Are You Doing a Good Job Homeschooling?

Tammy blogged this here the other day:

. . . And the number one sign that you’re doing a good job homeschooling — You feel like you belong in the world, and there’s no end in sight to all the amazing things there are to discover out there.

All her signs are good but I zoomed in on this. I’m thinking it makes a better distinction between types of homeschooling than the various religious or political classifications we’ve used.

All the progressive, secular unschoolers I know fit this standard, AND so do a few conservative Christian school-at-homers I know. Its correlation with certain other variables is incidental if you can see and understand that THIS is what matters no matter where you find it.

In other words, anyone home-educating or not who fears the world and is closed to discovery is a person unlike me, and in an activist group they are someones I need to worry about, no matter what attributes I otherwise share with them — feminists, progressives, stay-at-home-moms, educators or middle-class neighbors, for example. My own family members too.

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A Worthwhile Read

Science Times: Evolution

One of several fascinating articles.

From a Few Genes, Life’s Myriad Shapes

By CAROL KAESUK YOON

Evo-devo researchers are finding that development appears to have been one of the major forces shaping the history of life on earth.

. . .

By way of Pharyngula, of course.

Nance

Sock Puppetry at Home for Fun and Profit!

New cultural concept applied by top anthropology blog to home education criticism!

Read the notable examples and see for yourself, folks, this is well-documented fact, very scientific! (If you weren’t lost in Africa during the last decade, you would know this stuff already . . .)

Really? Is this who we are?

I just saw this headline —

Elizabeth Edwards scheduled to speak at Gay Pride event

Presidential race hopeful’s wife seen as breaking barrier

Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer

Elizabeth Edwards’ scheduled appearance Sunday at a major San Francisco Gay Pride event represents a first for a major presidential candidate or spouse — one that activists said reflects the growing clout of gay and lesbians as voters and their continued move into the political mainstream.

. . .

Having just responded to a poster on Sam’s list about the, to me, astounding assertion that she expects kids to make fun of homosexuals and homeschoolers, among others, I was set back on my heels. Maybe we are not as evolved as I had imagined. Maybe we are not ready for the 21st century. What the heck is wrong with us?

I was also asked recently by a dear friend who I might be voting for and who I found inspiring and why I seemed to be souring on Edwards. I told her it was just a general disgust with Congress at this point.

But now I am impressed with the Edwards campaign once again. I just don’t know about the rest of us. 😦

Nance

Creationism (of Sock Puppets and Young Disciples)

Here’s a beauty — no really! — posting as janicetwin over at sam’s, who seems to have gotten voice to go with the rest of her GL-awakened online self just yesterday.

One of janicetwin’s first fave posts ever is the ironically headed, GL-authored,“Choose Wisely: the Internet is a Dangerous Place.”

Her new “acquaintance” who she never met hanging around GL’s place, or so the story we’re being offered goes, is Penelope T Rax, poor woman, still has no online identity, never said one word anywhere according to Google, until s/he miraculously and immaculately popped up to chat with sam and the hot young blonde, about rogue women like Bonnie Parker, homeschooling and American public education, oh — and as always, the deep and often misunderstood ways and wisdom of GL.

Student Thanks Rob Reich for Uniting, Not Dividing

Here’s the travel blog of a Sikh-American Stanford student who made a film to end fighting and belief tribalism, called “Divided We Fall”

“In a world divided into “us” and “them” who counts as one of “US?”

— and here thanks homeschool critic political theorist Rob Reich as one of her mentors, the one who made her “believe my scholarship could affect the public good.”

A noble goal!

Has anybody seen or heard of this film?

Rolfe’s Homeschooling as Radical Act: More Words and Meaning

Power of story that connects to “Keep Your Radicals Free” —

“Are You a Rebel?”
. . .When I heard God’s call to leave my career and stay home to home school my children, I was a rebel. Everyone thought I was crazy to leave a promising position heading straight for tenure. But I was listening to the voice of my Father and the yearning He placed in my heart for my family and home.

I wasn’t a rebel when I chased after material wealth, the world’s accolades, and my five minutes of fame. Then I was just running with the pack. . .

Can a radical NOT take roots to the outward edge of circumscribed reality? Can it ever be “progressive” to further entrench that against which the rebel rebels, or is defending any status quo regressive by definition — maybe there’s some conceptual tipping point where a radical course (as search for goodness, truth, beauty) shifts based on distribution and becomes not radical, or are roots and radicals absolute, regardless of other folks’ movement in and out of the garden?

Does it matter what you intend and call yourself in its name, if it turns out your actions advance the opposite cause?
CS Lewis wrote about this for kids in the Narnia Chronicles:

. . .Calormenes who have done good in the name of Tash are rewarded after their death for having really honoured Aslan; likewise those Narnians who do evil in Aslan’s name are counted as having done that evil in the name of Tash.
This illustrates Lewis’s inclusivist belief that the idea being worshipped, and the honesty with which it is worshipped, is more important than the name by which it is referred to.