are down in Florida again this year.

I also saw some live-aboard kids in Marathon when we were there last
winter, The girls seem to miss the social life of school. Some of
them went to a local school while they were living at the dock for
several months.



grandma Rosalie

wherever there is education...its the parents, not the schools that
make a difference.......some folks love to have someone to pile
on blame...so, why not select the school system? they should take a
look at themselves 1st...imho.....

Just a snippet from GMBs post here (BTW, Tom sends his regards):

There was a couple with a boat like ours (Jean Marie) that did a
circumnavigation with girls that were 10 and 14 and both of them
seemed to have turned out well.


The girls from Jean Marie have done radically more than "all right." I
can't begin to recite the accomplishments and differences between them and
the usual student - but I'm sure their dad and mom would happily expound.

They're a few boats down from us as they do a complete refit in Salt Creek
Marina, and I've had several opportunities to chat them up in the course of
going by.

Suffice it to say, if you're involved, caring and willing to put in the
work, kids who are home schooled - let alone in an international environment
where they have to create their own entertainment as well as learn by
osmosis - should easily outdistance conventionally schooled kids, and do it
on less than half the time, to boot (no waiting for the slowest, no
bureaucracy, no reviewing for the first 3 months to re-implant what was lost
over the summer, etc.).

L8R

Skip and Lydia, trying desperately to get the boat finished before money
and/or time runs out


--
Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig
http://tinyurl.com/384p2

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you
didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail
away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore.
Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain

On Mon, 27 Dec 2004 12:00:31 -0500, "Skip Gundlach" skipgundlach sez
use my name at earthlink dot fishcatcher (net) - with apologies for
the spamtrap wrote:

~~ snippage ~~

Suffice it to say, if you're involved, caring and willing to put in the
work, kids who are home schooled - let alone in an international environment
where they have to create their own entertainment as well as learn by
osmosis - should easily outdistance conventionally schooled kids, and do it
on less than half the time, to boot (no waiting for the slowest, no
bureaucracy, no reviewing for the first 3 months to re-implant what was lost
over the summer, etc.).

And there is your answer.

Not all that complicated huh? :)

Later,

Tom

"Skip Gundlach" skipgundlach sez use my name at earthlink dot
fishcatcher (net) - with apologies for the spamtrap wrote:

Just a snippet from GMBs post here (BTW, Tom sends his regards):

There was a couple with a boat like ours (Jean Marie) that did a
circumnavigation with girls that were 10 and 14 and both of them
seemed to have turned out well.

The girls from Jean Marie have done radically more than "all right." I
can't begin to recite the accomplishments and differences between them and
the usual student - but I'm sure their dad and mom would happily expound.

I don't see or hear from Tom much anymore (I've only been to the
Florida west coast once recently and that was in 2001, and I met Tom
and Jean in person once at an SSCA meeting in 1999) and I didn't
remember off the top of my head exactly what the girls had done
academically or even what their ages were or whether they were 10 and
14 when they finished or when they started out. Glad to hear they are
all well.

They're a few boats down from us as they do a complete refit in Salt Creek
Marina, and I've had several opportunities to chat them up in the course of
going by.

Suffice it to say, if you're involved, caring and willing to put in the
work, kids who are home schooled - let alone in an international environment
where they have to create their own entertainment as well as learn by
osmosis - should easily outdistance conventionally schooled kids, and do it
on less than half the time, to boot (no waiting for the slowest, no
bureaucracy, no reviewing for the first 3 months to re-implant what was lost
over the summer, etc.).

L8R

Skip and Lydia, trying desperately to get the boat finished before money
and/or time runs out

We're in Miami Florida now by car. We aren't sailing down the ICW for
awhile - Bob feels it is too stressful and there isn't enough chance
for actually sailing down here.

grandma Rosalie

Tamaroak wrote:
My bride and I are considering taking a year off and doing the Great
Circle Route/Loop, a mere 5000 miles around the east coast, the Erie
Canal and the Tenn-Tom. We would take our boys who will be 14 and 15
and
home schooling them on the boat, using a prepared curriculum and a
satellite Internet connection.

Does anyone out there have any experience in this type of adventure?

Capt. Jeff

Without getting bogged down in the school-vs.-homeschool argument, I'll
just add my $.02. We started homeschooling our kids a couple of years
ago. We haven't set sail yet; but we've been doing a lot of
RV-around-the-US road travelling. It's wonderful. Our kids are
currently 12 and 10.

Rather than recommend a curriculum, I'm gonna recommend that you look
into unschooling. Check unschooling.com and/or just google the term.
Especially in the context of travelling, where each day brings its own
knowledge to you, why be limited to a curriculum? School-at-home is
only slightly more freeing and educational than heading to P.S. 101
every day. Look into unschooling. You'll love it and your kids will
thank you every day of the future with their interesting, self-directed
lives.

Frank