Some misc. thoughts

It's amazing to me how biased our media in the USA is. A friend of mine from Wisconsin had posted a link today, that had her angry. Once I watched and listened to this link, I, too was fuming. Those of us that choose to school our children at home, are catagorized by the 10% of home school parents that an extreme approach. The story was run on ABC's Good Morning America. In the clip, it showed 2 families that chose to take what is called an Unschooling approach. Unschooling is done without books, tests, or a set curriculum. The theory of this approach is that the child will lead the learning process. Again, in theory, it can be productive with the right mind process. The 2 couples they happened to show were the extremists of this theory. They call their approach "Unschooling," but they have chosen to do it without rules, parental guidance, or respect from the children. The article made me sick!

Of the 1.5 MILLION children that are home-educated, only 10% are educated by the "Unschooling Theory." That is 150,000 children. The remaining 90% are educated in ways that our public schools are unable to provide. However, the national media, has chosen to show these extremists, as opposed to showing any of the other 90% that have structure, guidance, respect, and have chosen home-education to help their children. It is a fact that children, with a respectable home education, are more educated, and much more advanced that children in public or even private schools. My personal thought is a process for my son. It has been an unschooling, to start. This way the public school remnents are able to be erased. Then we are going to be educating more in an eclectic/Charlotte Mason style. This being said, I want my son to be able to advance in the areas that he is already excelling, and focus/work on the areas that he is struggling. Fortunitely, he is really advanced on most subjects. Our first year is going to be a lot of experimenting to find the right schedule, curriculum, and pace...but there is no reason between Richard & I that we can't give our son & daughter the best and most extensive education possible!

I hope that a responsible news reporting agency will do a real story about the 90% of home-educated children that are truely excelling and how fantastic this option is for responsible parents.