Here’s the latest from the glass-jawed, self-proclaimed savior of science education who now seems to have declared war on Christian fundamentalism in America, by instead attacking thinking parents who happen to homeschool their own kids in evolution and celebrate the scientific method.
And he’s awfully late to the “define homeschooling” petulance LOL. Hard to improve on this, wish more of us still believed in this combination of unity and diversity in mutual trust, sigh . . .
Despite all that, he announces today that he’s been studying us all along, to ready his mortar fire. He must REALLY think if you’re not schooling then you’re dumber than dirt, because he invites you to come help him put the finishing touches on his weaponry and ammunition before he turns it on you (he already unleashed his dogs of war on Nance and me, and they’ve slobbered all over us. Gross!) 
For more see Girls on Girls Gone Wild (defining each other):
Is it a coincidence that GL visited the evolved homeschooler’s page, and now it’s infected with a bunch of porn spam?
You remember how I was brilliant a couple of days ago
and actually had something to say — “I Could Never Homeschool” http://cockingasnook.wordpress.com/2007/06/17/i-could-never-homeschool/.
Greg is one of those people. Those people who really have no idea what hsers are saying when we talk about hsing. His frame of reference does not include information that allows him to understand.
He seems to be trying to set up his next sales pitch or gotcha game with this, “What is a homeschooler?” piece but he will never really get it. He’s not really even trying at this point. But even if he tried really hard, he couldn’t do it.
Heck, he can’t even figure out which way to write it — homeschooler or home schooler.
Ah, well, off to MRI land with DS. No time for crackpots today.
Nance
If you look at Greg’s archives, the only times he has discussion (or comments at all) is when he mentions homeschooling. He’s a drama queen. Blah. Next he’ll be writing about ford vans and denim jumpers.
MRI Land? Ooh, is that a new Florida theme park? [tongue sticking out emoticon]
Later this summer we’re going with a group to Dolly Parton’s Dixie Crusade — no, sorry, Dixie Stampede! LOL — and when FavD was telling her dad the native Bostonian about it, he looked straight at her in all seriousness and said, “You’re making that up. There’s no such place.”
We’re lucky to have Doc as a credentialed counterbalance to these homeschool set-ups fancified as real science and critical thinking education. Doc, I like knowing you are there. And here every now and then, too.
Doc is the science doc; I’m the power of story doc. Both retired now. So when I reread her professional notes I thought she might welcome a collaboration to revise and publish on “homeschool” science:
Doc’s Original Sin:
Creation is not a scientific theory, does not involve the scientific method, includes no evidence, and is far removed from a logical progression of scientific discovery. Creation is a foregone conclusion and does not include a hypothesis. Creation science does not prove creation – it simply works to disprove evolution. Within the confines of creation, there is no room for new discovery.
JJ’s Concordance
Homeschooler-phobia is not a scientific theory, does not involve the scientific method, includes no evidence, and is far removed from a logical progression of scientific discovery. Within the confines of homeschooler-phobia there is no room for discovery. Homeschool heckling by scientists does not prove no scientists suffer from personal prejudices if not mental problems including clinical illnesses and conditions that include but are neither discrete nor limited to, paranoia, hypersenstivity to critisicm, delusions — in particular delusions of grandeur–, perversions, schizophrenia, attention deficit and other serious disorders including various personality disorders that may impair reason without disabling the communication synapses. . .
I hate smilies, but I very nearly left one.
MRI Land? Ooh, is that a new Florida theme park?
***
Only if you are a Tae Kwon Do competitor. At least he won the gold!
That will be some consolation when he accepts the cast is not coming off for a while. 
Nance
Sam blogs good advice about mad dogs in “Calls you shouldn’t answer” — ironically the same advice (well, it was more like a warning) Dr. Jekyll Laden gave me about his pet troll Hydes: Stay away from them.
I seem to have beat the spam issue on the wiki, for now. Personally, I think we should all just ignore Laden. Don’t comment there, don’t acknowledge his screeds, no matter how ridiculous they are.
Good questions, Sam!
Nance
Another fine piece of advice is “go, read, learn!” Gotta remember to ask sam if there’s da vinci code embedded in the line about “people and their rants laden with untruths and misconceptions” . . .?
Ha! And Snook’s spam solution is so good that it stopped COD’s advice above, until I just spotted it and saved it from the bin. Worth saving, too.
But Chris, you realize that means YOU have to come up with the replacement hot summer diversion to debate then? Nail-biting over the Yankees-plus-Clemens theoretical surge from 10 games back [barely containing my glee] can’t possibly rivet me until oh, around Labor Day . . . so whatcha got?
Oh, would this do as a transition filler maybe?
Yahoo Buying a High School and College Sports Network”
We could discuss this – although it doesn’t have anything to do with homeschooling. I nearly wet my pants laughing though. Remember, I said “wet”.
Okay, the stupid link didn’t come up.
http://angryaussie.wordpress.com/2007/06/20/miracle-diet-pill-with-teeny-tiny-side-effect/
I found this comment the most intriguing:
“This is possibly the single best blog post I have ever read. Hilarious and frightening at the same time.”
It made me stop and think, if that particular combination of attributes would be the right stuff to yield the “best” blog post in the world, in my view?
Or the best of anything else — a blind date, a car model, or boss?
And I’m thinking, how does this make you attractive? Which is the point of the crash diet, isn’t it? The blog “Tiny Cat Pants” was going on about body image issues and then there was the Bratz doll commentary at Culture Kitchen. Is it just summer swimsuit season that has us all acting crazy??
Nance
I really do agree with COD on this and honestly feel that most of these (is trolls the right word?) should be avoided. It’s an especially bad sign when your argument begins with reasonable questions then devolves into questioning semantics.
Thanks for the love JJ. And here I thought I was just writing a rant that kept me giggling.
Oh Nance, we’ll make millions, you’ve hit on the best cultural combo since chocolate and peanut butter. Pouty-lipped tarted up Bratz dolls (in swimsuits?) who swallow Doc’s drug and then do that hypersexy diarrhea thing right in your little girl’s lap . . .
Sam, you are the first aspiring roller derby announcer I’ve ever known, and I would pay money for a podcast of your historic first go at it, besides the love, if there’s a chance you are planning any such resource? I think it would be highly educational . . .
Maybe we’ll have sam do our tv commercial voiceovers then, Nance?
“When your child is ready for the real world of school, she’s ready for The New Hypersexy Bratz Doll — hilarious, frightening and always on the go!”
COD and sam’s advice sounds good to me. I’m sorry I didn’t take it earlier. I’ve wasted a lot of energy going nowhere and thinking about things I don’t find very interesting.
I still have no idea what GL is trying to do (although I think Doc is onto something). He’s “not against homeschooling”, he’s “concerned”. But he doesn’t have any solutions for all of the problems he sees. It’s the solutions that would really scare me, until then it’s just talk.
I don’t know, JJ. It might not be a classy enough product for a roller derby announcer.
(Pssst. . . Sam, just say no. I think the heat is getting to JJ.
)
Nance
HI Rolfe — yes, just talk. Your own posts are so good (take it from an admiring writer!) at capturing the essence of unschooled inquiry and creativity at its best and most real. I hope you’ll pour your efforts and time and thoughts into more of those for us all to appreciate and maybe embroider onto and pass around. You can leave online jousting and jockeying for years later in your journey, if at all.
Thanks JJ. It’s funny, I always struggled with English class in school because “I couldn’t write”. Now I’m writing for fun. I appreciate the complement and I am glad you’ve enjoyed some of my stories.
I’ll still have to debate some — it’s my nature. I just have to remember to back away when it isn’t important. Talking about my kids makes me happy, talking about cmf makes me angry. I’d rather be happy.
Well now you’re in cmf’s lair, the belly of the beast. He’ll talk to YOU sooner or later, he’s already in the thread I see. But have fun!
I really don’t think Greg is anti-homeschooling. It is unregulated growing up that he opposes.
By george I think she’s got it!
Oh, and unregulated belief in anything other than a science text.
I showed his credentials far more deference than deserved, but got far less in return than my own deserved. (This goes for our daughters too) For all his hypercredentialism, he doesn’t seem to mind telling an education policy doctorate he and Spielberg have school reform in the bag,or crying censorship to a top-five J-school bachelor’s degree . . . for all his concern about protecting other people’s children, he’s mighty quick to defend them being smeared with obscenity by his own clubmembers, and to make snide comments in his own name about all sort of kids in the news, as a way of insulting and presumably disempowering their parents.
Goes to show that credentials really AREN’T worth what they used to be, I guess. Maybe that’s what animates him, trying to build back the cash and status value of his own diplomas as a power base of some kind . . .
Credentials smenentials. I have a doctorate and my kids have to download songs to my ipod for me.
But you are smart enough to KNOW you don’t know. That’s the real test!
We could’ve skipped the whole We Stand controversy and just asked GL to decide! Lynn herself “stands for homeschooling” — she’s on his blogroll TWICE. Dawn gets one mention as does Alasandra (for her butterflies?) Poor Rolfe hasn’t earned a gold star from the professor yet, being male and all — but he hasn’t been expelled as a classroom troublemaker either so maybe the education establishment GL stands for, will still see his light?
(Nah, not if he has to go through GL’s sock drawer to get there.)
Ah, wait a moment! — when one actually tries Alasandra’s bloglink there, a curious screen comes up saying it’s been deactivated and it’s probably some sort of civil or ethical violation. Does anyone know more about that, whether it comes from her blog or GL’s?
JJ, haven’t got a clue what is going on with that. I would guess it’s something to do with GL (but hey that’s just a guess). My blog is still up and running, and as far as I know there haven’t been any problems with it.
Thanks for dropping by for a visit.
My favorite part was the butterflies.
Hi JJ,
I don’t understand where Greg is going with this either, but my impression has been that he’s frustrated to be characterized as anti-homeschooling when he has been saying that he’s not. My guess is that he’s doing this to confront and refute accusations; but I say “guess” because, even though I’ve earned 2 stars from the professor? (whereas Rolfe has earned none because he’s a male?), I really don’t know. But, I do know what it’s like to feel mischaracterized. It’s frustrating, but helpful to remember when others are feeling the same way, as we all will from time to time. It’s not about taking sides, for me.
Hi Lynn –
You know JJ will pipe up later but I saw your comment and wanted to say:
It is frustrating to be mischaracterized. We’ve probably all had that experience at one point or another.
But it is another situation completely if you have simply been caught in a lie. And imo GL has crawled to that level. If you have read some of his other posts that touch on hsing, you may see what I saw. He looks for any excuse, no matter how tenuous, to make some sort of disparaging remark about hsing and hsers.
At this point, he reminds me of the racist who denies it all when caught, proclaiming: “Some of my best friends are n. . . colored.”
He seems only to want to engage in a sparring match. He never actually (that I have seen, maybe I missed it and you can point it out to me?) says what he wants done, how he wants to go about having it happen, whether this is about a legislative move he wants to push, whether he has some product or other to sell that will solve whatever his issue is, etc.
And he never seems to hear any of the very experienced hsers who have taken time to speak with him. AFAIK, we all started off very pleasantly, only to discover that he was not listening, was not trying to learn and has an idea fixed in his head that he must somehow save hsers from ourselves. For our own good, whether we like it or not.
His thinking is not particularly original — lots of people don’t approve of hsing or anything different from what they did or do — but he seems to be an intelligent guy who has fixated on this boneheaded idea that he knows better than other parents what should be going on in their children’s lives. Maybe it is the hopefulness at the beginning that makes it all so disappointing now.
I think he should just quit marketing whatever it is he is up to and unveil his big answer to everything and let it stand or fall on its merits. If he’s got something to unveil. Or he should just go back to the lab and let go of this subject.
I think you are great to think of ways to give another human being another chance. There’s plenty of room in the tubes to see what you can do. But I don’t hold out much hope that anything productive will come of your efforts.
Nance
I hear you Lynn. There are no sides to be taken, only individual adults responsible for their own actions and inactions, credibility and reputations AFAIK. Definitely no standing for (or against) individuals based on their avowed support or opposition to hsing, much less to be for or against all homeschoolers!
I feel pretty sure GL wants the same thing in that regard btw. He wants this to be personal, to single out vocal homeschoolers who could make him look uninformed or prejudiced or just stupid and wrong, and cut us from the herd, define us by HIS judgment of us as unworthy *individuals*. But he’s not against hsing, no, he loves it if only it weren’t for all the actual hsers he’s met!
BTDT.
I get along well with Scott Somerville, former lawyer (also Harvard-educated btw) for the conservative Christian HSLDA — as do Nance, Daryl, COD and others,yet a vocal bunch at HEM-AHA despise him personally with the searing heat of a thousand white hot suns and will take their ball and go home even from a national conversation among diverse ACTUAL HOMESCHOOLERS, if he is allowed to post anything or even read along.
No skin off my nose, except for a whole bunch of lesser lights who decided to hate ME for not hating Scott. Huh? How is that defending hsing, by attacking other hsers who don’t make all the same judgments you do? So no worries on that score re: GL, who is not a “side” of any kind, at least not from me. (What would he stand for, if he were a side?? Hmmm)
Bottom line, I’d say one unforgettable lesson hsers learn the hard way is just how much home education IS about the individual, not the sacred unified congregation doing as ordered and expelling invaders and misfits in unison, as a threat to the whole hive.
When in doubt, Oprahfy!
“We teach people how to treat us . . .”
Lynne: What are you talking about? Both you and Rolfe get all 5 star in my book!