Category: culture Page 4 of 11

Christian hitched a ride with his friend Nathan to spend Thanksgiving weekend with the Rizos in San Diego. Kelly flew down last night from Seattle to join the crowd. We tried to figure out a way to be all together this year, but it just did not make sense. We could not be happier about the alternative as the Rizos selflessly made it all work out (again).

Kelly sent out this photo of Christian working on term papers, test preparation and homework. This is probably the last Thanksgiving he will ever have to do this. He has one more semester with a full load of classes followed by a semester with only one class, then he will be all dissertation all the time until he graduates. That is something for which he can certainly be thankful this Thanksgiving.

Lorena and I will spend some time with friends, but sometime during the weekend, we will cook a turkey–the thought of not having turkey sandwiches and other leftovers is more than we can bear.

From an article titled Pressed By Common Core And LGBT Agenda, More Families Homeschool at The Federalist:

One major reason families homeschool is for academic quality. The United States spends roughly $12,000 per student on education, which is more than every other country in the world except Lichtenstein. While our math and science scores have improved slightly over the last few years, we still rank in the middle of the global pack.

In addition, LGBTQ activists have successfully inundated schools with their approved ideology inside sex education that starts now as early as kindergarten. With these problems in public schools and many families unwilling or unable to afford the cost of private schooling, more and more families are choosing homeschooling as an alternative. This ensures they can avoid educational indolence and moral apathy while picking and choosing what learning method, curriculum, and schedule works best for their family.

Every year my own homeschool circle increases and there are waiting lists for the cooperative classes we participate in—and I live in a state that boasts some of the wealthiest counties and highest-praised public school systems in the country. Data released last year from the U.S. Department of Education shows that “between 2003-2012, the number of American children between ages 5 to 17 who are homeschooled has risen 61.8 percent, and that the percentage homeschooled in that age range has increased from 2.2 to 3.4 percent.” Parents are pursuing a style of education they can control that will enrich their children, now with very little fear of the stigma that used to surround it.

This is a great article in that it talks about the normalization of homeschool and the reasons it can be a great way to educate one’s children and not just the reasons to remove them from the caustic government school environment that delivers a bad education. I think this article is just another manifestation of what people are trying to do to fight a morally and spiritually bankrupt culture like the one described in the post before this one.

The Atlantic is one of those magazine I never read. To find one good article, I need to wade through 100 of them whose quality, content and or morality frankly disgust me. That being said, I receive links for great articles in The Atlantic from two or three different people on a semi-regular basis. If you follow this link, you will see I think highly enough of the good articles that I write about them on this blog. Whenever I start thinking they are on the right track an article like this one titled Student’s Broken Moral Compass show up and I resolve never to read them again on my own, but wait until someone with a stronger stomach than mine wades through the dreck to find the diamonds.

The thing that put me into a state of high dudgeon about this article was the proprietary aire of the piece–like it is actually OK for failed government schools and the education union thugs to assign the teaching of ethics of other people’s children to themselves. Or that an author for a hard left moderate¹ rag like The Atlantic can write about it like it is a foregone conclusion that that needs to be done. There is definitely a problem with all this, but it should be obvious that it begins with parents and a culture willing to assign the young and innocent to mediocrity and frequent failure, both morally and academically, at the hands of these progressive drones.

I know, I know, I have not yet made the caveat that there are great teachers in the system like this one. I make that caveat now (for my own safety).

1. Kelly tells me “it is moderate with a left bent tempered by many right-leaning writers,” but I do not think I am willing to say many or moderate. I might go along with “a few writers who are right-leaning on a few issues.” The article described in this post was definitely hard left with a totalitarian bent.