Homeschooling 101 Seminar by Unplugged Mom

You have to hear Laurette Lynn via a few of her podcasts to truly appreciate where she’s coming from and what she wants to instill in you. She wants you to be “educated” not “schooled.

 

What is it she wants you to learn? Simple: Skipping “School,” even home(schooling) will lead to a more balanced and enlightened life for your children AND your family.

But don’t take my word for it. You can check out Laurette’s unique and engaging lessons live. But you have to act quick. The Unplugged Mom’s ten-week Homeschooling 101 Seminar begins TOMORROW! (July 27th, 20011)

Don’t fret if you miss them, though. She’ll be recording them so you can learn on your own time and at your own pace. Which, when we think about it, is what home education and self-learning are all about, isn’t it?

UPDATE: July 30, 2011 – Ten Week Seminar Series Begins August 3

Laurette will be scheduling weekly live web seminars beginning August 3, 2011, and ending October 5, 2011. The cost is very reasonable and there is a 20% discount for reserving all 10 seminars. Read more and reserve your space here.

Sheeple Crossing: The Earth Day Rap

Here’s another post for the “Compulsory” basket. This one will be a little easier, since all you have to do is watch it. But that won’t make it any easier to stomach, unless you are a shepherd and enjoy watching the future dictators leaders of our country practice becoming little anarchists and informants (on their friends, then parents, then neighborhood, then the company they work for… if they can get a job.)

[YouTube pulled the video… but I saved the lyrics. The video of brainwashed children trying to rap this out was pretty sad anyway. It’s just as well it got pulled.]

Oh yes… urban powertry:

The sky is high and the ocean is deep,
But we can’t treat the planet like a garbage heap.

Don’t wreck it, protect it, keep part of it wild,
And think about the future of your great-grandchild.

Recycle, bicycle, don’t you drive by yourself,
Don’t buy those plastic products on the supermarket shelf.

Boycott, petition, let the big business know,
That if we mess it up here, there’s nowhere else we can go.

Don’t shrug your shoulders, say, “What can I do?”
Only one person can do it and that person is you!

Is environmentalism the new patriotism?

I put this in the Learning vs. Schooling category because this is a perfect example of the difference between learning and schooling. These children are being “schooled.” They aren’t learning anything of value, other than the fact they are helpless to truly impact their world by thinking for themselves.

Do people evolve into sheeple, or are they taught?

Will they be the future pollution-buster that comes up with some new invention that really might save the planet? Doubtful. They will  be too busy protesting, pointing fingers (watch the “moves” of these future American Idols!) and writing letters to “Big Business” and their government to please, please, please stop wasting our precious resources. It’s almost like we are making environmentalism their duty, their new social compact. It’s like instead of linking freedom and liberty with the American experience, we are replacing patriotism with environmentalism.

These children will not be contributing to society. These children will only feed off society. And they’ll be pissed off in the process because society will be constantly doing things that they have been told to believe, pollutes and DESTROYS the planet!

The sheeple of tomorrow won’t have time to think for themselves, so why include critical thinking in their schooling? Best to use our E-M-O-T-I-O-N-S and feelings. Best to write cute songs that paint with broad brushes. Plastic/Bad, Blind Sheeple Activism/Good. This kind of emoti-think has been used in the environmental movement for decades. Remember the poor Indian Native-American sitting by the garbage dump, crying? We’ve been made to feel guilty for decades!

Maybe rightly so. And maybe it worked. Have things gotten cleaner in the past thirty years? Sure have! Are we better off over-all here in America because we cleaned up our act? Sure. But forget all that. We have a GLOBAL crisis to think about and worry about and cry about now! Something damn near impossible to prove, let alone solve.

When did weather reports become climate issues?

Reminds me of a phrase: What we expect, is climate. But what we get, is weather. And in Indiana, wait a few minutes and it’ll change. The point here, people, is that we are more susceptible to our emotions and feelings on certain rather large issues than we are likely to admit. Children are more open to this kind of mood teaching.

Teaching using feelings rather than facts leads to irrational and illogical conclusions no matter what the science might actually say. This is why “Global Warming” was changed to “Climate Change” a few years ago, because every winter, when it got real cold, people suddenly didn’t care about what environmentalists were saying (because it’s cold, doof!) even though the scientists were pretty darn sure that the coldest winter on record was, in fact, a result of global warming!!

If the Catastrophic Weather Events Don’t Get Us, the Irrationality Might | Discoblog | Discover Magazine What the weather’s like affects some people’s beliefs about global climate change, a new study found: On hot days, they’re all over it, but on cold days, not so much.

If you care about your children at all, you’ll consider skipping public school and doing something–anything– other than allow your children to be schooled into the herd. Environmentalism is becoming the new patriotism.

About Me: Are You Part of the Homeschooling Movement?

Question: So how did you get involved in the home schooling movement? I home schooled some, saw a lot of positive out of it. Unfortunately, I also met home school parents who didn’t do a good job.

Answer: The short answer is, No. At least not in the sense of a movement that is organized. I think many people believe a movement isn’t a real movement until there are some non-profits involved, hiring lobbyists to give the movement ‘a voice’ in Washington. That’s not a movement. A movement is something where a huge number of people end up doing the same thing without the need for mailing lists, newsletters, calling trees and fundraising campaigns.

IF we are using the later term, then yes, I am part of the homeschooling movement. And I got into it by simply not forcing my kids to attend their local public school.

I didn’t get involved in the “movement” so much, as I just decided to become an involved parent. We decided to be involved in the raising AND education of our children. We decided early on that one of us was going to stay home when we had children, and as it turned out, I was self-employed in a business that was not conducive to a steady income and my wife was. Choice made.

While the kids were growing up, I used my skills to develop a web based and user-group based homeschooling network http://www.ihen.org. I also joined a few other, like-minded parents to found http://www.indianahomeschoolers.com. For about a decade now, we’ve supported, helped, networked with other parents who need help with their homeschooling. We’ve (collectively) answered literally thousands of questions and pointed thousands of people in the right directions, finding co-ops, internet resources, hard resources (like museums, libraries, etc.) and generally Helped Hoosiers Homeschool. In fact, that’s our motto: Helping Hoosiers Homeschool since the turn of the century.

Are we a movement? Nah. We’re a project. A work in progress. We aren’t so much a “movement” as we are a simple networking hub for information and ideas about alternatives to public, state schooling.

So, am I a part of the movement? I suppose so. But it’s not like I have a fancy placard on the wall making it official.

Now… What About Those Other People?

The end of your question reflects a condition I like to refer to as: TOPS (Those Other People Syndrome).

If I can encourage you to think outside of the box a little, I would like for you to think deeply about your last two sentences.

You say you experienced a lot of positive things. Were those experiences more positive than you might have experienced with a public school? If so, then isn’t that the entire point of having the freedom to choose the educational paths for your family? You did great! Kids are great! Life is good!

But you say it’s unfortunate that (in your opinion) there were some parents who weren’t doing a good job homeschooling their own kids.

First… so what? Does the fact that (in your opinion) some people don’t do such a good job, impugn the entire enterprise? (I ask that because there are a surprising number of people who believe that a few bad apples should indite the entire barrel.)

Here is where I would like for everyone to do a little deeper thinking: If that is the case — bad homeschoolers make homeschooling an undesirable lifestyle for everyone — then what are we to do with other failing things? What about failing government schools? Bad teachers? Uninvolved and neglectful parents? Are not they just as, if not more, influential and destructive to the lives of children?

And what about those parents who are just plain bad? They send their kids to public schools because it’s convenient to not have to care for your own children 24/7, they don’t have to take responsibility for the kids’ education — and it’s free. The State Schools teach the kids next to nothing in a values-free vacuum, because they believe that kids that don’t learn things just don’t have involved parents. The kids don’t get any instruction at home, so  in essence, we have millions of kids being raised by government schools adopting Lord of the Flies philosophies and nurtured by the media culture. The kids are screwed until they can leave home and make a mess of their lives all on their own.

It’s at this point where we can easily tell which young adults were homeschooled and which went to public institutions. And I can say without doubt that the worst homeschooler I’ve met has never been worse than the best public schooler I’ve met. See, I don’t judge the parents; I judge the fruit (once it has matured.)

Are the bad parents doing a good job? Can we more easily point to those families on the street and say, “I’m worried about the way they’re raising their kids.” Sure we can.

But we don’t. Do we. So why the scrutiny on homeschoolers… who are most likely sitting quietly in a library, reading or researching or doing something relatively useful with their lives, with some involved guidance from their parents?

Homeschoolers are easy targets because they’re not doing things the way the rest of the Sheeple do, and that makes the Sheeple nervous.

The point is: at the end of the day, there isn’t much we can do about how people raise and educate their children, can we? We can’t conduct junk food raids on the homes of fat parents with fat kids (yet) and we can’t conduct “educational neglect” raids on the homes of homeschooling families (mostly because most public schools are doing much worse at that teaching thing.)

Fact is: Homeschooling families are always “suspect” and under suspicion for somehow harming their own children by doing something so out of the ordinary as RAISING THEM. Why is that? Please think about it a bit.

If there is one thing, dear reader, you come away with after reading this post, I hope you begin believing that it’s more important to watch out for the people who are REALLY affecting, abusing, indoctrinating our children and stop worrying about how parents — you’ve seen or heard about — are raising and educating their children. Here’s another motto I’ve used for years:

All Parents are Educators. What are you teaching YOUR children?

And THAT is what I do. I help people make progress and think for themselves and stop worrying about Those Other People by busting a few myths. If this is something you call a “movement” — to that I say, “Whatever. I’m in.”

BbB

Skip School: Obama Nation Needs YOU!

Summer’s here and it’s time to figure out what to do with the kids.

The school has taken care of them all year (food, shelter, socialization and even a little learning) but now what are we to do to keep them busy until they can get another decent meal in September?

Jobs are few and far between, of course, but our president doesn’t want an employment crisis to go to waste. So, while he’s looking for government jobs for the parents (like the census) there is always COMMUNITY ORGANIZING for the kids!

You too, can become an agitator for change!

Change Now!

There might be a lot written in the coming weeks about the new internship program being promoted through our State Schools. You’d think that summer programs for kids would be ALL OVER the news; especially since these jobs are supposed to translate into so many good things for our communities. But for some reason, some hateful people are comparing this and the AmeriCorps programs to the Nazi Brownshirts.

I say they might be writing articles, because since Congress gave AmeriCorps 5.7 Billion back in March of 2019, there hasn’t seemed to be much of a full court press from the media, promoting this goodness and light. Organizing for America (OFA) seems to be gearing up for a summer internship program, but you wouldn’t know it unless you went looking for it. I don’t know… getting almost 6 Billion dollars to do such good work… wouldn’t you be, you know… promoting the hell out of all the good work you’re doing?

Regarding the “agitation” curricula government programs will be using, I keep seeing Saul Alinsky’s words of wisdom creep into the vernacular. There are some wonderful things that are going to be taught to our up-and-coming agitators and organizers. Have a look at some of the principles and values our children will be learning this summer and probably next school year; so you (parents) won’t be surprised when they come home from school with their AmeriCorms home inspection teams:

Tactics

“Tactics are those conscious deliberate acts by which human beings live with each other and deal with the world around them. … Here our concern is with the tactic of taking; how the Have-Nots can take power away from the Haves.” p.126

Always remember the first rule of power tactics (pps.127-134):

1. “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.”

2. “Never go outside the expertise of your people. When an action or tactic is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear and retreat…. [and] the collapse of communication.

3. “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. (This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address.)

4. “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”

5. “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counteract ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.”

6. “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.”

7. “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time….”

8. “Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.”

9. “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”

10. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.”

11. “If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside… every positive has its negative.”

12. “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.”

13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. In conflict tactics there are certain rules that [should be regarded] as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and ‘frozen.’…

“…any target can always say, ‘Why do you center on me when there are others to blame as well?’ When your ‘freeze the target,’ you disregard these [rational but distracting] arguments…. Then, as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all the ‘others’ come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target…’

BbB

Homeschool Truants in the Crosshairs

ILLINOIS, INDIANA, MICHIGAN — The year 2010 is going to be the year of “The Hunted Homeschooler.” Some cities are considering new curfew laws, supposedly to counter truancy, but in practice, they will be used to harass homeschoolers. Some cities are just outright picking targets that they know aren’t really homeschooling, and nailing them. (I wonder how they know that education isn’t going on? Read more for my theory.)

My friend, Sue Ryan at Corn and Oil has been writing about what has been going on in Illinois this month, and combined with what we have been discussing here in Indiana and in Michigan, it almost appears like an all out frontal attack on homeschooling.

We need more regulations!

Homeschoolers are unaccountable!

Parents who didn’t fill out an attendance record are educationally neglecting their children!

Parents are skipping school and ‘saying’ they’re homeschooling!

I’m sure there are more.

Conspiracy? Nah. But while I won’t give it that much credit, I do believe that what is going on of late is a result of the practice I’ve called, “Public School Excommunications, or Ex-schooling.” Public schools, in the desperate need to reduce the dropout rates among students (including those who are not old enough to legally drop out) have found that by encouraging parents to simply “say” they are homeschooling, both the school and the parents can conveniently get rid of a mutual problem.

We can all blame NCLB all we want, but the fact is, no matter what was required of public schools to meet the federal demands, teachers and school officials all across the country did everything they could, to either dumb down the requirements so more kids could ‘appear’ to pass, or they sabotaged their classes to prove the point that the Republican’s plan for school reform wouldn’t work.

Part of the sabotage plan (I would argue) was to indict parents for not holding up to their end of the bargain to educate their children after (school) hours. Stupid kids aren’t the schools fault… it’s the fault of parents who don’t appreciate education the way they should. The battle of who’s schooling whom stays on cruise control until those stupid public schoolers get too hard to handle and control; then it’s time to get rid of the problem.

It’s like a getting out of school free card!

The solution is obvious! The school gets rid of a child that doesn’t want to be there and is likely acting out in disruptive or violent manners (not to mention purposely tanking his or her state mandated tests) by forcing the parent to leave the school in the only legal way possible — they are forced to transfer out of public school to a private school. And since they can’t afford a private school, they are told their only choice is to homeschool.

It’s likely the parent is already frustrated with her child’s behaviors, and double-frustrated with how the school handles and miseducates her child. What concerned (or even neglectful) parent wouldn’t be glad to get out of the cycle of  abuse and punishment inflicted by government schooling on her child?

There are questions that need to be asked of every parent from here on out that is accused of “pretending” they are homeschooling:

• Did you recently decide to homeschool, or have you been doing it for a long time?
• Why and when did you decide to leave public school to homeschool?
• Were you told that you were required to homeschool?
• Were  you told that if you didn’t, CPS would be called on you?
• Were you informed of the legal requirements to homeschool, or do you feel you were just tossed out?
• Did you look for local and statewide resources for help, once you decided to homeschool?
• Would you have rather gone to another school, if you had a choice?

These are the first questions reporters should be asking when they come across cases like this. But instead, we are going to get more and more articles indicting non-homeschoolers for no other reason than NOT going to a government school.

Therefore, this will be the year of The Hunted Homeschooler.

BbB