Tag: homeschooling

The project was to turn 4 rooms (2 of those are kind of 1 giant room) plus a small hallway from similar to the below (old, very warn carpet) to the second picture. Family took off Wednesday to be out of the way. Seemed reasonable enough–basically a room a day. Yeah, right. First there’s moving…

The 1954 book How to Lie with Statisticsby Darrell Huff is so relevant that it is still being used in college classes around the country. Its unique presentation of statistics apparently has also captured the hearts and minds of some public school administrators in Texas. You see, Texas, God bless it, has a very hands-off…

…be prepared, since there will likely be several posted Thursday, Friday, and maybe even over the weekend. JoAnn’s off to a retreat, so I’ll be working from home much of Thursday and all of Friday (or at least trying to, and at the bare minimum, pretending to). Will be just me and the three oldest.…

Was having a bit of discussion on Facebook about homeschooling, and another friend posted this link: Why Public School is the Bomb. First of all, the opening is so incredibly over-the-top that the article lost me on credibility right there. In all my discussions about homeschooling, whether online or in real life, it’s never been…

From the previous post (and the reason for it), it is apparent that there are a lot of myths and assumptions about why people choose to homeschool. So I wanted to share why it is that we chose to, and invite other homeschoolers to share their reasons so that we can hopefully dispel some of…

[Note: this post has generated a lot of traffic, especially from outside the United States. I’d love to hear directly from some of you as to homeschooling in your country and the challenges you face. Please feel free to email me at scotters@gmail.com!] In particular, would love to hear from the recurring visitor from Mexico……

Given the Department of Education’s conservative estimate of 898,000 students who were educated entirely at home in 2003, the National Home Education Research Institute’s estimate of 2 million homeschool students, and the national average per pupil expenditure on instruction, homeschooling likely saves American taxpayers and public schools at least $4.4 billion to $9.9 billion in…

My recent series on The Purposes of Modern Schools has been seriously lacking in inspiration and motivation since, well, the first couple posts. And quite frankly, the last couple have really stunk. I can hardly believe I wrote them. So, in the spirit of the current election, I am pulling the plug on the series…

John Taylor Gatto, who is a former New York State and New York City Teacher of the Year and the author, most recently, of The Underground History of American Education wrote an article that appeared in the Sept 2003 Harper’s Magazine, titled “Against School”. Let me say upfront that this is a whole lot to…

No, I didn’t double-type the word response in the title–this is a response to a response I just read to last month’s Costco Connection debate. Rarely do I get this worked up this quickly. Really. The debate last month was this question: Should parents be certified to home-school their children? The response came from a…