We think of ourselves as a literate society, but the truth is that we’re fooling ourselves.
Just because we can read, doesn’t mean we can read. Just because we can write, does not mean we can write. Unless we are educating our kids to be readers of difficult books, and writers of persuasive essays which they are capable of doing, we are short-changing them.
Read MoreTeaching your children to follow their passion sounds promising, but when you reflect on the word passion, you realize it's a misnomer. We don’t actually want our children to follow their passions.
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I took my kids trick-or-treating on a few occasions, but the more I thought about the messages we were communicating to our kids, the more I began to think trick-or-treating might not be such a great idea.
Ironically, while growing up, Halloween was one of my favorite holidays. What kid doesn't like candy? Having a free-for-all candy night with no adult supervision was the equivalent of kid Heaven.
But now, I stand on the side of those who think we should ban trick-or-treating.
Letting our children trick-or-treat contradicts our position that sugar is bad for their teeth and bad for them. We limit the sugar our children eat all year, but one day a year we give them a free rein to eat as much sugar as they want.
Do you have any idea how much sugar they consume? The average kid consumes three cups of sugar on Halloween!
Eating Halloween candy is not limited to one night, either. For however long it takes them to get through their bag of candy, that's how many days they are filling their bodies with harmful amounts of sugar.
The gross amount of sugar consumption creates severe sugar spikes in our children's blood levels, leaving them feeling not so well.
Overeating candy comes with the underconsumption of wholesome foods, which only exacerbates the problem.
Allowing our children to trick or treat on Halloween and eat so much candy is not practicing what we preach, nor is it responsible parenting. I'm guilty too, but when the facts are on the table—wow.
I read that one dentist pays children $2.00 for every pound of Halloween candy they give him. While I can appreciate the intention behind this gesture, is it sending our kids the right message?
We buy the candy, the kids knock on our doors, we give them the candy, and then the kids sell it to the dentist.
How can turning our kids into greedy candy peddlers be a solution? Greed is the #1 problem in the world today, and we are all suffering because of it. We don't want to encourage greediness in our children, do we?
We teach our kids not to talk to strangers, and we teach them that it isn't polite to ask people for things, yet, one night a year, we let our kids knock on the doors of strangers and ask them for candy.
One shameful moment for me as a kid happened one day on my way home from school. I had just turned twelve, and my best friend Bridget and I were famished after a long day sitting in classrooms.
At about 3:20 in the afternoon, as we were walking home with grumbling stomachs, we had this bright idea.
We could trick-or-treat!
We knocked on the door of an apartment near our school, and an elderly woman opened the door. Very surprised to see us, she asked, "Isn't it a little early, girls?" She gave us some candy anyway.
As an adult looking back, not just on that isolated incident but on the idea of knocking on a stranger's door and asking for candy, isn't this a contradiction?
We teach our kids not to speak to strangers and NEVER to take candy from a stranger, yet once a year, it is permissible. We teach them that it's not polite to ask for things, yet once a year, it is permitted.
But here's the crux of the matter: Halloween is a creepy holiday; it has gotten even creepier since the corporate world has taken it more seriously.
In my old neighborhood, a neighbor had gravestones on his front lawn and skeletons that moved and looked like they were coming out of graves. When we drove up the hill at night, my kids used to get scared because the scene looked so real.
So did I!
And that was a mild scene. My friend's neighbor in the town next to us would spend a fortune decorating his lawn until it looked like the scene out of a horror movie. I used to wonder what on earth that man was thinking.
Halloween is supposed to be for kids, not psychopaths.
I like the idea of carving pumpkins, but should we be wasting food like that? With so much starvation and deprivation in the world, it seems insensitive to waste pumpkins for a night of amusement.
For Halloween, about 22.2 million pumpkins go to waste! At your average price of $5.00 per pumpkin, that's 111,000,000 dollars of food that we waste. The average cost to feed one person per day in the US is supposed to be about $11.00 (seems very low); divided by 111, 000,000, we could feed 10 million people, roughly.
My god, that's shameful.
On second thought, we should ban Halloween.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
When you join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course for parents of school-age children, we guide you in homeschooling with the classics to raise more intelligent children of a better character.
Enroll using the link below and feel confident knowing you have the guidance and support you need to homeschool successfully.
For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20+ years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents to get it right.
She is available for one-on-one consultations as needed.
“Elizabeth has given us counseling and guidance to help us succeed with our home school planning. When I feel overwhelmed, scared, or lose my confidence, she offers words of wisdom and support.”
— Sherry B., Pittsburg, PA
What creature is that you are probably wondering?
It is the whale.
We studied dinosaurs in the second grade, yet, dinosaurs pale in comparison to whales. While reading Moby Dick, I discovered a fascination for them because whales are truly sublime.
I’m now convinced that no child should complete childhood without learning about their amazing lives.
Did you know that whales are the largest animal on Earth, even bigger than the T-Rex Dinosaur? The nine heaviest creatures in the world belong to the whale family. A blue whale weighs 200 tons, and when they give birth, their babies weigh three tons and gain 200 pounds per day!
Compare this to the largest elephant ever to exist (as far as we know), who weighed only 4 tons, and you begin to realize the magnitude of of whales.
The sperm whales have the largest brains of any animal, including man. Not only do they have the largest brains, but their brains contain a neocortex, like the human brain. The neocortex governs higher cognitive functions such as planning, memory, empathy, and language.
The sperm whale has a highly sophisticated language that is based on sound. They emit coded clicks at the speed of milliseconds and can emit these sounds at vast distances.
Scientists today are trying to decode their language using artificial intelligence. Someone even wrote a book about real conversations with whales and how the lessons we learn from them can help us live more joyful lives.
“As for his true brain, the whale, like all things that are mighty, wears a false brow to the common world. ”
Because most of the whale’s life is spent at the bottom of the ocean, they must rely on sound to see. Whales use click sounds to communicate which is called echolocation. Echolocation is when their sounds bounce off of an object and send back an echo to the whale that tells them where the object is.
They rely on click sounds to see, but these sounds can be as loud as 230 decibels making them the loudest animals on earth. In comparison, if you stood next to a jet engine, the engine's sound is about 150 decibels.
Whales are so loud that their clicking sounds can kill a man!
Whales can live underwater for about 90 minutes because their bodies can store massive amounts of oxygen in their muscles. When whales surface to breathe, they breathe for about seven minutes before they go underwater again.
Female whales live in multi-generational families. In contrast, the male whales live solitary lives and return to the females only during the mating season.
Whales will mourn the death of a loved one, and they will celebrate the birth of a calf, according to Shane Gero, a behavioral ecologist and founder of the Dominica Sperm Whale Project.
They have different dialects for each whale pod.
Yes, it’s true. Whales eat large squid, and the indigestible parts of the squid are eventually excreted. These excretions float in the water for seven years, going through various changes, and can be washed up on shores in the form of what is known as ambergris.
“It’s beyond comprehension how beautiful it is, It’s transformative. There’s a shimmering quality to it. It reflects light with its smell. It’s like an olfactory gemstone,” is how Mandy Aftel, a perfumer describes ambergris.
It can sell for anywhere from 10K to 100K, depending upon the size.
In 2021, a group of Yemeni fishermen found 1.5 million dollars worth of ambergris in the floating carcass of a sperm whale!
Sperm whales are the citizens of the ocean, and they are dying.
"Why are they dying?" asks Shane Gero.
And then he answers his own question: "It's us," he says. "All of us."
The deluge of gargantuan shipping fleets bringing us our goods from all over the world are killing the greatest creature on earth. Calves are born, but they are dying from accidents caused by large freighter ships.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, sperm whales were hunted for oil and spermiceti, but now they are killed because of our ignorance. It’s ironic that arguably the most intelligent animal on Earth is going extinct because of man’s stupidity, or greed.
Today, six out of 13 great whale species are considered endangered, including the sperm whale who was the subject of Melville’s masterpiece, Moby Dick.
Teach your children about the greatest creature on Earth when they are young, and you will have no problem getting them to read Moby Dick when they are older.
Moby Dick is the story of an obsessive pursuit for one albino sperm whale named Moby Dick by a man with a wretched heart called Ahab.
While it's not easy to read, it's a powerful and often humorous book with themes of human nature and human folly gracing the pages.
“God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates. ”
John Taylor Gatto used to have his sixth-grade students read Moby Dick.
Though I never asked him why out of all the great Western classics, he chose Moby Dick; my guess is because once you read it, you can successfully tackle any other work of great fiction.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
When you join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course for parents of school-age children, we guide you in homeschooling with the classics to raise more intelligent children of a better character.
Enroll using the link below and feel confident knowing you have the guidance and support you need to homeschool successfully.
For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20+ years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.
She is available for one-on-one consultations as needed.
“Elizabeth has given us counseling and guidance to help us succeed with our home school planning. When I feel overwhelmed, scared, or lose my confidence, she offers words of wisdom and support.”
— Sherry B., Pittsburg, PA
Defenders of language are opposed to the idea of gender-neutralizing language, as are those of us working in the field of traditional education.
And many, many others.
So I was not a little taken aback the other day when a friend told me that I should replace the pronoun "he" with "they" in my writing.
His concern was that people would think I was literally writing about boys rather than understanding "he" is a centuries-old pronoun that stands in place of an antecedent noun that could be of either sex.
Let’s take this sentence as an example: “If we teach a child to read too early, he may struggle to read well later.”
“He” stands in the place of “child,” who could be either a boy or a girl.
Surprised by my friend’s reasoning, I asked a couple of my grammarian friends if they had encountered this same concern. Maybe their being British had some bearing on my findings, but each emphatically said, "No!"
If you read Mr. Gwynne's Grammar, a best seller in England, you will find a section on the use of the pronoun "he." Mr. Gwynne makes a point of differentiating between “sex” and “gender,” the word “sex being a purely biological term and the word “gender” being a purely grammatical term.
“The word to indicate whether someone is male or female is ‘sex,’ not ‘gender,’ which is purely a grammatical term.”
Assigning gender to a noun is woven into the structure of many languages, including the Romance languages. The gender of a noun will determine which form of an adjective or pronoun should accompany it.
For example, in Latin, “mensa” is a feminine noun that means "table.” To say " the beautiful table," we use the adjective’s feminine form of “beautiful” to agree with the feminine gender of “table,” hence, “mensa pulchra.”
French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian follow a similar structure.
As you can see, gender in language has nothing to do with an individual's biological or wishful sex regardless of claims to the contrary, although there is of course some overlap when human beings and animals of the female sex are being referred to.
As reason would have it, therefore, the correct use of the pronoun "he," to stand in place of a noun that could be of either sex, is not sexist but is grammatically correct.
“I’ve studied authoritarianism for a very long time - for 40 years - and they’re started by people’s attempts to control the ideological and linguistic territory”
Using language correctly does matter.
Our language is the means through which we understand ourselves and the world in which we live. When we start meddling with one of its basic units, we do so with potentially disastrous results, such as being confused about the biological difference of a man or a woman.
There's a sort of madness at play here.
My point is that if you are a homeschooling parent teaching your child English grammar, please teach him that "he" is a centuries-old pronoun and cannot be replaced with “they".
Instead, teach your child that “he” replaces the antecedent noun when the noun could be of either sex, and we cannot afford to lose him!
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
When you join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course for parents of school-age children, we guide you in homeschooling with the classics to raise more intelligent children of a better character.
Enroll using the link below and feel confident knowing you have the guidance and support you need to homeschool successfully.
For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20+ years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents to get it right.
She is available for one-on-one consultations as needed.
“Elizabeth has given us counseling and guidance to help us succeed with our home school planning. When I feel overwhelmed, scared, or lose my confidence, she offers words of wisdom and support.”
— Sherry B., Pittsburg, PA
An inspiring look into a homeschooler’s journey about successfully teaching a subject she had never learned properly during her own school days.
Read MoreMy kids are behind!” Tell me honestly, as a homeschooler, have you not had the same thought at least once?!
Read MoreWhat follows is an edited transcription of key selections from John’s talk, The Underground History of American Education. As fantastic as it may seem, his findings are based on verified fact, not crazy conspiracy theories.
Read MoreNow that the homeschool year is winding down, are you worried your children didn't finish everything you had mapped out for them? Are you feeling a little despair?
Read MoreShould you buy a phonics book and teach your child to read, or should you hand the task over to your computer?
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There are many advantages to homeschooling, and one of them is leadership.
When done right, homeschooling your kids should lead them to a state of personal sovereignty, a word John Taylor Gatto used often. In other words, raise your kids to march to their own beat, or, as John liked to advise us, to be the writer of their own script.
“You either learn your way towards writing your own script in life, or you unwittingly become an actor in someone else’s script.”
There are a few strategies to know if you want to reach this goal which I’ll share with you. These strategies will assist you in giving your child a serious education, not a public-school education
Assuming your long-term objective is to provide your child with an excellent education and the tools to think independently, you want to be clear about his educational goals.
For each school year, you will need to know what you want your child to accomplish for that year. For each subject, you will need to decide what your child should learn about that subject.
Don’t cut any corners here as planning is everything.
A lot of thought should go into you homeschool plan. If we are going to reach any goals in life, we must be intentional and have a map of how we will get there. Intentional homeschoolers plan out the school year and know their end-year objectives.
Your child will become interested in subjects you may not have anticipated. Even though you have prepared a homeschool plan, you've got to be flexible enough to shift when the winds change direction.
Any time your child becomes interested in something, that's when you want to teach it. We learn best when we are motivated to learn. A desire to know something motivates us.
There are things your child must know, such as how to read. There is no way around it, but there are things you will not have on the schedule that he may show an interest in. Usually you can be more flexible with subjects, such as science, history, and literature.
Adjust your schedule to your child’s interests when it makes sense to do so. This should not interfere with your goals, but enhance them.
Don't expect mediocrity from your child. Let me tell you a story to illustrate this: I met two brothers in a hotel in Gocek, Turkey; a yachting town on the Mediterranean. They were from Israel, and they were somewhere in their 70's.
Gocek, Turkey, 2020
I was having breakfast when they sat down at the table next to me. We got to chatting about how the Jewish people are known for being very intelligent. They said it was because they had superior genes! I asked them to tell me about their childhoods.
I explained that I worked in children's education and, contrary to what they thought, I didn’t believe that they possessed superior genes! Jewish children must be raised in a way that nurtured their intelligence.
Both of their faces lit up, and they said passionately, "Our mothers drill it into us from an early age that we are going to grow up to be an engineer or a doctor or something of importance. We are raised to understand that anything short of this isn’t an option!"
They were laughing as they said it, but it was obviously an impressionable part of their childhood. They were raised to reach the top. Mediocre expectations were not a part of their upbringing.
With all due respect to natural ability, people who excel often do so because it was expected of them or someone inspired them to excel when they were young.
“I’ve come to believe that genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us. ”
Most of us went through the public school system. Consequently, our standards for an education are naturally low. Without knowing what a serious education looks like, it's natural to adopt a public-school-at-home model of homeschooling.
Warning: you do not want to recreate public school at home!
“That seemed crazy on the face of it, but slowly I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of the national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to prevent children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior.”
You want to understand the subjects a child should learn and the books a child should learn from. This is a whole other topic, but let me say that a thorough knowledge of grammar would be a good place to start, something that is no longer taught in public school.
Which means that if you want to give your child an excellent education at home, you have to opt-out of any public-school-related programs and do it yourself.
As the teacher to your child, you want to enjoy teaching your child. If you don't, your child will sense this, and it will put a damper on his experience of learning. You want to nurture your child's love of learning instead by being passionate about learning yourself.
If you aren't enjoying teaching your child, it's probably because you haven't found the sweet-spot in homeschooling. It's there, you just need to discover it.
“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.”
Start by recognizing the magnitude of what you are doing: you are educating your child. What more noble task is there?
Acknowledge your courage and your dedication to your family. Focus on the positive aspects of homeschooling and avoid harboring thoughts of all that you have to do today. Our “to-do” lists are always too long. Set realistic daily goals and check them off as you complete them for a quick boost of happiness.
Keep in mind that even if you weren't homeschooling, you'd still have a lot to do. You may have more free time when you kids are in school, but you'd quickly fill it up with other things.
When you’re homeschooling, you’re filling your time up with a service that will pay you back 100-fold for the rest of your life.
Homeschooling is a service we provide to our children. It takes up our time and it takes up our energy. It's important to structure our days and weeks so we don't get burned out and lose our motivation.
It's important to build some fun time into your life that does't involve your children. What is it that you enjoyed doing before you had children? What is is that relaxes you and boosts your mood?
Whatever it is, make sure you schedule it into your week.
There is nothing worse than a cranky homeschooler, and you'll become cranky if you don't fill your own reserves at least once, if not twice a week.
A friend once said to me, "Life is difficult, but it should be enjoyed." There will be difficult days when you homeschool.
There are always difficult days no matter what we do.
But overall, you want to enjoy it. If you enjoy homeschooling, your children will enjoy it, too.
And they will learn to write their own script in life.
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
Become a Smart Homeschooler to raise smart, ethical, and critically-thinking children. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course and feel secure knowing that you have what you need to homeschool successfully.
For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child Well to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20+ years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with her unique combination of mentors, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
While grading students on a bell curve may make some sense in a college setting, it's a harmful system for measuring the comprehension and knowledge of younger students. The Bell curve was designed to determine where each student ranked in relation to the rest of the group, but each child has a unique mind that is developing at its own rate and understands things in its own time, and, therefore, to compare a child's ability to those of his peers defies common sense.
Read MoreDo workbooks and critical thinking classes teach children to think critically?
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For many of us, taking on the job of homeschooling requires a lot of sacrifice. Some of us give up jobs and careers we love, and all of us give up much of our free time.
However, if we realized the impact of homeschooling on our family, our society, and potentially the world, would it seem like a sacrifice?
Not at all.
What might seem like a sacrifice at first will become the door to a better, happier life for your family and will ultimately impact society and the world for all the reasons that parents choose to homeschool.
Homeschoolers are usually in agreement that we want our children to have an excellent education, and we know it's not going to happen in public school.
Not the kind of education we envision anyhow.
Reading competently, writing skillfully, and speaking eloquently are skills competent homeschoolers want to make sure their children develop because these skills are the cornerstone of a sound education.
With them, the child will grow up to have powerful a voice in a world where few read, few write, and few speak eloquently.
“Who can take the measure of a child? The Genie of the Arabian tale is nothing to him. He, too, may be let out of his bottle and fill the world. But woe to us if we keep him corked up.”
We want our children to not only read well, but to enjoy reading. To choose a book to read over a movie to watch is our ideal. Not that our children never watch movies, but lying in bed with a good book is something they look forward to.
We want our children to be well read and to read books that are worth reading. In 21st century schools, children are required to read books that kids should not have to read such as the Andy Griffith series and books with immoral themes; books that 60 years ago no publisher in their right mind would have ever published.
That our children remain curious and become life-long learners in pursuit of knowledge is a concern most homeschoolers share. With studies showing that by first grade a child's innate thirst for knowledge of his world begins to wane, homeschoolers want to fiercely protect their child's curiosity.
Curiosity is inherent to man. Babies come into the world curious but we need environments for our children that nurture their curiosity. Homeschooling provides this environment; public and most private schools do not.
Not a single famous writer, inventor, philosopher, mathematician, scientist, or historian would have become famous had they not been curious. Curiosity is what propels us to keep learning and discovering which makes our lives exciting and colorful and challenging.
A curiosity without which true greatness is difficult to achieve.
Homeschoolers want their children to enjoy learning for the sake of learning, not for rewards or test scores.
Homeschoolers don't want their children subjected to arbitrary tests that serve to sort and rank them amongst their peers.
“The lesson of report cards, grades and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents but should instead rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to be told what they are worth.”
Instead, they want their children to know that with hard work and perseverance most things are possible, and that test scores are no indication of a person's ultimate worth.
With the loss of a good environment and character training in schools, homeschoolers want to protect the integrity of their children. We want to raise them in an environment that elevates our children to be their best version of themselves, not an environment that chips away at their dignity.
When I was in school, the negative influences were outside the classroom, but that's not true anymore. Children are being taught some grossly inappropriate things inside those four walls that make up the school classroom.
“It is time we squarely face the fact that institutionalized schoolteaching is destructive to children. ”
Another thing you'll find is that homeschooling preserves the natural loyalty of a family and homeschooling families tend to be more closely-knit. On the contrary, in public school, children learn to be loyal to their peers, not their family, and certainly not their parents.
Once you develop the loyalty to your peers that public school is notorious for fostering, it's hard to undo. Most of us aren't even aware it's there. It wasn’t until my parents passed away that I realized how deep the parent / child bond was and how dishonored the family bond is in Western society.
Our bond with our parents is the next strongest bond we have in life. The only bond that is stronger than the parent / child bond it is the bond we have with our Creator. The family bond is a powerful bond that’s worth protecting.
“The curriculum of “family” is at the heart of any good life. We’ve gotten away from that curriculum – it’s time to return to it.”
We don't need studies to tell us why homeschooled families are closer-knit. We become close to the people we have shared positive experiences with, and homeschooled families spend a lot of time together, and they have a lot of great experiences together.
In contrast, public-schooled children spend time with peers, and they go home where they have to do hours of homework. There isn't much time left for family bonding.
With the family back at the center of a child’s life, and with family as the basis for a wholesome society, by the mere fact of homeschooling, we will change the world.
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
Become a Smart Homeschooler to raise smart, ethical, and critically-thinking children. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course and feel secure knowing that you have what you need to homeschool successfully as well as live ongoing support from Elizabeth.
For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child Well to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20 years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with her unique combination of mentors, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
Here are a few maxims that you need to understand to homeschool successfully.
Read MoreDo you think it’s possible to raise a 2022 child without technology? Let's look at a few facts…
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John Taylor Gatto, a renowned educator and best-selling author, said that "schools were dangerous places for children."
Having been educated through the public school system, I can say with certainty, as I’m sure you can too, that my best years of learning were wasted.
Not only were they wasted, but as a public-school student, I was exposed to all sorts of immoral behaviors and mediocre influences in my life.
It wasn't a great beginning.
In my "twelve-year jail sentence," as Gatto likes to call it, I certainly never learned that a "preposition is a word which governs a noun or pronoun and connects it to anything else in the sentence or clause" (definition according to Mr. Gwynne, author of Gwynne's Grammar).
I memorized not a single piece of poetry, nor did I ever learn my own country’s history with any coherency, let alone other histories of the world.
(I did read a lot of classic books, but not in school. My father supplied me with those, and they were my saving grace.)
It would have been helpful to have learned the above subjects during those 12 wasted years and learned other subjects too, which are essential to living a good life.
For example, learning Aristotelean logic when I was young would have given me the ability to see through the kind of propaganda that flies in our faces every day and deceives us to believe in and do things we would not otherwise believe in or do.
“Modern propaganda is a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea or group.”
Having a better understanding of world history would have taught me that history repeats itself. I would have known back then to look to the past to understand where we have been, where we were then, and where we were headed.
Fast forward many years later to my discovery of the six purposes of government schooling that John Taylor Gatto uncovers for us and guess who was livid?
I wasn’t alone.
Like many of us, I realized that I had been cheated of a real education, and there is nothing more infuriating than discovering that you have lost the best years for training your mind to a dumbed-down, nefarious government school program.
I should also tell you of something else that happened to me when I was in public school which has been an impediment throughout my life. As a young kindergarten enrollee, I had developed a false belief that I was not very smart!
This may sound strange, but it happens to be fairly common for children who are almost a year younger than the oldest child in the classroom but expected to do the same level of work.
Unfortunately, beliefs we form from childhood experiences become like deep grooves in our minds, and it can take a lifetime to polish them out, which is why we need to consider carefully the way we are raising our children.
“School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I should know.”
In this brief summary of my unfortunate government school years, did you notice that I just gave you five reasons why concerned parents elect to homeschool their children? If not, let me summarize them for you as it’s important to reflect on them:
Concerned parents want to give their children a real education where their children learn, at the very least, how to read well, write well, and speak well.
They want to give their children proper training in morality and what it means to be an ethical and civilized human being.
They want their children to understand that mediocrity is not good enough; they must learn to strive for excellence.
They don't want their children exposed to early sexual influences, drugs, and perverse ideologies.
They want their children to have self-confidence and as much self-knowledge as they can acquire during a well-spent youth.
These are the five most common reasons for homeschooling, but there are two more that are gaining momentum. Crime is a big problem in schools today, and many parents are not putting their kids into public school or are taking their children out of public school because of safety issues.
I mentioned this to a group of parents about 15 years ago, and one parent thought I was being extreme. But I wasn't. I was just on top of the statistics earlier than they were; now, I believe it is common knowledge that schools are not safe places for kids.
We also have health concerns with the government schools now mandating a new drug for children that many parents feel is unsafe, despite the propaganda, because the ten or twelve years it takes to safely test a new drug is still in the future.
We have many new homeschoolers now because of the mandates which I find interesting.
Now I’ve given you seven reasons why concerned parents choose to homeschool. Here’s one more that seldom gets mentioned, but that I believe is the most important because it encompasses all the rest:
Your children were born with a God-given potential that they will realize throughout the course of their lives if, and only if, they’re given a fair chance.
If you want your children to reach their potentials, the best chance you have to help them is to intelligently homeschool your kids. Don’t let them waste their best years of learning in public school.
Educate your children well by doing it yourself or hiring competent tutors to teach your kids. One-on-one instruction is superior to class instruction which is why the aristocracy were always tutored.
What’s vital to remember is that an education tailored to one is the education of people who lead themselves, and may even lead others, as opposed to being led.
Let me conclude by saying this: living in a dumbed-down world is frightening. Dumbed-down people are easy to manipulate, and Americans may be the most manipulated people on this planet today.
Keep your kids out of public school and homeschool them so they can grow up to be leaders who are intelligent, ethical, critically thinking people.
Mediocrity will not do.
*****
To learn about John Taylor Gatto’s Six Purposes of Government Schooling, use this link.
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child Well to Live a Triumphant Life.
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Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20 years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with her unique combination of mentors, Elizabeth has developed her own comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
I believe it was Isocrates who said that the healthy child wants to become an adult. In raising our children well, we must teach them how to act and think like mature people.
Yet, the phrase we hear most often repeated is this:
"I just want him to be happy."
But if you think about it, it isn't what you most want. What you most want is that he grows up to be a decent, hard-working, mature adult. If you raise him to become these things, then happiness will follow.
As the ancients understood and current research now proves, happiness is found in living a virtuous life. The modern pursuit of pleasure and good times, it turns out, is just a myth being thrust upon us by very sophisticated and manipulative marketing techniques.
Contrary to this empty rhetoric, a good life does not come from the pursuit and acquisition of pleasure, in whatever form you desire, but it comes from being a virtuous person. As the concept of "virtue" seems to be an idea that’s gone out of fashion, let me share with you some of the qualities that a virtuous person might possess:
Humility, courage, mercy, patience, tolerance, diligence, and generosity. These are some of the qualities a truly “happy” person might embody.
To inculcate these kind of qualities in your child, you must begin when he is very young.
You must train him in the way of good habits, and then, and only then, will you be able to raise a happy child who later becomes a happy adult. One state naturally follows the other.
What is the key to raising a child with good habits?
Raise a child who is obedient and does the right thing, not from fear of you, but from a deep love and respect for you.
We don't need behavioral studies to prove this; we need to pay attention. A child who is always complaining and throwing tantrums and always asking for this and that is not a happy child, is he? Nor is the child who is always doing what he is told not to do.
However, the kind of training that protects from these unhappy states must start when your child is very young. You should begin training your child in the ways of good behavior as soon as he or she turns two years of age.
If you wait until much later to begin, the training process becomes increasingly more difficult. Waiting too long means you will need to correct bad habits first and then work on instilling the good habits in your child.
It’s a much more tedious and frustrating experience to correct bad habits than it is to avoid them from forming in the first place.
“Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man.”
If you fail to raise your child well, then he will be destined to spend the rest of his life working to correct deeply ingrained negative traits (a lifetime pursuit and not for the easily discouraged). Even worse, he will perpetuate and suffer the ills in life (as will everyone he encounters) that arise from not being a good person.
You see, the opposite of the virtuous person would be the wretched one who will never know any real happiness. We've all known wretched people, especially as they get older and nature carves their wretched states into their faces. We certainly don't want this for our children!
In a nutshell, if you focus on the happiness factor when your child is young, you will fail to raise a happy child. Focus on raising a decent child first, and his happiness will follow.
If you don't know where to begin, do this: throw out all of your parenting books and stop asking your friends for advice (the latter is the equivalent of the blind leading the blind). Moving forward, begin to think about the consequences of your actions as a parent.
Start asking yourself questions such as, "If I do this, then what is the message I am giving my child?" If I let him do this, then what am I teaching him about his behavior and the journey of life?"
For example, this may surprise you to know that many parents look to their children's desires to decide how they should educate them. I know this for a fact (no studies done, yet) because the parents say things to me like, "I thought about homeschooling, but he wanted to go to school with his neighborhood friends," or "I thought about homeschooling, but he's so social, and I think he'd be happier in school."
How you educate your child is a huge decision that will alter the course of his life, but he is too young to make such a life-changing decision. You are the adult; this is your decision to make for your child.
It doesn't matter if he prefers to go to school with friends or that you think he would be happier in school because he has friends to socialize with every day. What matters is whether or not a school is the best place for your child or whether another option might be such as homeschooling.
You have to weigh the pros and cons accurately and objectively before you make this kind of a decision.
Base your decision upon your values and what you want for your children. If you want to raise decent children, you have to consider the moral environment of the child.
If you're going to raise highly intelligent children, you have to evaluate the level of academic training a school offers. If you want both, then you have to look for an educational model that provides both,
If you only care about your child's immediate happiness, then you can let him make this decision.
I used the example of educational decisions because I hear about them a lot, but the truth is that there are many decisions we let our children make every day, such as when they can finish playing; when they need to do their chores; when they need to get ready for bed.
Instead of training them to understand that these are non-negotiable commands we make of our children, we go to the negotiating table with them and let them argue their case for an extension of time for whatever it is they want to do.
We also exhaust ourselves in the process, which is one reason parents find raising children so challenging today. It's always tiring to have to argue with someone and then give in to them when they should have done what you asked them to do in the first place.
Children need most, and what they don't have enough of are adults who guide them on their way to maturity by concerning themselves less with whether or not their children are happy and more with whether or not the parents are training their children well.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
The point to childhood is to prepare for adulthood; you should be less concerned about making a child happy and more concerned about raising a child who grows up to be a responsible, honorable, and mature adult.
It's not uncommon today to see grown children well into their 30's, or 40's still living at home because they can't make it on their own. The other day, my 30-something chiropractor told me that half of his friends still live at home.
I know of many situations where the parents still have aging children at home. An offspring well into adulthood and living at home out of necessity was unheard of when I was young.
Literally.
Make your priority for your children less about their happiness and more about behaving well and doing the right thing.
If you do, the chances are strong that you'll be able to enjoy your golden years knowing your kids are doing well and on the way to acquiring the kind of happiness that comes from living a good life.
*****
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
Become a Smart Homeschooler, literally, and give your child a first-rate, screen-free education at home and enjoy doing it. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course.
For parents of children under age seven, Raise Your Child Well to Live a Triumphant Life, course will be open again sometime in March, 2021.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an educator, veteran homeschooler, a lover of the classics, and a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 19 years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with the unique mentors she was fortunate to have, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
When people have asked me why I homeschooled, I tell them I had no choice. I tell them that if they understood what I understand about public education, they would homeschool too. John Taylor Gatto was the man who opened my eyes to the nefarious agenda behind public school.
What follows is a transcription of the key section from John’s classic speech and opus, The Underground History of American Education. John was a brilliant and well-researched man. I have read what is below in Ingles’ book myself; it is all true.
“I have something here. I have the six purposes of schooling [from the book Principles of Secondary Education by Alexander James Inglis] as laid down in 1917 by the man whom Harvard named their Honor Lecture in Education for.
So far from being a fringe individual, this guy is the reason the Harvard Honor Lecture in Education is named as it is: The Inglis Lecture. I would like to read you the six purposes of schooling. I moved heaven and earth as it took years to find this book [Principles of Secondary Education]--just like trying to find in past years a copy of the Carol Quigley [book] Tragedy and Hope.
I learned about Inglis from a twenty year President of Harvard [1933-1953], James Bryant Conant, who was a poison gas specialist in World War I--and was in the very inner circle of the Atomic Bomb Project in World War II--was High Commissioner of Occupied Germany after the War.
So he [James Bryant Conant] wrote--there must be 20 books about the institution of schooling--of which he was completely a proponent. And he is a very, very bad writer. I forced myself to read most of these books, and one of them he says that if you really want to know what school is about, you need to pick up the book that I’m referring to Principles of Secondary Education.
Two years it took me to find a copy of the book [Principles of Secondary Education by Alexander James Inglis]--750 pages, tiny print and as dull as your imagination can be. And furthermore, it is not till you get to the very middle of the book--in an unlabelled section--that he spills the beans. Let me spill them for you.
There are six purposes, or functions, as he calls them. The first he [Alexander Inglis] calls the Adjustive Function: Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. That’s their main purpose--habits and reactions to authority.
That is why school authorities don’t tear their hair out when somebody exposes that the Atomic Bomb wasn’t dropped on Korea, as a history book in the 1990s printed by Scott Foresman [did], and why each of these books has hundreds of substantive errors. Learning isn’t the reason the texts are distributed.
So, first is the Adjustive Function--fixed habits. Now here comes the wonderful insight that being able to analyze the detail will give you. How can you establish whether someone has successfully developed this Automatic Reaction because people have a proclivity when they are given sensible orders to follow.
That is not what they want to teach. The only way you can measure this is to give stupid orders and people automatically follow those. Now you have achieved Function #1.
Have you ever ever wondered why some of the foolish things that schools do or allow to continue? [Function] #2, he [Inglis] calls it the Integrating Function, but it is easier to understand if you call it the Conformity Function.
It’s to make children alike as possible--the gifted children and the stupid--alike as possible because market research uses statistical sampling, and it only works if people react generally the same way.
The Third Function he calls the Directive Function: School is to diagnose your proper social role and then log the evidence that here is where you are on the Great Pyramid, so that future people won’t allow you to escape that compartment.
The Fourth Function is the Differentiating Function. Because once you have diagnosed the kids in this layer, you do not want them to learn anything that the higher layers are learning. So you teach just as far as the requirement of that layer.
Number five and six are the creepiest of all! Number 5 is the Selective Function. What that means is what Darwin meant by natural selection: You are assessing the breeding quality of each individual kid. You’re doing it structurally because school teachers don’t know this is happening.
And you’re trying to use ways to prevent the poor stuff from breeding. And those ways are hanging labels--humiliating labels--around their neck, encouraging the shallowness of thinking.
I often wondered, because I came from a very very strict Scotish-Irish culture that never allowed you to leer at a girl. But when I got to NYC, the boys were pawing the girls openly and there was no redress for the girls at all, except not showing up in the classroom--high absentee rates.
Well, you are supposed to teach structurally that sexual pleasure is what you withdraw from a relationship and everything else is a waste of time and expensive.
So, the Selective Function is what Darwin meant by the favored races. The idea is to consciously improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit with their inferiority by poor grades, remedial placement, and humiliation, so that their peers will accept them as inferior. And the good breeding stock among the females will reject them as possible partners.
And the Sixth is the creepiest of all! And I think it is partly what Tragedy and Hope is about--a fancy Roman name, the Propaedeutic Function. Because as early as Roman bigtime thinkers, it was understood that to continue a social form required that some people be trained that they were the custodians of this. So, some small fraction of the kids are being ready to take over the project.
That’s the guy--the honor lecturer [Inglis], and it will not surprise you that his ancestors include the major-general of the siege of the Luknow of India--famous for tying the mutineers’ on the muzzle of the cannons and blowing them apart, or somebody who was forced to flee NYC, a churchman at the beginning of the American Revolution, because he wrote a refutation of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.
They were going to tar and feather him. He fled and was rewarded by the British by making him the Bishop of Nova Scotia. Those are Inglis’ ancestors!
So, Al Inglis is certainly--when I learned of this and wrote to Harvard, asking for access to the Inglis Lecture. Strike me dead, Lord, if I’m exaggerating at all. I was told “We have no Inglis Lecture--hasn’t been for years, and we have no records.
It was the same that happened when I discovered that Elwood B. Cubberly, the most influential schoolman of the 20th century and the bionomics genius had been the elementary school editor of Houghton Mifflin, and I wrote Houghton Mifflin--Is there any record? And they said, “We have no record of anyone named Elwood P. Cubberly.
Now Harvard is telling me, “There is no Inglis Lecture. A week passed and I got a call from Harvard, from some obscure office at Harvard, saying “What is your interest in the Ingles Lecture?” I knew that I was on thin ice.
And I said, “Well, James Conant referred me in his books to the man the Inglis Lecture is named after, and I was just wondering if I could get some background on this fellow, and a list of the lectures.
And in due time, I got a list of the lectures and instructions [on] how to access the texts, but not easily. Enough hoops that someone who has to mow the lawn and burp the baby wouldn’t jump through those hoops. I was able to prove Harper’s [magazine] wouldn’t publish [it in] the cover essay I wrote, which Lew Laflin [?] named Against School, but I had called The Artificial Extension of Childhood because I think that is the key mechanism at work here.
So, they wouldn’t print the information about Cubberley because Houghton Mifflin denied it. It was only months after that I looked through my extensive library of incredibly dull books about schooling, and I opened [one]--and on the facing page said Elwood B. Cubberly, Editor and Chief of Elementary School, publishing arm of Houghton Mifflin.
By the way, the secondary Editor and Chief was Alexander Ingles. So you see how this cousinage works.”
*****
Download your free copy of 10 Surprising Facts About Homeschooled Kids.
*Video transcribed by Roger Copple. To watch the full 12-minute video: The Six Purposes of Schooling [Video]
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
Become a Smart Homeschooler, literally, and give your child a first-rate, screen-free education at home and enjoy doing it. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course.
For parents of children under age seven, Raise Your Child Well to Live a Triumphant Life, course will be open again sometime in March, 2021.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an educator, veteran homeschooler, a lover of the classics, and a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 19 years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with the unique mentors she was fortunate to have, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
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