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May 3, 2010 Newsletter
The Two Pitfalls of High School Home Schooling. Plus: Why I am NOT a Tea Party Person...Yet.
A month since the previous post! Well, when visiting colleges, including our son's science project fair at A & M Galveston, dealing with ill relatives, and being ill myself with a cold I picked up on one of those college visits, I have neglected this site. Sorry. But now the garden is going along well--never mind that here it is, the beginning of May, and it SNOWED this morning! And it will freeze sometime between midnight Sunday and 6 am! But the vegetables planted already will survive: they are early spring plants (bok choy, spinach, and collards, with a couple of chards thrown in).
One thing I learned with our daughter getting ready for college that I didn't have to worry about with our son, and I'll pass it on: if you are home schooling your child into the high school years, monitor how well he or she does on standardized tests (such as the Iowa or Sanford), and be prepared for similar results on the SAT or ACT. If the child does well on Iowa tests--even though the Iowa test is criterion-referenced, not norm-referenced like the SAt or ACT--then expect good results on the SAT or ACT (our son, for instance, had similar results and while he didn't set the SAT on fire, he got all 500s in each subject: reading, math, and writing. Such scores are good enough for most colleges.) But if the child does relatively poorly on these high school or grade school standardized tests, for whatever reason, be aware that they might not do well on the SAT or ACT, and prepare accordingly. For one thing, there are good colleges out there that don't really go much by SAT/ACT scores, even for homeschoolers. But the thing about getting a home schooled child into college is that the college needs SOME measure of what the child might be capable of that is (shall we say) "accredited." Home schools, not being accreditied and not having class ranks, do not fit into the "box" that most colleges use to evaluate future students, and therefore many colleges use SAT or ACT scores almost exclusively when evaluating home schoolers. In short: while public-schooled (or accreditied private-schooled) students who are ranked don't have to worry too much about SAT or ACT scores unless they are in the bottom 25% in class rank, home schooled students are more weighted, college-admissions-wise, by their SAT or ACT scores. In fact, some college in Texas will flat out deny admission for home schoolers if their SAT or ACT scores fall below a certain score, and use the Critical Reading (also called "verbal") and Math scores ONLY (totally ignoring the writing! Writing just happens to be our daughter's strong suit!), such that home schoolers must get nearly a 600 on both to get into a decent college! No one said life is fair.
Fortunately, colleges do also look at high school transcripts for home schooled students (even though they say that this earmark doesn't matter if the student is unranked. Yes, it does matter--especially if the home school teacher is in fact a state certified teacher and/or guidance counselor, which yours truly is.) If the home schooled student does not have very good SAT or ACT scores, but also has volunteer works, special skills (for instance, Japanese tutoring), summer jobs or leadership and academic awards, these are also taken into account. Our daughter, for instance, despite not very good SAT scores, got a sort of conditional "acceptance" into the University of Texas (which gets about 50,000 freshman applicants per year and only accepts 7,200 of them! Most of these are top 10 percent ranked public and private school students that the university MUST accept by state law.) However, we are not going to go this route because she would have to meet certain GPA requirements that she might not be able to meet (because of its math requirement...doesn't matter that she is going into International Studies not the sciences! It is a fact of life that some folks just plum aren't good at math!).
Then again, the home schooled student can complete a year at the local university or community or junior college, then transfer with hopefully a decent grade point average (because beyond 15 transferable credits, colleges don't care about SAT or ACT scores for transferring sophomores who are applying). So that, while home schooling a student who might not do very well on the SAT or ACT might lead one to send the child into the public school system just because it ranks high school seniors, this doesn't have to be your option. But SAT or ACT scores aren't the only possible pitfall for home schooling a high school student. I have always maintained that if the student's strong suit is athletics and not academics, then maybe the student really ought to be in public school. In many states, including Texas, home schooled students are not allowed to participate in school district athletic programs. If your son looks like he might be the next Peyton Manning or Ray Lewis or LeBron James, then send him to public school and hope he doesn't get his brain mushed up with politically correct BS. If your child is great in art and your local school district has an art program, then send him or her to public school IF there is no way you can teach art (in other words, you have no art talent. Same applies for music.) Also, if you just think there is no way you can handle teaching high school subjects like Algebra or Physics or Chemistry or English even (because you think you're not smart enough or something like that) then by all means send him or her to public high school. In all cases stated above, if you can afford it, send your child to private school instead. We homeschooled out two kids because I could do it and we couldn't afford private school. On the other hand, there is no excuse for not homeschooling in the Elementary or Junior High years, except if both parents MUST work or the single parent must work. Unfortunately, inexpensive Montessori programs do not go beyond Elementary years.
And now, about the Tea Party movement. I have already said it is unlikely that I would be a Tea Party person at this time because the Republican Party looks as if it is co-opting the movement which was started by Ron Paul supporters. My heart gets sick, in fact, every time someone...anyone...associates Sarah Palin with the movement. Or Michelle Bachman. Or Glenn Beck. Or Sean Hannity. Despite the fact that these folks do say something true and intelligent every now and then, these folks are neocon to the core and DO NOT SUPPORT LIBERTY! If they did, then they wouldn't support empire, they would uphold the rule of law, not the rule of men, and they wouldn't have sold their souls to Israel. In fact, Palin and the others are ONLY--and I mean ONLY!--supporters of the Tea Party movement because the Democrats are in power, and they want to hijack back the dissaffected voters who are joining Tea Parties (and don't tell me that Palin has changed her stripes because she endorsed Rand Paul for the Senate in Kentucky. Rand Paul is NOT the anti-empire person his dad is, and I have heard or seen statements he has made claiming to support the BS "war on terror").
Now I am not saying that ALL Tea Party people are wanna-be neocons, Israel-firsters, small-govt.-only-when-Democrats-are-in-power, and other folks who will go back to being lovers of big government when the Republicans get back into power. Some, in fact, are Ron Paul Constitutionalists, anti-empire, and true lovers of liberty. But I suspect that (because true libertarians are less likely to be political than those that seek power--and are thus anti-libertarian!) a slim majority of Tea Partiers now are the closet neocons who are taking Palin and those like her seriously and will fight tooth and nail to get Republicans back in there. That's what I suspect. That may not be true at all. But that's what I suspect (and, if a reader or subscriber knows differently, I'd like to hear about it.)
In any case, when I was at Bible Study the other night a friend who had moved away but was back visiting said, "What we need out here is a Tea Party." I went up to her and joked, "Careful, Obama might call you a 'terrorist'!" But there seemed to be an undercurrent of agreement among those who heard her say that. Actually, I'm kinda surprised it hasn't happened out here in this mountain subdivision yet. Even those I know who voted for Obama do not like a lot of the things he is doing, particularly with ObamaCare: most of the seniors (who make up the majority of folks out here--this is a sort of "retirement" community) are clearly opposed to screwing around with Medicare and many have given up their AARP membership. But therein lies the rub: these folks don't like ObamaCare because their entitlements will be "screwed" with! If these folks REALLY supported liberty and limited government, they would demand an END to entitlements, period! Though I have put into Social Security over the years, I can honestly say I want that money back, but only that money back. Further, I do not expect to collect any Social Security, regardless of what I put into it. For one thing, the govt. will have to push back the eligibility age to 70, and they are gonna have to keep pushing it back. Social Security is broke. Period. So is Medicare. I know it and they know it. Actually, the United States is bankrupt, but most Americans want to keep deluding themselves so then, so be it. No one ever accused Americans of wanting to live in reality. So, I don't expect to ever collect even the Social Secutity I put into it!
Another instance where I can't agree with what many Tea Partiers want is the new Anti-Immigration Law passed in Arizona. Folks, we don't need new laws to keep illegals out--we need to enforce the laws we already have! But nooooo! The anti-illiegal immigrant laws we have do not use "racial profiling" so they are no good and we need new ones. The old laws don't make legal immigrants carry their "papers" around (in fact, they DO require legals to carry "papers" around! Why do you think the Border Patrol asks folks who don't "look like" they weren't born in the US if they have their "green cards"...strike up a chorus of Cheech Marin's "I Was Born In East LA"!), so we "need" new ones that DO require immigrants to carry "papers." Fine. So why am I opposed to this new law and others like it that will be going the rounds in state legislatures, including Texas? BECAUSE THESE LAWS REQUIRE ALL AMERICANS TO PROVE THEY WERE BORN HERE! Therefore, I have to carry my freaking birth certificate? It seems to me like soon there won't be enough room in my purse for all the BS documents I'm gonna have to carry every time we go to El Paso, thanks to that Border Patrol checkpoint (my husband was "arrested" at several months ago because he "questioned" a stupid question some rogue agent asked him) outside of Sierra Blanca, Texas. And I really like what the wonderful Will Grigg, a true champion of liberty, writes on his blog about a born-in-the-USA Mexcian-American who was beaten by these champions of this new Arizona law just because they were racially profiling him and he couldn't prove on the spot that he was born here. Any readers or subscribers who think I'm just making this up because I don't agree with the government, don't tell me that they won't be using this to do racial profiling, and don't tell me that this "carry your papers" BS won't be used against any and all Americans at some point. Don't forget: not all born-in-the-USA-Americans have their birth certificates! How many birth certificates got lost during Hurricane Katrina? How many birth certificates get lost every year with tornadoes, house fires, the US Postal Service? How many old timers have their births recorded in their Bibles? How many legal immigrants have lost their "papers" many years ago for whatever reason? How many parents of children born at home before the mandatory Bushian law in 1991 requiring all hospital born babies to get "Socials" have never applied for birth certificates (or Socials, for that matter)? How many white or black or Hispanic or Asian or other USA-born-Americans will be arrested, tased, beaten, jailed, or "taken care of" by other means because of this FASCIST POLICE STATE LAW and others like it that "liberty loving Tea Partiers" support? And when this law and their ilk fail to curb illegal immigration--which it will! Don't ever confuse the US government with real problem solving!--will we need implanted ID chips? And, if the Republicans propose this, how many "liberty loving Tea Partiers" will go along with it? I suspect the majority. Because the majority of Tea Party folks DO NOT LOVE LIBERTY! Period!
Finally, I leave you with a few more examples from writers better than me about the fact that perhaps a slim majority of Tea Partiers are not true lovers of liberty. I think James Bovard's piece, where he posts what "Tea Party" folks commented about an article he wrote for the Christian Science Monitor making generally the same claims I've just made about a slim majority Tea Party folks, say quite a bit about the authoritarian tendencies of some in the Tea Party movement, particularly the nonsense some posted about anyone who doesn't support Tea Parties must be a "liberal". The last comment, while articulate, can't seem to see the forest of overseas empire from the trees of "defense spending." Since when is spending billions we don't have for an empire we shouldn't have "defending liberty"? Another good piece on Lew Rockwell decries the fact that consent for oppression begins at home, whether or not it's Republican- or Democrat-inspired oppression. If Tea Party folks are so well educated as the commenters in Bovard's piece claim, then how come so may of them see the new anti-illegal immigration law in Arizona as "needed" to defend "liberty" from "liberals" and "left wing Aztlan folks"? In fact I wonder if the fact that the Aztlan folks so staunchly oppose Arizona's new law that they are leading riots over it is why Tea Party folks "support" the new law? Or is it because Sheriff Arapiao helped inspire it? (And folks, I used to almost totally agree with Arapaio on this issue!) My take is also that, if Border Patrol and law enforcement in general can't stop illegals from coming here with the laws we have, why would we need racial profiling to stop it? All racial profiling will do is piss off American-born Hispanics...and then Asians, Africans, Pacific Islanders, "Indians"...you get the idea. Pretty soon we'll be adding "driving while brown" to "driving while black" as everyday complaints. Is this what you want, Tea Party supporter? Then you have this article about a poll of Tea Party supporters at Real Clear Politics which suggest (in the poll) that "pro-Tea Party respondents are much more likely than others to agree that the government should be able to detain suspects indefinitely without trial and to tap phones if there is a threat of terrorism...." Well, nowadays, it seems, there is always a "threat of terrorism."
There is a lot to support about the Tea Party movement: cut spending, cut entitlements, cut taxes. But until the clear majority of Tea Party folks want an end to empire, and end to their entitlements as well as entitlements for the poor, criminal prosecution for the fraudsters on Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, and the government at large, an end to Israel's intransigence (see USS Liberty), and begin to eschew Republicans as well as Democrats, and put themselves on the line to defend liberty and the Constitution (that is, the rule of law rather than the rule of men), then count me out of the Tea Party movement.
Don't forget, if you have a comment on this or other posts, e-mail me with your comment, and put the name of the article in the subject line. Or, you can post it here.
