Note to Mainstream Press: Michael Farris Does Not Speak for All Christian Homeschoolers

Mike Huckabee seems like a decent guy personally, but it absolutely infuriates me when the mainstream press touts him as "the homeschooler's choice" based on his endorsement by Michael Farris of the Home School Legal Defense Association. The HSLDA has done a lot of good work over the years but they don't speak for all homeschoolers. I personally don't think they should get involved in partisan politics, particularly since there is another strongly pro-HS candidate in the election (Dr. Ron Paul). Now, I've got my own concerns about both Huckabee and Paul but that's a discussion for another time. Anyways, the Des Moines Register ran an article yesterday entitled "Homeschoolers propel Huckabee".

Although not monolithic, home-schooling Republicans are united by core principles, especially their rejection of public schools in favor of their own religious-based teaching.

Let's stop right there. While all HS families have rejected the public schools, not all those who vote Republican are HS for religious reasons. The GOP is the party not just of the religious right but also of secular libertarians, many of whom also have decided to educate their children at home.

Likewise, they are civically active and well-connected to Iowa's evangelical churches

Again, why does the mainstream press insist upon equating homeschoolers with Evangelical Protestants? Some are, but many aren't. There are HS families of every Christian denomination, and also plenty who are other faiths, atheists, or agnostics.

Michael Farris' endorsement of Huckabee in May, meaningless to much of the voting public, sent a strong signal to Crawford and other Christian home-school families in Iowa. Farris is founder and chairman of the Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association and the national figure for Christian home-school families.

The national figure for Christian homeschoolers? Maybe in his own eyes, but I know plenty of Christian home educators who do not believe that he represents them.

Estimates by the Oregon-based National Home Education Research Institute put the number of Christian home-school families in Iowa at roughly 7,500 to 9,500. As a group, they are disproportionately active in politics, partly out of strong opposition to abortion rights and gay marriage, core positions for socially conservative Republicans.

Not all Christians are socially conservative, anti-abortion, or hold traditional views on sexuality. These are hotly debated issues and several denominations have taken official positions that are definitely on the liberal side: the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church USA, the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, the American Friends Service Committee (aka the Quakers), etc. While I personally disagree with those positions and I'm glad that the Vatican has held the line on traditional sexual morality, my point is that Christians are a pretty diverse group. Just knowing whether someone considers Jesus to be the Savior of the world doesn't automatically mean one knows where he/she stands on "hot button" issues.

Socially conservative Evangelicals may be a vocal subset of the homeschooling community, but they don't speak for all homeschoolers and it annoys me when the mainstream press treats them as if they do.

Are Today's College Students Too Apathetic?

Thirteen members of Harvard University's class of 1967 are criticizing today's Harvard students as being apathetic and politically indifferent. They have sent a petition to the new university president Dr. Drew Faust complaining that the school is either not recruiting enough politically active students or is doing too little to promote "civic courage and political engagement". So what is the impetus behind the alumni's complaints? No big riots or mayhem such as violently taking over a university building such as occurred during their own student days.

Harvard's director of admissions, Marlyn McGrath, countered that today's students are active but use different methods than 1960's era protesters. "I don't think there's much of a lack of political engagement here," she said and noted that today's students prefer "civil discourse" to "throwing tomatoes."

Adds associate dean Judith Kidd, "students today often focus on causes they can see in front of them."

An example of this is 17-year-old Dan Nally of Westwood, MA. Back in 1996, then 9-year-old Dan heard a news report that the Greater Boston Food Bank was 5,000 turkeys short of its Thanksgiving dinner giveaway goal. Dan went door-to-door in his neighborhood collecting turkeys and that year ended up getting 36. Since then, Dan and his family have turned their efforts into a full-blown nonprofit organization called Turkeys 4 America. They have served over 3.5 million servings of turkey to needy individuals!

I don't know where Dan will attend college next year, but it would not surprise me if he wound up at Harvard or similar school. I met a significant number of individuals at my alma mater who, like Dan Nally, had impressive "do-gooder" credentials. They weren't out there in a mob burning flags or effigies of the president in an ostentatious display but rather they were quietly making this world a better place.

I wonder about these kvetching Harvard alums- would they be happy if Harvard recruited more members of Generation Joshua? Somehow I doubt it...

Government-run Schools Dumping Classic Poems in Favor of Lightweight Verse

One of my favorite books to read growing up was the Golden Books Family Treasury of Poetry edited by Louis Untermeyer. I received it as a gift on my 6th birthday from one of my little friends and it still has a special place on my bookshelf decades later. I spent many hours as a child absorbed in the wonderful poems such as Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride", Poe's "Annabel Lee", Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci", Thackeray's "Pocahontas", Holmes' "Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill", Lear's "The Owl and the Pussycat", Nash's "Tale of Custard the Dragon", and so on.

I was therefore very disappointed to read an article from London's Evening Standard newspaper entitled "Schools scrapping classic poetry for 'lightweight' verse." British school inspectors checking poetry teaching in government-run primary schools found that only 8% earned an "outstanding" rating. Most teachers did not know enough about the subject to teach classic poems and instead focused on easier modern verse such as "On the Ning Nang Nong" by Spike Milligan:

On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all say BOO!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So it's Ning Nang Nong
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning
Trees go ping
Nong Ning Nang
The mice go Clang
What a noisy place to belong
is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!

Not exactly Shakespeare, is it?

While there is a place for modern poets such as Shel Silverstein or Jack Prelutsky in the curriculum, the primary focus should be on classic verse. Not just for cultural literacy purposes, but also because they typically demonstrate a higher-level vocabulary and structure than recent poems. A child simply gets more out of reading something that has not been "dumbed down".

In our homeschool, I'm planning to use the poetics series by Michael Clay Thompson published by Royal Fireworks Press. It looks like a good introduction to studying poetry using classic verse. I think we'll do a poetry unit in the spring with the Music of the Hemispheres book if DD appears to be ready at that point (it's so hard to predict with her).

TT: 13 Christmas Gift-Givers from Around the World

Header courtesy of Missy Frye at "Observations from Missy's Window" Thirteen CHRISTMAS GIFT-GIVERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD In honor of tomorrow Feast of St. Nicholas, here are 13 Christmas gift-givers from around the world. 1. St. Nicholas, 4th century bishop of Myrna in modern day Turkey. Renown for his generosity and love of children. 2. Santa Claus, his secularized, commercialized version in present-day America. 3. Father Christmas, the British version of our Santa Claus. In Roman Britannia, the pagan god Saturn was said to watch over the festival of the winter solstice. After St. Augustine brought Christianity to England in 597 A.D., the gift-giver changed from Saturn to Father Christmas. 4. Dun Che Lao Ren, "Christmas Old Man" in China 5. Pere Noel, Father Christmas in France. 6. Christkindl, the Christ Child in Germany. 7. Nino Jesus, the Christ Child in Latin American countries. 8. Befana, an old woman said to have gotten lost bringing gifts to Gesu Bambino (Baby Jesus) in Italy. 9. Babushka, an old woman said to have felt guilty about steering the magi in the wrong direction on their trip to Bethlehem, in Russia. 10. Jule-tomar, little elves with long white whiskers, in Sweden. 11. Jule-Nisser, elves in Norway. 12. Tel-apo, "winter grandfather" in Hungary. 13. The Grinch, if you live in Whoville :-) Other Thursday Thirteens (Please note that I take no responsibility for the content of other blogs):

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Great Holiday Gift Idea for Kids

I just found out that one of the kids in our homeschool support group makes unfinished wooden toy animals that look like a fabulous alternative to all the "made in China" toys. Please note that I have no affiliation with the selling website and am receiving no consideration for promoting these financial or otherwise. I just wanted to share something I thought might interest some of my readers and help out a fellow homeschooler :-)

Carnival of Homeschooling #101 is Up!

Mama Squirrel over at "Dewey's Treehouse" is hosting this week's 101st Carnival of Homeschooling: Snowed-In Edition. This is the time of year I miss New England winters. Come February & March, however, I'm glad to be out here in California, LOL!

Thoughts on "Why Education is Useless"

I just finished reading the provocatively-titled Why Education is Useless by Dr. Daniel Cottom of the University of Oklahoma. I had picked up the book because I was interested in reading a spirited defense of why liberal education remains important in modern times. I've read several books on that theme in the past year or so including Climbing Parnassus by Tracey Lee Simmons, Who Killed Homer? by Victor Davis Hanson, and The Paidea Program by Mortimer J. Adler.

I was very disappointed by the pedantic, incoherent, and politically correct drivel Dr. Cottom wrote. Why Education is Useless reminds me of Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind but written from a left-wing perspective. Like Dr. Bloom’s book, Dr. Cottom’s is a mish-mash of rants against the author’s personal bugaboos and a highly pedantic discussion of philosophy full of academic jargon.

Here is a typical paragraph:

“Survivalism is an acephalic, rhizomatic, activist, grass-roots movement inspired by quasi-organic intellectuals who have rejected the so-called public sphere, cultural studies an institutionally legitimized academic movement through which tenured and potentially tenurable folks aspire to transform that sphere through their transgressions. The tragic vision of turn-of-century naturalism returns as farce in contemporary survivalism, and to judge from the ‘return to beauty’ widely bruited of late, fin de siecle aestheticism may return as farce in cultural studies if we do not watch what we are doing.”

Now imagine 206 pages worth of this soporific prose- no wonder it took me almost 2 months to get through the book rather than my typical fortnight or so!

Dr. Cottom comes off as the stereotypical arrogant, anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, anti-military, ultraliberal Ivory Tower academic. He spouts all the politically correct nonsense that’s been coming out of universities since the 1960’s and demonizes anyone who happens to disagree with him as racist, intolerant, self-righteous, or at best merely ignorant. He makes little distinction between demagogues such as George Wallace and thoughtful conservatives such as Dinesh D’Souza, William Bennett, and Pope John Paul II.

Dr. Cottom asserts that universities should "celebrate the uselessness at the core of higher education" as a bulwark against the "tyranny of stupidity" of our culture epitomized for him by George W. Bush. Now, I'm certainly no fan of President Bush but I just don't get the vitriolic loathing and insufferably arrogant feelings of superiority he elicits in many liberals. It goes beyond criticism of his administration's policies, which is to be expected, to something much more personal. It started long before the invasion of Iraq and even before the disputed 2000 election (though I'm sure those events exacerbated the already-existing animosity).

I suspect that a great deal of it has to do with the militant hostility to Christianity so popular in certain social circles. Dr. Cottom specifically mentions Bush's naming Christ as his favorite political philosopher in his book and makes the astonishing claim that it identifies Bush as a "right-wing Protestant white male beneficiary of political support from racist voters." Last time I checked, Christians were a pretty diverse bunch: both genders, all different races & ethnicities, a wide variety of denominations, and the full range of political leanings. Bush is a right-wing Protestant white male and for all I know he could well be the choice of white racists (though it's important to make the distinction Dr. Cottom conveniently skips that not all racists are white). However, simply choosing Christ as one's preferred philosopher does not make one ipso facto conservative, Protestant, white, male, or racist.