The Reason For My Faith

4 responses to “Homeschool Your Children”

1. 

   William Keevers

   03/09/2021

   I am 66, lifelong severe ADHD. The diagnosis wasn't remarked upon until the 1970s. (I know it from personal experience. In 1973, my parents sent me for treatment to a college where a provisional therapy for neurological injuries was practiced—they didn’t know what I had.) Our awareness of ADHD only came up with the prevalence of Ritalin, a very profitable drug.
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   Fifty years previously in 1920, 97% of the populace previously engaged in the practice of agriculture was shifting to the cities, out of the natural world where ADHD would be unrecognizable, as most occupations open to boys and young men had involved vigorous physical labor, and before this, most young men went into their fathers’ occupations, practicing those manly callings of life. John Taylor Gatto shows how universal compulsory schooling (designed to crush the imagination of the child) was designed from the outset for producing good factory workers.
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   Point being, educators of Christian renewal emphasize children studying first, from the book of nature. This means letting them have a vast amount of time experiencing the natural world God created for them. An example is Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project: He came up on a sheep ranch in the western part of the state of Virginia. (It happened also, that he was raised in what would now be called, “NoSchool”.)
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   Mr. Gatto emphasized that 1) most education is auto-didactic (especially in this age of information overload where information is so readily available), so young people educate themselves, 2) basic starter literacy can be conveyed in only 40 hours instruction, and 3) basic numeracy in 42 hours; this is between 2 1/2 and 4 months of essential education What then do kids need to be doing in school for the rest of 12 years, if not to be beaten down into perpetually dependent children, needing someone to tell them what to do and think?
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   The point about children being expected to pursue self-employment is good. And it can be prefaced, by children being expected to engage in productive public service projects, even beginning with lemonade stands for philanthropy, where they are in complete charge and learn it all as little adults. Mr. Gatto’s work (a number of well-received books), emphasizes a large number of successful people who, not only didn’t stay in school, but who by the age of 13 were very serious in active pursuits. John Quincey Adams went to the Russian Court at St. Petersburg at 14 as a translator, but ended up being the de facto ambassador. Thomas Edison at 13 was a train boy selling candy, newspapers and vegetables to passengers on the Grand Trunk Railroad, got permission to set up a printing press in a rail car, and because of the environment, produced the freshest news about the civil war.
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2. 

   Chuck Ness

   03/09/2021

   Amen William. You are spot on. I grew up in the 60's and 70's when the school system still dwelled on education, instead of indoctrination.

   Children used to learn from experience. Yet now the left passed laws that make it impossible to hire children un 16, and even up to 18 they are limited on what they can do. Kids used to have jobs after school, and that led the to succeed.

   My first job was a paper route at 15 years old. I delivered them 7 days a week, in the morning before I went to school.

   Then I dropped out of school in the 9th grade and got a job as a fork lift operator at a lumber yard. Try getting a job driving a forklift in any capacity anywhere in this country before you are almost 21 is impossible today. However I learned the work ethic, then headed into the military at 17.

   Now I do not suggest that way. See I came from a screwed up family whose father went to prison when I was 7, and being the youngest of 8, I was forced into situations that were different than most. But I made it.

   After my commitment in the military in 76, I went to a community college.

   Back then, even kids that screwed up, knew they could make it if they just got a job and put their nose to the grindstone and worked hard.

   Today, hard work is looked down upon.

   Plus, as for higher education, not everyone is meant to go to college. We have bought into the idea that every child should go to college, WRONG! This mind set comes from the “60”s and “70”s liberals who realized they could indoctrinate children more if they can get them earlier and keep them longer. They were right, look at all the public and university idiots running around with brain full of crap, but cannot even make change from a dollar is the machine doesn’t tell them how to do it.

   Not everyone is meant to go to college. We have bought into the idea that every child should go to college, WRONG!

   This mind set comes from the “60”s and “70”s liberals who realized they could indoctrinate children more if they can get them earlier and keep them longer. They were right, look at all the public and university idiots running around with brain full of crap, but cannot even make change from a dollar is the machine doesn’t tell them how to do it.

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3. 

   William Keevers

   03/12/2021

   Can you tell me, Mr. Ness, what is the bead device in the top image of the homeschooling Mother with boy & girl? I have been trying to explore boosting early numeracy with the Korean finger counting/cyphering method (chisenbop) based on the abacus and soroban. I have invested a lot of money getting all the books, but am having trouble getting into practice with it, and I can't find any Korean people who know about it, to get off the ground (as an adult). It was shown on t.v. in the 1970s. https://youtu.be/vtARCOoQTT8

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4. 

   Chuck Ness

   03/13/2021

   William, it is called an abacus. It's been in use since ancient times and is still in use today. It was used in the ancient Near East, Europe, China, and Russia, centuries before the adoption of the written Arabic numeral.

   I have heard of the finger method, it's pretty cool

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