Lorena, Kelly, and I went to a church convention yesterday. She got asked to translate from English to Spanish for one of the meetings. It was a two hour long meeting, so she asked me if I would be willing to translate for the last speaker. I had actually not done it for awhile, but said yes and had a ball. I forgot how fun it is to translate. The funny deal is that I seem to focus on what is being said better when I translate, too. I hope I get to do it again soon.
Category: Socialization Page 1 of 2
I saw the video below that a friend posted this video on Facebook last night about challenges for millennials in the workplace. I think it says some important things that has caused me to think I need to work on some of my own behaviors. He talks about addiction to social media–on cell phones in particular and the dopamine high that is triggered. He talks about what a great disservice it was to tell children they were great when they were not great. He talks about the idea of delayed gratification that seems to be completely missing in an entire generation of young people. He talks about the increase in suicide and accidental drug overdose in that generation that is most probably a result of this. I think he is exactly right on all that. The video is truly a worth 15 minutes of your time.
It was kind of depressing though that in about the last third of the video he espouses the idea that the corporations need to take responsibility for fixing this. That is a completely different subject, but he is objectively wrong on that. The corporations might need to address the issues associated with this large problem because it prevents them from finding good, long term employees that facilitate them meeting achieving their purpose–to make money. Corporations should not be tasked with social engineering. They should, like government, achieve their purposes without meddling in peoples’ in areas where they are so patently unqualified. They really, really have competing interests with respect to what is good for individuals and that is not necessarily a bad thing. The individuals themselves, their families and, most importantly, God and their spiritual communities are the only ones who have the truly worthwhile answers to these kinds of challenges. Disinterested third parties whether they are government school teachers, coaches, bureaucrats, academics and even bad parents are the ones who trained them in this wrong thinking in the first place.
Kelly texted me this image from where she sits studying this morning. She drove up to Canada with a friend to keep her company in the lodge (her friend has an injured leg) and it appears she is actually getting some studying done. She has a ton of studying to do, but I think she is weakening though–she says she might try to ski for half a day tomorrow. It looks beautiful up there. I have to admit I am somewhat envious. I definitely would do all my non-skiing in the lodge with a hot beverage in my hand. Kelly is meeting some new friends, so that is a fine thing.
Here is an article by a woman who tries to justify her decision not to homeschool her kids. All of us homeschoolers have had to put up with the demands of ignorant meddlers who want to know how we can justify not putting our kids into traditional school. It is kind of nice that a few people are starting to get that it is traditional (and especially government) school that needs justification. Still this woman really demonstrated she has not given homeschool a fair shake nor even any depth of thought when she said:
What we’re doing here is hard. Most conservative parents want to raise kids who can live in the world without being fully assimilated to it. This is a daunting project, and there are many ways to go wrong. You can overprotect your kids. You can underprotect your kids. Some parents blight their children’s futures by monitoring them too closely, never allowing them to develop the emotional maturity needed to cope with disappointment and failure. Other parents will look back in 20 years and wonder, “Why didn’t I intervene before that problem became serious?”
Homeschooling is becoming more popular because it gives parents more control over the various stages of their children’s development. That’s readily understandable, but homeschooling can’t be a magic bullet, because kids do eventually need to learn how to navigate an unsympathetic world where most people do not love them. This is the grain of truth in the often-lazy “socialization” argument against homeschooling, and parents who reply “I wish to socialize my children myself” are missing the point. Your kids cannot spend their whole lives in the bosom of their natal family.
The socialization, overprotection, “need to learn hot to navigate an unsympathetic world” memes display profound ignorance of how most homeschools actually work. No thoughtful homeschool program leaves kids to “spend their whole lives in the bosom of their natal family,” nor is that an aim of any homeschool parents of my acquaintance. Actually, it is the traditional school students who wallow in the bosom of teachers inculcated with hard left political correctness by the mind numbing deweyite teacher education programs that are the order of the day.
So, while we are quite pleased that you feel the need to justify the dumping of your kids into these cesspools of progressivism, your justification and arguments are not well served by holding up straw men.
Betty Blonde #409 – 02/09/2010
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.
Kelly and I are kindred spirits in that we regularly get accused of being overly enthusiastic. We talked on the phone about this very subject today. Overly enthusiastic. That is an oxymoron. One of the few really good things that came out of the 1960’s was the expression, “don’t harsh my mellow.” Precisely right. The bane to our existence are those who chose to curb their enthusiasm in a spirit deadening effort be cool, “in the know” or somehow superior to those who engaged in passionate behavior.
Those lukewarm souls who choose to act nonplussed about all things social are not only boring, but could very well be guilty of the attitude for which the Laodiceans were admonished in Revelation 3:14-17. Do not be lukewarm. Be passionate. Love life. Do not be relegated to that category of people who slouch through life throwing wet blankets on all joy.
Stick to your guns Kelly. Be enthusiastic. Be overly enthusiastic. The gnostics of buzzkill in no way have special knowledge about those things you know that animate your enthusiasm.
Betty Blonde #390 – 01/13/2010
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.
Luke, in his latest post at the Sonlight blog, writes about a conversation he had with a friend who appears to work at a traditional school. The whole post is great with one minor caveat which I will discuss in a bit. Here is a bit that nails the whole government school socialization conundrum:
“This one school has an assembly every Thursday morning.” He looks at me, inviting me to ask.
“What do they talk about every week?”
He produces a gorilla shrug. “Exactly!” He’s as excited now as he was when talking about the affection his kids have for him. “I have no idea! In fact, in a school that large, it takes a ton of time just to file all the kids in and out. It’s an hour of that, every week, for 36 weeks, for every single student. File in. File out. And when you have a mass of kids like that…” he pauses. “Large groups of children do not tend to propagate maturity.”
The post describes concepts that are easy to understand, but that many are willfully unwilling, if you will, to acknowledge.
The only part of the post with which I have a quibble is the quote from Neil deGrasse Tyson that advocates for the idea that schools should teach empathy along with reading, writing and arithmetic. As is usually the case with Tyson, he has made what, on the surface, appears to be an enlightened statement, but that is monumentally wrong. The last people who should be assigned to teach children empathy in the current government school educational environment are teachers. It is not that some teachers might not be be great at it–it is that the system ties the teachers’ hands and often advocates for the teaching, even bullying of students with Christian world views on things like homosexuality, sex and origins. Too often, the empathy only travels one direction. Maybe we should change the system and/or let the parents manage how their children get taught empathy.
Luke — Thanks for another great post. Please forgive the quibble!
Betty Blonde #263 – 07/22/2009
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.
Day 581 of 1000
This is the sixth in a series of posts on the benefits of skipping high school and going straight to college. The introductory post and index to all the other posts in the series is here. You can see their undergraduate results and post-graduate (PhD) chase here. I try to keep the results updated as they occur.
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This post is not about socialization in a homeschool. The move from homeschool to college after the eighth grade at age fourteen is a somewhat more thorny issue. I have explained why we believe the socialization that occurs in typical homeschool settings is profoundly better than what currently happens in traditional government and private school settings here. There are links to reasearch and additional articles on socialization in that post. This post describes some of the things we considered with respect to socialization when we chose to move our kids from homeschool directly into college.
Timing
The timing has somewhat to do with the fact that we were not aware that Kelly could have handled college work at least a couple of years before she went to college. After she passed her third or fourth CLEP exam and got good scores on the ACT college placement exam it became apparent that she could probably handle the academic rigor of college. Still, we do not think we would have put her in college then even if we would have been aware that she could handle it. The reason is that she was very young and she would have been attending college on her own. We think it was good that she waited that extra couple of years during which she took many more CLEP tests for college credit and worked on the understanding the intellectual underpinnigs of our worldview1.
When the time came to consider college for Kelly when she was sixteen, we still thought she might be a little unsure of herself to handle the social aspects of college on her own. We did not want her to be too far from home and we did not want her to be alone. By that time, we had been through some pretty rigorous worldview education with both the kids. Kelly and Christian have always been very supportive of each other, so we thought that, if they went to the Community College together, they would, at least, give each other some moral support and it might not be so scary. We now knew through testing and for other reasons that Christian could hand college, go we decided to pull the trigger and put them in college together.
The Social Environment at Community College
We were surprised by the high professional and academic standards of the teachers at Wake Tech, but even more surprised and appreciative for the kindness and helpfulness of both the teachers and the administrative staff. Of course there were a few who did not want to do their job or had (being gracious here) bad people skills, but they were definitely the exception and not the rule. Our expectations about the students was quite a pleasant surprise. There was a very interesting mix of students at Wake Tech. There was a good mix of foreign students, vocational and college prep students right out of high school, people in the work force trying to upgrade their skills or get a degree, and maybe a little bit unique to Wake Tech, soldiers recently discharged from military service at Ft. Bragg, going to school on the G.I. bill.
Kelly and Christian befriended a pretty amazing mix of people. They made four special friends with whom they remained in contact. Nestor and Daniela are a brother and sister from Venezuela who come from a close-knit Latin family. They took the same hard math and science classes as Kelly and Christian. What was really great about them is that they also had a Latin mother and understood Kelly and Christian in ways that are sometimes difficult for gringos. Christian still gets to have a class with Nestor and Daniela every now and then at NCSU.
Mike is an Iraq War veteran who pretty much adopted the kids. They took almost all of their math classes together. It is hard to over emphasize what a great thing it was to have Mike as their friend. Make was old enough, mature enough, and sure enough of himself to not care to much what anyone thought about him, including the commie English professor he took one semester before Kelly and Christian got him. He was unfailingly kind to the kids, more conservative (but not by much) than me, and willing to give the kids advice and correction when they needed it. They still love the guy and are grateful that Mike went on to NCSU with them.
Finally, there is Mr. McCarter. He was the kids math professor for Calculus II, Calculus III, and Linear Algebra. He talked and joked with the kids and Mike every day before and after class. They send Mr. McCarter an email every now and then to let him know how they are doing. They owe a lot to him for the encouragement he gave them and the rigor with which he taught his math classes.
The upshot is that Community College was very scary when the kids first started. They got to turn down invitiations to parties that were illegal on their own right, but would have been profoundly illegal if two underage kids would have showed up there. The saw lots of drugs, heard all kinds of immoral jokes and stories, and heard all manner of casually used bad language. They even saw a fist fight our two. They came away from Community College with their Christian worldview intact and with a good mix of wonderful friends.
The Social Environment at Big State University
The social transition to NCSU was interesting. It seemed to be a big advantage to not have been socialized in the artificial world that only exist in traditional government and private schools where self-esteem and political correctness are preached as if they were holy writ. The entire educational experience of most of the kids entering the university was in a highly regulated, institutionalized environment where decisions were made for them about what they studied, when they could talk with a time and place for virtually everything chosen by the school district or state set regulation. The self-esteem thing was particularly apparent when the kids went to new student orientation. Since the kids were both in their Junior years in hard degrees, so they did not have to spend much time with the freshmen. By the time students make it to their Junior year in a hard (STEM) degree, some of the narcissism gets knocked out of them.
Conclusion
All in all, the kids homeschool transition served them very well in their move from Junior high school to college.
1. See this link on worldview considerations.
Day 572 of 1000
This is the first in a series of posts on the benefits of skipping high school and going straight to college. The introductory post and index to all the other posts in the series is here. You can see their undergraduate results and post-graduate (PhD) chase here. I try to keep the results updated as they occur.
People send in questions and I try to answer them here: Answers to homeschool questions
I thought I would write a few posts on why we think skipping high school is a great idea. I will write about the positive reasons for skipping high school, how we did it, and the actually outcomes for our children. The bad of what passes for a traditional high school education these days seems to out weigh the good by a lot. Still, I do not plan to write much about the abject failure of the majority of traditional high schools in America–at least not in this series of posts.
We definitely made some mistakes on the way, but it has been fabulously gratifying. Sometimes we went too slow. Sometimes we tried to go too fast. We serendipitously lucked into activities and opportunities that moved us forward. We missed deadlines and made mistakes through laziness, incompetence, and ignorance that set us back. Most of all, though, we made a plan and then just plugged away at it for about a decade. The plugging got tedious at times, but we can honestly say it was worth it. Joy, gratification, and humility are the words all of us, kids and adults alike, would use to talk about the educational path we chose for our family.
I have written an outline for what I want to write and will keep a list of links on this page.
- Part 1: Introduction (this post)
- Part 2: Different paths for different kids
- Part 3: Kelly’s path from junior high to college
- Part 4: Christian’s path from junior high to college
- Part 5: Why we think it is silly not to go to community college
- Part 6: That supposedly thorny socialization question
- Part 7: Why not skip high school? Worldview preparation is essential
- Part 8: Kelly takes a mathematical proofs class at Big State U.
- Part 9: Christian takes Chemistry at Big State U.
- Part 10: A full load a big state University
- Part 11: The fact sheet (how we did)
- Addendum 1: Starting college by age 12 (not us)
Day 346 of 1000
Christian had his chemistry final this morning. This is not a post semester celebration because Christian has one more lab and Kelly has her final tomorrow. They are at Chick-fil-A to celebrate traditional marriage and support Dan Cathy and Chick-fil-A. The place was jammed, but they had a big crew working so they got their food very quickly. Everyone was in a great mood to be around like-minded, right-minded people. Lots of people took pictures and videos to commemorate the event. It was quite a happy occasion.
UPDATE!!!! NEWS FLASH!!!
Troy just commented that everyone was not just at a Chick-fil-A. They were at the brand new ONE AND ONLY to story Chick-fil-A. How cool is that. How could I have missed that. Thanks Troy!
The kids have orientation at NCSU today. So far they have heard about all the special benefits people receive solely because of the color of their skin or their sexual behavior choices. It is a good thing they are Mexican or they would not receive all the special privileges and advantages that are withheld from white males. It all seems pretty degrading to me. Thankfully, the only have one or two more brainwashing classes each–they got most of that stuff out of the way at Wake Technical Community College. Still, it is a shame they have to run the gaunlet of such nonsense to get to classes that actually teach them stuff that is relative true like math and chemistry.
Day 313 of 1000
Lately, our family talks about world views, morality, and world events more than has been normal for us in the past. I think this is because of the election in Mexico on Sunday, the election in the US in November, some Supreme Court rulings, propaganda filled college orientations indoctrinations, events in the Middle East, and our own rapidly changing lives. In the midst of all that, Christian is selling a lot of our old homeschool books to raise money to buy books, cell phones, and other stuff he and Kelly need for college. One of those books is titled, Understanding the Times by David A. Noebel. Kelly, Christian, and I read the book aloud together. We liked it very much because it pulled together a lot of material we had studied previously into a discussion about world views.
Actually, I have already written about the book a number of times. You can find those posts by clicking on the following links:
We read a lot of books, listened to audio talks, and watched videos about different worldview issues. Paul Johnson, Lila Rose, William Lane Craig, Greg Koukl, Dale Carnegie, William Dembski, Stephen Meyer, Robert Spenser, and others helped us to understand the historical reality of the death and resurrection of Jesus, the seminal role of Christianity in science, law, commerce, education, and the emancipation of slaves and women. They showed us why abortion and homesexual behavior are wrong and traditional marriage is right. The main thing Understanding the Times gave us was a grasp of how different worldviews understand all of these important topics and what to expect from people who are true to these competing worldviews.
The reason this has all come to mind is that we really tried to give the kids a sense for why they should hold to a biblical worldview. This book helped tie a lot of disparate topics together into a cogent whole. The deeper we delved into these subjects, the better we understood the truths on which a biblical worldview are founded. Understanding the Times did a good job of giving us the big picture when the kids were just starting high school. It has gone a long way to prepare them for what they have confronted in college. For that I am grateful.
Day 111 of 1000
The kid’s friends, Mike and Nestor, came over to the house yesterday to study for their multi-variable calculus test for 4-5 hours. I got to talk to them a bit. Both of them want to be engineers, but neither of them took a traditional educational path, Nestor having come to the U.S. a few years ago and Mike having taken some extended time in Iraq. They are both impressive people and they work very hard at hard classes. My Russian buddy, Stepan and his wife are leaning hard toward what he calls “Home Education” for his two daughters. After looking it over they have decided they do not want the educational system, public or private, to get their hands on his daughters.
Then Eric G. sent me a link to an article on the bankruptcy of the Western educational system. The article, titled “Educated” people, is spot on. There is lots of stuff like this in the article:
We are not where we are because we were privileged; oh no. We got ahead because we work harder and just had a knack for that education thing.
This forgets of course that education in the United States and Europe at this point is a certification program more than anything else. It tests basic intelligence in some areas; in other areas, such as the liberal arts, it increasingly tests nothing but political allegiance and the ability to recite dogma in different forms (such “A Feminist Analysis of Cetacean Symbolism in Public Policy”).
Even in the sciences, we do not test intelligence so much as obedience, memorization and application of rote. This enables us to stop relying on smart people and to instead promote lots of interchangeable cogs.
I completely resonate with that whole quote. The problem now is to figure out how to educate one’s kids rather than “Educate” them in the sense described at the Amerika blog. Every day, we are more thankful we homeschooled our kids. We have turned more and more of the responsibility over to our kids. We will try to help them, but they will increasingly have to navigate the educational morass on their own. I wish I knew the answer.
At lunch today, Andrew mention that when he lived in Seattle he was very impressed with the way the government provided online support and information for things like the DMV, the tax office, etc., but how that when he walks into the office or call on the phone to get help, there is either none or it is surly, lazy, and passive/aggressive. With North Carolina, it is just the opposite. Online infrastructure is not so great, but the people at the counter or on the phone are happy, helpful, and kind. Amazing. It is absolutely true and I prefer the latter most of the time.
My Russian buddy Stepan and I discussed maturity this morning over coffee. I told him Grandpa Lauro’s maxim that, with boys, the blood doesn’t ever really start getting to the brain until about age 30.
Stepan laughed and said, “We have a saying like that in Russia, too, but I can’t tell you what it is.”
I asked, “Why not?”
He said, “Well, the saying is the something only gets to the something. You are going to have to figure out what are the two somethings for yourself.”
Day 102 of 1000
Lorena, Christian, and I made our way to the Community College last night to see the final performance and art show for the fine arts program. Paintings, pencil drawings, charcoals, and sculptures were displayed outside the music performance room. The chorus and the story-telling classes provided the performance arts. It was wonderful. There was a pretty good sized crowd to see it all. They dynamic of the community college is very fascinating. It is obvious that Kelly’s chorus professor and the story-telling professors take their jobs very seriously and derive great joy from them. Kelly sang with the chorus and with one small group of Mexican students who sang “We Are the World” in Spanish. Christian got some great pictures–I will put up a few of them this evening. Wake Technical Community College has an impressive facility, the student body is eclectic and fascinating to watch. It was all pretty impressive and very, very fun.
We had a great Thanksgiving dinner. Here are a few photos:
First the guests of honor. We were profoundly humbled that Gladys was able to spend Thanksgiving with us.
Also my old boss Andrew and his (soon to be) veterinarian Sara. We were especially thankful these people were so gracious to listen to Grandpa Milo’s and Dad’s stories. We are hoping they make this a tradition with us!
It does not seem like it is Thanksgiving if Grandpa Milo is not taking charge of the cooking.
Lorena cooked, too!
Grandma Sarah is her usual joyful self.
Kelly gives instruction to Kiwi about not bothering the guests while they are eating.
We all have a great time. This must have been during one of Grandpa Milo’s “true” stories.
We sat at the table from about 2:30 PM to about 8:30 PM. It was an awesome Thanksgiving!
Update: Warren (who is often with us for Thanksgiving) has a wonderful Thanksgiving post here.
Day 94 of 1000
Last night, we had a wonderful dinner of French onion soup, french bread, cheddar cheese, and pizza. It sounds a little odd writing it, but it tasted great. We all sat around the table and talked for a couple of hours after dinner, then made our way to the couch and continued talking until about 1:00 AM this morning. We got the turkey in at around 9:00 AM. Andrew and Sara will show up just in time for dinner. I will put some cooking and eating pictures up later.
Day 93 of 1000
My plan was to take some pictures of our visitors–Grandpa Milo, Grandma Sarah, and our dear friend Gladys–and post them here on the blog last night. Grandpa Milo lost his luggage (it came to the house later that evening), we came home through heavy traffic, ate Lorena’s amazing Kung Pao Chicken for dinner, went to Gospel meeting, ate some chocolate chip cookies, and talked until midnight. None of that should have prevented me from posting a few pictures, but everything was SO interesting and we were enjoying ourselves SO much, it just slipped my mind. I will try to do better tonight.
It is GREAT to have them here. I have decided that we really need to buy a mini-van for these kinds of visits. Our total automobile capacity right now is eight people and that is just not enough.
Day 92 of 1000
Grandpa Milo, Grandma Sarah, and Gladys (also a Grandma) will arrive at the airport this afternoon to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with us. I am running hard right now, but life should slow down by later today. I will have plenty of pictures to take and posts to write over the next few days. I am really looking forward to it.
Day 87 of 1000
For the first time in five years we will have a fairly big group of people at our house for Thanksgiving. Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah will get here on Tuesday along with our dear friend Gladys Christie. That makes seven and we expect to have an additional three to seven people beside that. It is not as big as we did in Oregon, but it that is OK because we need a medium size one to get back in practice. Lorena had me do a little work on a clogged shower and she has been preparing like crazy for a week. Studies should slow down a little after the weekend, so I am sure she will put us all to work.
We purchased a Wurlitzer console piano for the family about eleven years ago for about $2500. It was a big financial hit at the time, but has been an absolute joy ever since. Kelly took piano lessons for ten years with that piano and Christian took three years of lessons as a little kid before he switched to guitar. Kelly still plays the piano frequently, but, since she no longer takes formal lessons, we have let it get out of tune. We decided that everyone would probably want to sing hymns or play the piano during Glad and Grandpa and Grandma’s visit we would use that as an excuse to get the piano tuned. That happened on Tuesday so we are all set!