Tonight's Assignment

Tonight dd17 attended a charity art auction in Green Bay as part of an assignment from one of her teachers. She's taking two classes at the local technical college (Wisconsin's version of community college) this semester, in addition to her studies at home during this, her last year of homeschooling.

One of our older kids also attended community college while homeschooling for high school. This is a great way for young people to try college and see if it's what they want before committing to attending a college or university after high school.

I think it's good for the kids to take these classes, not only because of what they can learn about the subject of the class, but because they get to try out the classroom. Of course, there's a lot more freedom than there would be at a public school, so it's a good fit for kids who've never been to school.

A prime advantage, of course, is that they earn both high school and college credit for the courses they take. It really makes a nice transition between high school and college, i.e. between doing things because your mom says so and doing it because the teacher assigned it. Kind of a nice breather for Mom, too :)

Homeschoolers are Everywhere!

The high school years have been pretty exciting for 17-year-old Isabelle Erb. Her mom began homeschooling her at the start of high school, which freed up enough time for her to follow her current passion: high-fashion photography.

And yes, she's right in there scrambling with professional photogs for the best shot; here's a photo of her along with the rest of them during the recent Fashion Week in New York City. Don't miss the article that goes with it---the description of her quiet persistence will make you smile.

Every Child Has Special Needs?

Got back from several days in Chicago yesterday, weary but happy. It was the first time I've ever taken a trip alone with dsds15, and it went very well. We stayed in a hotel near O'Hare with ds23, who was in town on business. This was a great help to me, as I could take a shower without worrying that my youngest was downstairs hailing a cab or something, because his big brother kept an eye on him for me.

Came home very tired, and found this in a homeschool email newsletter I receive:

Todd Wilson, Familyman Ministries

I have special needs children. In fact, ALL my children are special needs children. First, there's Ben (15) who really needs me to listen to him talk . . . because he talks a lot. Then there's Sam (13) who likes to tease but who needs me to know when it's time to stop teasing and be understanding. Katherine (11) needs me to be extra gentle during these "changing" years.

Ike (9) needs lots of one-on-one attention. Abe (7) needs snuggling and closeness. Maggie Rose (4) needs me to help her use self-control. Cal (2) needs me to read books to him and Jed (7 mos.) needs me to smile at him.

Now before I get an angry note from some well-meaning mother who insists that I'm making light of or minimizing special needs children, let me say that I am not doing that at all. I know some of you have children who demand incredible sacrifice and labor on your part. I know you lie awake at night wondering if you can make it through another day. I'm certainly NOT trying to equate my "special needs" kids with your "special needs" kids. But I am trying to point out that ALL of our children have special needs and that we've done our children and ourselves a disservice by labeling our special needs children as "special needs." They're just children like all the rest.

Yes, they have special needs, but as I've already described, all children do to some extent. Amazingly, God has given you the abilities to meet those special needs and has given your children the mom and dad just right for them. You don't have to feel inadequate or apologize for their lack of progress, or label them as a "special needs" child.

All you have to do is love, train, and prepare them for THEIR future. Oh, yeah, and one more thing . . . . . .
Be real,
Todd

Wow. That didn't sit real well with me yesterday. I pictured myself reading that back when my son was little and we were trying to adjust to homeschooling three kids while caring for a toddler on an apnea monitor who couldn't keep weight on because of severe reflux, and I think that attitude (no matter how well-meaning) would have really hurt me.

Also, having just seen family in Chicago who have a daughter (our niece) with delays of unknown origin and how they have to fight to get the right kind of education for her out of their local school district, and having some idea of the pain they have gone through with and for her, his message kind of got me going:

Hi Todd,

I read your column in TOS' THM occasionally, and usually find it amusing. But I've got to tell you that you stepped in it today. I get your drift about all of our children having special needs, but you're off track here, and I'm afraid you probably hurt some parents of children with disabililties.

We have four kids, currently 15, 17, 23 and 24. They were all homeschooled from birth. Like your children, they're all special. But our youngest has Down syndrome, and let me tell you, once you have a child with true special needs (i.e. mental retardation, not a need for extra hugs), your entire life changes, and it will never be the same.

Todd, kids with special needs aren't kids like yours (and my older three) who simply need to gab a lot or snuggle a lot. We're talking about kids with major physical and/or developmental issues. This is life-changing stuff, not "Love Language" preferences. Flip through an issue of the wonderful magazine NATHHAN puts out and you'll see what some families' daily lives are like. You might also want to read The Dance Goes on by Roberta Bandy for a true-life description of the joys, blessings and heartache of a Christian family whose oldest son was born with a chromosomal defect.

I'm certain you didn't mean to offend anyone, but some of your comments came across as a bit flippant, to say the least. Like you, we have a 15-year-old son who needs us "to listen to him talk...because he talks a lot." Of course, his speech is extremely delayed, so we have to work to understand him. He may well be telling us about what happened in one of his beloved Winnie the Pooh videos, which he's told us a hundred times before, but it's important to him, so we listen. BTW, at 15 he can't play outside by himself because he runs off and has no sense of danger. He was in diapers until he was almost eight.

We love him dearly, and are grateful that God gave him to us just as he is. But telling us or other parents that all we have to do "is love, train and prepare them for THEIR future" is incredibly naive. Newer parents of the disabled (who are still coming to terms with their child's disability) are likely to consider it insensitive, and I would agree.

Todd, be real: please consider issuing an apology.

Sincerely,
Barbara Frank

Each of my kids is unique, no question. And they are all special and very dear to their dad and me. But one of them does have special needs. We didn't give him that label. He got it when he arrived with an extra chromosome. It is what it is.

Homeschooling a 12th Grader.....Again

It’s a bittersweet fall for me, as I once again have a 12th grader.

The first time it happened, it was exciting: wow, we’ll soon have our first homeschool graduate!

The second time it happened, the very next year, it was still exciting, but it went by so fast I couldn’t believe it.

This third time is different. I now know firsthand how very quickly this year is going to pass. One of the great things about homeschooling for high school is that your teens can do it their way, which means lots of stuff going on. And we all know how time flies when you’re busy.

Reaching the end of 12th grade, no matter how gratifying, is tough on Mom. Another one ready to fly the coop. I miss the first two a lot; I can’t imagine letting go of this one. Let’s not go there right now, ok?

Instead I want to talk about homeschooling for 12th grade. When I was in high school, senior year was pure torture. It seemed like such an afterthought. After all, by December I’d already been accepted to the university. Hanging around high school seemed so….anticlimactic.

But there I was, marking the time until I was released.

My kids didn’t have that experience. Each one’s 12th grade year has been different.

Our eldest made it very clear that she didn’t want to go to college. So we used that year to do projects that would give her a leg up on the independence she craved so much. (They’re the basis of Life Prep.) She worked through a math-review-for-adults book from the 1960s (my dad had used it to prepare for his military exams, and for some reason I had it on my bookshelf.) She read some good literature. She put in many hours a week watching a neighbor’s baby while she was at work (and bought a car with her earnings). She ran a fundraising table for Rock for Life. She got into local concert promoting. And then April came, and we called it graduation for the one-woman Class of 2001. She moved out on her own two years later.

Number two was a different story. He wanted to go to college. He studied some subjects at home, plus took a noncredit Chemistry course at one local college and Spanish at another. The latter was at the community college, so he got college credit for it. He was on the board of our church’s youth group, a great job for someone with an eye for ministry. He also worked at a local grocery store. He spent the year after his 2002 graduation doing much the same things, except he didn’t study at home. In fact, he was rarely home! So 12th grade and real life a year later were very similar. And then he went off to college. Shortly after college graduation, he got married and moved to his wife’s hometown, ten hours from here. Another one flies the coop.

Now we come to number three. She has neither the fierce independent spirit of her sister nor the academic desires of her brother. But she is very creative and has many interests. This year will be spent exploring them further. Sure, we’ve got some formal studies planned, and she’ll continue to work her way through Life Prep, too. She’s also taking a few for-credit college classes (one online, one in person). And if there’s time, she’s going to enroll in a Christian Writer’s Program. But she’ll also be playing her violin in the county’s youth orchestra. She hopes to keep growing her craft business and her web design business. And she just got a new job in a coffee shop, where she’ll be working a few days a week. Before we know it, the year will have flown by, and it will be graduation time again.

Looking back over the 12th grade experiences of all three of my older children, I see that they look more like real life than a school year. That satisfies me. It means my kids weren’t marking time the way I did senior year. I realize they can’t appreciate that the way I do; from birth to age 17 or 18, all they ever knew was homeschooling. But it makes me feel good to know they had it better than I did.

Number three doesn’t want to leave home yet; she says she’ll still be around for a while. That should make this third high school graduation a little easier on Mom. :)

Still, in many ways, this year marks the end of homeschooling as we knew it. After number three graduates, homeschooling will be the day job of our 15-year-old with Down syndrome and me. He won’t ever need our very useful (if not always loved) copy of Saxon Algebra, or our A Beka High School Literature series. By the time he reaches 12th grade, he’ll still have many years of study left, and he’ll be nowhere near ready to leave home. That’s ok. His senior year will consist mostly of real life, just as it did for his brother and sisters. And like the others, he’ll be just fine.

Playing Catch-Up

I've been pretty busy lately, but I didn't realize how busy until I noticed that I hadn't posted here since Friday. Seriously, it seems like I just posted a day or so ago. Time flies when you've got a long to-do list, I guess.

So I had better get caught up here. First off, you won't want to miss this week's edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling, which is being sponsored by Janice Campbell, who very kindly parked the cover of my book next to my post. Thank you, Janice! BTW, you can tell that many people are getting back to homeschooling this time of year by the great variety of posts at the carnival this week.

Next, I want to thank Melissa Markham for the lovely review of my book. We're offering a special price on the book, but only for those who visit her blog and read the review. Again, thanks, Melissa!

I don't know where the time went since Friday, but part of it was spent shopping so I could do another round of bulk cooking. The nearest Sam's Club is an hour away, and just happens to be down the road from the community college where dd17 started classes this week (more on that in an upcoming post). It just made good sense to combine those two trips. After stocking up at Sam's yesterday, I spent today making red sauce (40 cups, now frozen in bags), chicken parmagiana (five dinners) and pork ribs with sauce (two dinners).

Before we went to Sam's, we went to JoAnn Fabrics, where I bought three yards of a layered set of fabrics called Warm Windows. It was $27/yard but I had one of those 40% off coupons. I'm going to make window covers for our bedroom. We just signed another year's lease on the house we're living in, despite the difficulty we had last winter keeping this house affordably warm (that was the only downside to this house; it's wonderful in every other way!) Since we're staying another year, I'm ready to make a few improvements.

In the coldest month last winter, it took $300 worth of natural gas to keep the house at 65 degrees. Not good! So the landlord is going to have the boiler tuned up, and we're going to try to make the house a little tighter against the cold Wisconsin winds. After I make the window covers, I'm going to hem the thermal drapes I recently bought to go over the dining room windows. The curtains and the Warm Window fabric are a creamy white, so we can take these window treatments with us to the next house, wherever and whenever that might be.

I'm hoping to get that work done over the next few days. Next week, dsds15 and I will be heading to Chicago, where we will visit with some dear homeschooling friends. Ds23 happens to be there on business those days, so we're going to meet up with him, too. It will be great to see them all!

Something New

Just added a few new links to the blog, and they're for freebies :)

Both are special reports that you can download. One is called Teaching Your Children to Write, and the other is Ten Tips for Coping with Temperamental Teens.

Scroll down a wee bit and you'll see the links for them on the right side of your screen, in the section under the photo link for Life Prep.

The first report comes from my vantage point as a writer as well as a homeschool mom. The second comes from my experience living with and raising teens (we're on our second pair.)

In the name of fairness, the next special report we publish will be written by my 17-year-old daughter, and will be titled Twenty Tips for Coping with a Menopausal Mom.

Just kidding....maybe. :)

When Kids are the Center of the Universe

A recent thought-provoking article at a British newspaper's Web site caught my eye. It laments the rise of the child-centered world, where keeping Junior’s self-esteem intact becomes Job 1. The large number of comments after the article makes it clear that the writer struck a nerve with a lot of people. Apparently, there’s a bumper crop of self-absorbed young people around these days.

It’s easy to bash schools where teachers aren’t allowed to correct students’ work in red pen because it could make them feel like failures. It’s natural to lament parents in the store who fall all over themselves trying to make their children like them by buying them presents (yes, I have actually seen mothers begging their child to choose a large toy. It’s an amazing thing.)

But it’s also tempting to think that it won’t happen to us when, as homeschoolers, it could easily happen to us.

I mean, homeschooling takes over your life. You find yourself poring over curriculum catalogs, spending hours on the phone signing your children up for co-ops and lessons and staying up late planning upcoming learning experiences.

And that’s just in the summer! Then there’s all the time you put in working with your children, reading to them, making sure they understand concepts they’re having trouble with, taking them to zoos and museums ….add in feeding them and clothing them and making sure they live in a healthy environment, and you can easily end up living in a child-centered world. And that’s not a good thing.

In a child-centered world, kids are the center of the universe. That’s how they come to believe that their needs are more important than anyone else’s, and often turn into adults who continue to believe that.

Over the years, I’ve struggled to maintain a balance between giving my kids what they need in order to grow and develop properly, and giving my kids what they need in order to learn that they are not the center of the universe. I haven't always been successful.

Being sensitive myself, and having been hurt in childhood by some adults, I wonder now if I protected my children’s feelings too much. As they’ve ventured out into the world of work, they’ve sometimes gotten their feathers ruffled over things that aren’t the end of the world. Maybe I should have been tougher on them.

There were also times when I wondered whether I’d gone overboard in creating a learning environment for my kids, because once they discovered an interest in something, they took off with it on their own, with no encouragement from me. Perhaps some of the time spent making lesson plans would have been better spent on a dinner date with my husband.

Oh, yes, him. That patient guy I married. He worked to pay for all the books and educational games and craft supplies, and he never complained about how much time I spent with my nose in the Rainbow Resource catalog. Sometimes I think we should have carved out more time for ourselves.

But on the other side of the scale, there were times when I managed to make my kids understand that the world does not revolve around them. We limited their outside activities so we could have time together as a family. Occasionally, they’d find me on the sofa with a good book or having fun using my sewing machine and they knew that anything they asked me to do right then would be denied. Of course they had chores and responsibilities that they had to do, whether they were in the mood or not. And then there were the evening walks-for-two that were reserved for their dad and me.

As they say, hindsight is 20-20. The end result is that my kids, while not perfect, are doing fine. But looking back, I can see that if I hadn’t struggled with maintaining a balance between their world and ours, they might not have turned out so well. That’s why even now, with only two children left at home, I keep fighting to maintain that balance. Because it’s when you’re not aware that you need that struggle between your world and theirs that you fall into the child-centered universe.

Homeschool Class Rings

Brumbemom asked me a question last week. Like me, she has a senior homeschooler this year, and they’re wondering about class rings.

My older kids were not into “school” things like that; my eldest didn’t even want a graduation party. As for dd17, she seems more interested in my high school ring (she’s into anything “vintage,” i.e. 1970s!) than one of her own.

But there are places where you can go to get your teen a homeschool class ring, including Josten’s. If your teen would rather design his or her own ring, this looks like a good place.

For more information on this topic, here’s an article you might find helpful.

There is Hope

I admit to a bias in favor of homeschooled teens. Having met so many (not to mention having several of my own), I just think they’re so creative, interesting and bright.

But dealing with government-educated teens, like the ones that have trouble taking our orders in local fast food restaurants, and those I see slogging down the street in herds with their pants falling down on purpose, has given me the impression that they’re quite the opposite of the homeschooled teens I know. And that’s not fair. The bright kids, the ones who succeed despite spending their lives in school, also exist, but I don’t see them around too much, probably because they’re too busy spending their time in more useful pursuits, like starting and teaching their own Advanced Placement classes in Economics.

That’s right, Seth Weidman of Pittsburgh, PA, believed there was plenty of demand for an AP class in Economics, but his high school did not offer one. So he created his own class by studying up on the subject and teaching what he learned to his fellow students.

And was he successful! So far, of the 18 students in his class, nine have taken the test, and eight of the nine have received their test scores. Six scored a 5, the highest score you can get, and two scored a 4. Compare that to the national average of AP test-takers (last year, less than 15% scored a 5 and a little over 25% scored a 4), and you can see that Seth was quite successful indeed.

I applaud Seth’s initiative in setting up this class, and can’t resist emphasizing that his students did better than the average American AP test-taker, who most likely took AP classes taught by a certified, college-educated, NEA-approved teacher. Ahem.

Seth’s friends thanked him for his efforts with a cake that had “Thank you, Seth” written on it and t-shirts made for the entire group that said “Weidman School of Economics” (Seth’s wearing his in the photo accompanying the article.) What a great group of kids!

What To Do When Your 12-year-old is Bombarded with Questions About His Future

It's interesting (and sometimes alarming) to watch how other adults talk to your homeschooled teens. For some reason, many of them feel the need to quiz your offspring about their future plans, and particularly about where they're going to college. (Maybe it's their way of checking to see if "this homeschooling idea" actually works, LOL.)

I saw this with my own kids, and it put a lot of pressure on them. Feeling like they have to live up to the expectations of the other adults in their lives can be a huge temptation, simply because said adults appear serious and concerned about the issue. But deciding what to do with your life, much less whether and/or where you're going to college, is a big deal, and it certainly doesn't help to have people putting so much pressure on you, especially when you're not quite 13.

That's what happened to a 12-year-old whose mother posted a question asking how to handle this pressure to the readers of "The Homeschooler's Notebook." Their responses are so good, I just had to post this link to share them with you. Just scroll down a little less than halfway, to where it says "Last Issue's Reader Question."

By the way, at the bottom of that page, you'll find a link for subscribing to the "The Homeschooler's Notebook." I've been a subscriber for years and I highly recommend it!

Teaching Your Girls About Money

Five years ago, Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers was first published, and since then I’ve gotten many email messages from readers who used the curriculum with their kids and were pleased with it.

Sadly, I’ve also been asked why I chose to include girls in my target audience for the book.

Now, I realize that many homeschoolers are even more conservative than I am, enough so that they plan to keep their daughters at home until and unless they marry. But to keep them in the dark about financial matters seems so misguided to me.

In the past, many women were uninformed about their finances. Men kept track of the money, and their wives kept track of the cooking and cleaning. But if their husbands died before they did (which is statistically more likely to happen), they often found themselves wondering if they were rich widows or poor widows, because they didn’t know. They had to rely on other male family members to help them find the paperwork needed for probate and figure out where they stood financially.

Unfortunately, marriages also break up, and women who are unaware of financial matters can find themselves left with children to support and no idea of how to prudently handle the income they now need to bring in. The pain of an unwanted divorce is thus compounded by the need to learn about money. It’s hard to learn something new when you’re emotionally distraught.

My grandmother raised four children as a single mom during the Great Depression, and the stories my dad told me about what she went through made it clear to me that girls need to know about finances every bit as much as boys do.

Recently, I was reminded yet again of that when I read this article about women who find themselves losing their homes because they were not knowledgeable about the mortgages they applied for when they bought them. The combination of ignorant consumers and greedy mortgage companies has resulted in some single moms also losing thousands of dollars that they really can’t afford to lose.

In the stories quoted in the article, the women now losing their homes didn’t understand that buying a home without putting any money down is a warning sign that you’re going into a loan with some danger zones. They saw it as a lucky break, when it was anything but that. It usually means that you have an adjustable loan, and in the current climate, your house payment will continue to rise, even if the value of your house does not rise (or worse, drops.) You are responsible for the amount of money borrowed to buy the house no matter what the house is now worth.

Even if her loan did not have an adjustable rate, the first woman seemed like a great candidate for a house because of her income level. She also thought she was making a good purchase because she didn’t borrow as much as she was approved to borrow. Big mistake! Pneumonia and then a broken wrist made her miss work, and she was forced to spend what cash she had paying bills. But she ran out of money, and could no longer make her mortgage payments. She not only lost her house but ended up owing the bank $32,000.

These women were also apparently unaware of how stressful it can be to have a huge house payment when you’re the head of a single income family. Had they been taught about financial freedom and the joy of being debt-free, they might have never become homeowners, but they wouldn’t have lost their homes, either. When you look at everything through the mindset of minimizing debt, you have more control over your financial situation, especially as the years go by and the good habits you’ve developed bear fruit.

Reading the sad stories about those women has reminded me yet again how important it is that we educate our girls as well as our boys about how to handle money and how to aim for financial freedom. Judging by what’s going on in our economy right now, this kind of education is more important than ever. We homeschooling parents have the time and the opportunity to do it right.

Her First Job

Dd17 started her first official job last week. By official, I mean not a babysitting job, or doing work for Cardamom, but working for someone else in their place of business.

She worked long days on her feet last Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and came home tired but happy. Now she has a couple of days off before it begins again. This is tourist season, so it's constant customers along with answering the phone, mopping the floor and doing all the other things that need to be done in a small but busy retail establishment.

So far she enjoys the work, and is more than ready for her first paycheck. She says her goals are to buy an iPod and then save up for a car.

It's strange not having her around during the day, and we miss her, but we're glad she's found a job that she likes.

She had applied for a job at the public library a while back, but when she didn't get it, she marched right into town and starting going up and down the main street of the downtown area, asking each of the merchants if they needed help. No one did, until she got to one of the last places remaining, and he was about to hire new help and said she could add her application to the pile. And the rest is history.

She could have applied at the local Target but said she wanted to work in a smaller place where she's get to do a variety of things, so this is working out well for her.

It's working out well for us, too, because of all the places for the child of a chocoholic mother to work, it's a candy store, and when we visit, we get a free sample of their homemade chocolate fudge (yes, she's already learning to make fudge in their big copper pot.) Of all the skills she's learning at her new job, I put fudge-making at the very top of the list :)

Testing Your Teen's Level of Financial Literacy

Our country's economic situation illustrates what happens when large numbers of people are financially illiterate and thus fail to live within their means. People bought houses they really couldn't afford using mortgages with payments that would increase dramatically over time. Worse, many also borrowed against the home equity that developed as the bubble inflated. Now, they're losing their homes because they can't make the payments, and the repercussions of so many foreclosures as well as the subsequent decline in prices are affecting the entire economy.

Lack of financial literacy is a real problem. Public schools have failed to teach kids about money, but more importantly, many students' parents have failed to teach them about money. It is our responsibility to take the time to teach our kids about financial matters while they're young, so they will make wise choices when they grow up.

That's what Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers is all about, and I'm thrilled to be using the curriculum again, this time with my third child. This past year, she worked through most of the reading list. This fall, she'll begin with the projects. Since she just got her first "official" job (beyond babysitting), it's the perfect time to do these projects, as she'll be able to use the financial principles she's learning in her daily life, now that she'll have a steady paycheck.

I was glad to hear that some parents are teaching their kids to be financially savvy. HSLDA reports that a homeschooled boy is one of the high scorers in this year's National Financial Literacy Challenge. If you'd like to be notified about the next challenge so that your own child can take it, sign up here.

Homeschooler Gets Full Ride to University of Chicago

Ok, so I'm always reminding (nay, nagging) people to check out each week's edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling. There's a reason for that: you'll find awesome posts there!

Take this week's edition, for example. Lots of good stuff, but one post in particular stands out for me. A new blogger shares her family's homeschooling journey, which includes the news that her son (a bright guy who scored 35 on his ACT and 2300 on his SAT) has been awarded a full scholarship to the University of Chicago.

In case you don't know, that's not some lame Mickey Mouse college. It's an excellent school with a fantastic reputation. This is a great story that should encourage current and prospective homeschoolers everywhere.

No, I'm not linking to it. Go to the carnival and search for it yourself. Bet you'll find lots of good stuff while you're there. :)

The Perils of Using the Internet for Research, and the Solution

In Scotland, a parent-teacher organization is blaming the Internet and specifically Wikipedia for the falling test scores of Scottish children.

Let's set aside the discussion of test scores; that's a huge issue in itself, and one I don't want to go into right now. It's the rise of the Internet and the way kids have figured out how to use it to their perceived advantage that interests me.

When I was in college, one of the so-called advantages of the Greek (fraternity/sorority) system was that its members had access to the completed tests and essays of past members. Thus they could memorize test answers instead of learning what was presented in class, and re-type the essays of others inside of writing their own. This saved those students all sorts of work; we who were not "Greek" felt it was an unfair advantage. But the bottom line was that these students didn't learn anything because they didn't have to read the assigned books, nor did they learn via the process of assembling information and giving it back to their professors in the form of essays.

I imagine that frat house filing cabinets are collecting dust now that kids have the Internet. There are sites where they can go to find prewritten, high-graded essays that they can pass off as their own, thanks to the cut-and-paste function.

And for the times when they actually have to do their own research and writing, there are sites like Wikipedia. Savvy teachers probably check Wikipedia's take on the assigned topic before they correct the essays so that they can tell who's been playing cut-and-paste there. But this doesn't solve the problem, which is that kids are wasting their time and not learning anything, at least not much that's accurate.

One solution to this would be to require kids to write their essays while in the school library or classroom, using the books and materials available there, with no Internet access. With a tool like the Neo (which I own and highly recommend), students could type their essays and never get near a computer.

For homeschoolers, this is much simpler. We can supervise our kids more easily than a teacher can keep tabs on thirty kids. By requiring our kids to use printed matter only for research, they will learn the material and develop writing skills in the process, because we've removed the temptation of the Internet.

But printed matter can be dated, and we've become accustomed to the immediacy of the Internet. Isn't there some way to take advantage of that immediacy?

The good news is that there is. By requiring our kids to use primary sources and reputable secondary sources, we can avoid the problems that are going on where kids are allowed to use Wikipedia and other sites that have proven to be inaccurate.

On the Internet, primary sources are sites where the information is first generated. For example, for the activities of our president, kids can visit http://www.whitehouse.gov/. Further government info can be found at http://www.usa.gov/. For government statistics on employment and information on the labor market, go to http://www.bls.gov/.

Secondary sources are trusted entities that access primary sources. A large city newspaper like The New York Times or the Chicago Tribune is considered a secondary source. Newspapers are not as trusted as they once were; recent cases of lying reporters have tarnished their image, and budget cuts have forced them to reduce the number of editors who check on the sources used by reporters. Still, quoting a large newspaper should be considered fairly accurate, and certainly much better than Wikipedia.

This is not to say that Wikipedia is not useful. I've allowed my teen daughter to use it as a jumping-off point, as it gives her a quick briefing on a topic. But she is then required to back up what she finds with research from trustworthy sources.

The Newsletter is Up

I sent out the June newsletter right before I took the week off, so I didn't get a chance to post the link to it here until now. If you're a subscriber who doesn't check your email very often, be aware that this was your last issue if you haven't already renewed.

To renew your subscription, just fill out the form you'll find here. If you're new to the newsletter and want to subscribe, you can use the same form. All renewing and new subscribers will receive our latest special report, "Ten Tips for Coping with Temperamental Teens," once they confirm their subscription.

The next issue won't be out until mid-to-late July because I'm working on a new book and need to dedicate some time to it. I don't usually do monthly newsletters in the summer because most people are so busy with things besides homeschooling anyway.

Getting an Education in Driver's Ed

It’s been a while (eight years, to be exact) since we signed up one of our kids for Driver’s Ed. I’d forgotten what it’s like. Your offspring's first few times behind the wheel can test your nerves and rev up your prayer life, that’s for sure.

Dd17 is doing fine, though, and it’s interesting to get her take on the classroom portion of the instruction. We’re using a private driving school because Driver’s Ed is not offered in the public schools here as it was where we used to live. As a result, the class is not run by the school district yet is full of kids from the public schools. If there’s another homeschooler in her class, dd is not aware of it.

Each time she comes home from class, she thanks me for homeschooling her. I remember my son doing the same thing when he took Driver’s Ed at the local high school. He used to come out to the car where I was waiting and say, “I feel dumber.” This might have been because the teacher (a coach) breezed through the material and then showed the kids movies (popular movies, not driving instruction movies.) This went on for an entire semester.

Dd is surprised by the amount of wasted time in class. She’s used to working efficiently, and the classroom is not at all efficiently run. Sometimes the class doesn’t start until 15 minutes after it is supposed to start. The teacher sits up front and says, “Let’s wait in case there are latecomers.” There might be one or none. Nevertheless, she does this each class. Considering the classes are only two hours long, that’s a good-sized chunk of time lost at the beginning of the class. And yet sometimes, the kids are released early.

This is not a good thing, because the classes are held at night. Dd can call us to pick her up early, but it’s 15 minutes away, so she is left waiting there in the dark with a few other kids. As a result, her dad has taken to waiting in the car with a book. This means he’s right there whenever the teacher lets the kids out, and it also saves gas (one round trip instead of two). But it also means he loses 2 ½ hours to Driver’s Ed. Starting this weekend, the classes will run ten nights in a row. Losing that much time is going to get old. We’ll have to take turns bringing her to class.

So it’s not very convenient for us, but it’s important for her, and not just in order to get her driver’s license. I can see with her, as I did with her two older siblings, that having a classroom experience for the first time (excluding Sunday School) is a real eye-opener. If you want your child to appreciate homeschooling, sign them up for the classroom portion of Driver’s Ed!

Bribery for Class Attendance

They're paying kids to go to school again.

Seriously, this is pathetic. A Connecticut high school's Advance Placement (AP) classes are not attracting many students, so it's decided that the way to get kids to take these harder classes and pass the AP tests is to pay them for doing so. A $450,000 grant from the National Math and Science Initiative will be providing the cash for these kids.

How much are kids likely to really learn if they're only there for the money? The root of this problem is not being addressed: what happened to kids' inborn desire to learn? How can that desire be nurtured instead of snuffed out?

Not that I approve of bribery, but since NMSI is going to spend this money anyway, I think they should start a program that offers parents some "hard cold cash rewards" to start reading to their kids and taking them to libraries and museums instead of giving them DVDs and video games from the time they're tiny. Seems like that would be more productive than bribing the kids.

A Young Actor with Down Syndrome

In England, a new book written by the mother of a boy with Down syndrome is due out in two weeks. The boy is 15, loves acting and currently has a role in his second movie.

I love how she describes life with him in this article. She certainly captures it well. (He's almost the exact same age as our son.) I especially appreciate her comments regarding her unwillingness to have a subsequent pregnancy tested for Ds because she would never abort a baby with Ds. I think she and I would get along just fine.

Happy 17th Birthday, Mimzy!

Yesterday, in a Mother's Day post, I mentioned the best Mother's Day gift I ever got, which was my daughter, born on Mother's Day 1991. That was May 12, which is today! So Happy Birthday, DD17, aka Mimzy. You are so special to all of us :)

(That's her banner ad on the right, btw, with all the little creatures on it that she makes and sells. )