Homeschoolers for President!

Now you’re talking some serious education reform and rethinking visibility — how about just putting a home-educating family in the White House, way to save years of lobbying and public ’splaining! Elizabeth Edwards really appealed to me already, but this is some great icing on their campaign’s cake for me.

And just for the record let me reiterate, I don’t give a flying flip about whether they call it “homeschooling” or “tutoring” or “private schooling” or some personal combination of terms that best captures meaning for them as parents. With a professional tutor, I suppose it won’t be even partly “unschooling” but OTOH, these kids are young enough to learn a great deal through play and maybe the tutor will be a REAL education expert rather than a pedant, and understand “school play” as something other than an oxymoron? The point isn’t the labeling but being free to find what works and doing it, and loving it. As a family (first or otherwise.)

(Cock of the Snook to Daryl, homeschooling Dem dad doctor of science who found this)

SALON: Elizabeth has announced that you plan to hire a tutor to help home-school your two youngest children, Emma Claire and Jack, in the fall so the family can be together on the campaign trail.
Have you realized how many conservative votes you could get if you play up your plans for home schooling?

John Edwards: I hadn’t thought about that.

SALON: I assume that evolution will not be part of the curriculum.

John Edwards: It’ll be part of our curriculum.

SALON: Other than thinking about it, have you made any arrangements for home schooling?

John Edwards: No. We haven’t even talked to the children about it, which we have to do.

Is God Real? Is God Reasonable? Is It Reasonable to Even Ask?

Newsweek just hit my mailbox (it’s late, hmm, usually comes on Wednesday) and Favorite Daughter put it in front of my eyes as I blogged about the British sailors being taken hostage by Unreason. On the front cover above the masthead is this headline:

“Is God Real? Rick Warren and Sam Harris Face Off”

So I open it up and there’s a big ol’ story called the God Debate by Jon Meacham, with dueling quotes stripped across the top, like

“Our Words Fell On Deaf Ears. . .”

UPDATE - CNN story just posted here, with full transcript of statement.

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Still watching the live news conference on CNN and thinking it should be required viewing in every school worldwide — that is, if we do mean to create and preserve real environments that sustain human life by right instead of might.

When one is “not equipped for a fight” and reason fails in the face of unhearing, blinded, singleminded Borg-like purpose, Reason itself becomes an unreasonable response and is forcibly redefined against your will, becoming not an academic exercise but a raw first-rung survival skill, a matter of figuring out who is fit to survive and what it will take.

And even that kind of Raw Reason falters without intelligence, sound information for making wise decisions, and being allowed untwisted, unmanipulated communication within one’s one group of fellows and with the real world. Reason stripped, blindfolded and shoved up against the wall to hear the sound of guns being cocked.

Oh, and who ALWAYS bears the brunt in any patriarchal power play? Why, the woman of course!

“It was mainly psychological and emotional . . .”

“Isolation was a major part of this . . .”

What was the worst moment?

“There was a lot of trickery and mind games being played . . .”