10 Reasons Why We Home School

Upon revealing that my wife and I home school our children, we find ourselves in heavy crossfire with an emphasis on us doing wrong by our kids. It’s interesting that the harshest attacks come from (1) single people, (2) childless people, (3) old people who grew up during an age where schools were still good, or (4) people who sent their kids to private school (be it Christian or a Yeshiva). I’ve also entertained some minor attacks from public school teachers, mostly in regard to my pride: how dare I think I can do their professionally trained job (that’s another topic though).

So I decided to do a list of ten reasons why we home school. You’ll notice certain things about this list compared to my other two lists. The five stupid reasons to opt out of home schooling dealt with the storm of stupid attacks I’ve had to weather; the five wrongheaded reasons to home school dealt with what I’ve heard some people say to justify their homeschooling: but these ten reasons are totally personal. They’re Our reasons for home schooling Our children in light of Our situation. Here’s the list:

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5 Initially Wrongheaded (But Potentially Contextually Understandable) Reasons to Home School

I was planning to post this after my 10 reasons to home school, and even after my 5 stupid reasons to opt out of home school in favor of public school, but I faced another problem.

What if home schooling parents started offering their opinions of what they thought were good reasons to opt out of public school and then my post came out listing their reasons as wrongheaded? That would be highly suspect and embarrassing!

My second problem is that some of these comments make a lot of sense in the right context. Their initial problem is that they take a wrong view of education but, based on the right context, these reasons are sometimes justifiable.

Therefore, here are five wrongheaded yet potentially contextually understandable and justifiable reasons to home (instead of public) school your children:

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5 Stupid Reasons Not To Home School (and Do Public School Instead)

In defensive discussions justifying my parental rights and educational choices for my children, I often find myself repeating my lists of reasons.  I have 10 solid reasons why we home-school, which I was going to post today, but then I had an internal struggle.

What if people (as they sometimes do) started offering some responses which tied into some incomprehensibly stupid reasons to opt out of home-schooling and send my kids to school? I mean, they’d see this post and think I was spring boarding off of their incomprehensibly stupid comments. I am therefore ethically required to post this first!

My second struggle is that this post can only exist if people understand my number one reason for home-schooling: I can’t afford private school. I really can’t. I’m trying to save for retirement and the college education of three kids; it’s impossible to pay private school tuition right now.

With conscience assuaged, and the number one reason listed to my reader (that’s you), all struggles are rested. I can unapologetically offer five undeniably and incomprehensibly stupid reasons to opt-out of home school and send kids to school:

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Prepackaged Town Halls?

Chip Reid and Helen Thomas against Robert Gibbs at the daily press briefing on the “tightly controlled” town hall meeting. Gibbs keeps saying “let’s have this discussion after the meeting.” Also look at how she grills George Bush and how he answers. Video after the jump. Read More »

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Taplet PC Dreamin’

I’ve been flitting around tech stores trying out multi-touch capable laptops searching, hoping, for the perfect Multi-Functional All-Purpose Swiss Army Tech Tool. What I’m hoping is that this tool replaces my leather Bible, works as a note-taking tool, allows me to design anything from articles to websites on the run, and has the sheer work-horse power to create and display professional presentations. I dream of a Perfected Tablet PC.

But Tablet PC’s are just not there yet. They offer all the features that you can find on your standard multi-touch smart phone, but I’m not looking for a glorified phone or a laptop transformer—I’m looking for the Future of portable computing. So here’s where I’m thinking the market needs help:

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Rant On Lawn

  1. Mowing the lawn in the heat is awful, more so when the humidity feels like you’re walking through a storm but without the benefit of rain.
  2. Mowing the lawn after several days of rain is obnoxious: not only is the grass ridiculously heavy so that your machine keeps stalling, but your feet get a nasty, hot, wet feeling.
  3. Neighbors with dogs are great when they keep the dog in their yard, but for some reason my neighbors have decided to walk the dog on my lawn. When I peek at them coming out towards my lawn and I “coincidentally” go outside, they freeze-frame, turn around and walk elsewhere. But when I don’t get a chance to catch them, my mower discovers their unhappy deposits instead.
  4. I distinctly remember enjoying mowing my own lawn. That was a little more than two years ago, less a child, less the new neighbors with the dog, and in April.
  5. When I see Adam, I might have to punch him in the gut.
  6. There is not enough water to recalibrate the dizziness that comes with the first two hours of mowing with a push mower.
  7. It doesn’t look big, but a third of an acre is a lot to mow. Especially in the heat. While avoiding poop on the lawn.
  8. I don’t think any of my neighbors enjoy it when I take off my shirt. I’ve wondered if the Dog is retribution for the bare bosom or vice versa.
  9. In the past I’ve considered a lawn care contract. I refuse to pay for it though in light of identifying with Adam’s stupidity and sheer value of the dollar. In either case, I fear the day when aliens visit our planet and confuse either Dogs, or Our Lawns, for our leaders.
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Apple WWDC 2009

No, I’m not there but I’m following the live feed on The Apple Blog and Gizmodo:

  • 15″ Macbook Pro, 7 hour battery life with an SD card slot ($1699).
  • 13″ MacBook now MacBookPro, with unibody, SD Card, 8GB of memory, up to 500GB or 256GB SSD drive with backlet keyboard and FW800. $1199
  • Uber model 17″ with 500GB HD, at $2499. Yup, still can’t buy a Macbook Pro.
  • New Safari does purdee things that are meh. Plugin crash that stops the plugin, not the browser.
  • Quicktime X rebuilt from the ground up. Big woop.
  • Snow Leopard (Leopard users: $29 single/$49 Family) running all major OSX apps in 64 bit coming out December (Windows 7 should be out October, in case you’re wondering).
  • Ms Exchange Support built into Mail, iCal and Address book. This was a Duh, no brainer. Should’ve had that long ago.
  • iPhone OS 3.0: 100 new features. cut/copy/paste across aps. Shake phone for undo. Landscape keyboard. MMS available but AT&T MMS later this summer (HA!) HTTP Streaming AV. Javascript performance boost. HTML 5. Form auto-fill.
  • iTunes rentals available for iPhone.
  • iPhone Tethering now available over USB or Bluetooth. AT&T doesn’t support it at launch (HA!)
  • Find My iPhone (new feature): your iPhone floats from the ether, or at least tells MobileMe ($99 per year) where it is. Your family and friends can also track you down with it. (SkyNet coming soon)
  • A bunch of boring iPhone Ap stuff. Some random announcment of 16gb 3GS iPhone ($199) and 32GB iphone 3GS  ($299) and the base 3G model remaining at $99.
  • No Camera on the front of the iPhone. bah.

All in all, no big woop. Maybe some ups for OS3.0 but, with a jailbroken iTouch I’m not overly hyped.

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Your Body: A Poll

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Links N’ Junk: Spring Is In The Air

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MCF’S Another Poll of Randomosity

MCF’s Questions and answers here and my answers after the jump.

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