Digital Cowboy

I’m a smart guy. I’m smarter than most. Usually, I’m the smartest person in the room. It’s awkward and difficult most of the time. For the most part I’ve gotten used to it and learned to live with it.

This blog attracts people that are smarter than average. I love that. At Vox’s blog and here too, I’m not usually the smartest guy in the room. That’s what I like about this place and his. It’s a relief from the pressure I get pretty much everywhere else I go.

I’ve struggled with this - and prayed about it - for much of my life. It’s not arrogance. It’s a gift that has often seemed like a burden to me. I’ve humbly tried to get God’s help in dealing with it. I spent much of my life in a quandary trying to figure out how to manage it and just fit in.

Here’s what He’s shown me in answer to those prayers:

Wisdom is the principle thing. In all your getting, get Wisdom. Intelligence as the world measures it is only one kind and, taken alone, it’s worthless. There are different kinds of intelligence. There are people with IQs much, much lower than mine that are far more successful than I am at the moment because they have other forms of intelligence that aren’t measured by an IQ test. Many of them also have Wisdom.

I’m not going to get into all of the different kinds of intelligence here. That’s not what this is about.

When I was in High School, I made money winning bets before and after class by doing long division in my head while reading aloud from a book. Sometimes I even provided the answer before the jock betting against me had gotten it from his calculator.

I was arrogant then because I could do things like that.

What profit is that without Wisdom?

None. Wisdom is the principle thing.

I have two points here. The first is that government schooling set me up to fail by making me cocky about my gifts. They lead me to believe that I was “gifted.” (I was. I am. They corrupted it.) They led me to believe that the world was my oyster. I thought I was gonna be the next Steve Jobs. Being smarter than your “guidance counselors” is not a great way to plan a career or a life. (And if your kids are average, they’re smarter than their “guidance counselors” in the government schools, Corporate Dad. If you love them, get ‘em out.)

The second point is that Wisdom is far more important than raw intelligence. It’s a funny thing about intelligence relating to Wisdom - Intelligence often gets in the way of Wisdom. That probably explains why I was raised right - taught Wisdom - and it still took me way too long to even start pursuing Wisdom. I was too busy making money with my circus side shows, like doing long division in my head while reading aloud.

But I’m coming around and it’s working for me.

Proverbs 3:17 reads (speaking of Wisdom), “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.”

Go read the whole chapter. I had a hard time choosing an excerpt. So here’s a couple more:

“Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honour”

“She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and happy is every one that retaineth her”

Seriously, there’s context that you need. Go read Proverbs 3.

Bottom line: I find myself now very happily and voluntarily following people that almost certainly don’t have IQs in the same category as mine. But they have Wisdom that I want.

I respect that far more than the eggheads that think college degrees make them smart.

Proverbs 3 (AMP) ends with “The wise shall inherit glory (all honor and good) but shame is the highest rank conferred on [self-confident] fools.”

I know a lot of wise people with low IQs and even more very intelligent, self-confident fools. I used to be one myself.

You think this isn’t coming here? I’m not saying it’s coming tomorrow, but we live in a sick world. This is most definitely what government, institutionalized education is about. Before you go looking for my tin foil hat, just remember that the Governator, just this week, signed into law what is effectively a ban on the terms “Mom,” “Dad,” “husband,” and “wife” in Californicator schools (among many other things) because those words are discriminatory against sodomites.

From the first article:

The vast majority of Norwegians send their children from the age of one to the kindergartens, where they spend their days until they begin school at age six.

Pia Friis, leader of the popular Bjerkealleen Barnehage in Oslo and a well-known pre-school educator, told newspaper Dagbladet on Tuesday that children should be allowed to express their own sexuality at day care centers. She doesn’t want to stifle what comes naturally.

Children, she said, should be able “to look at each other and examine each other’s bodies. They can play doctor, play mother and father, dance naked and masturbate.

“But their sexuality must also be socialized, so they are not, for example, allowed to masturbate while sitting and eating. Nor can they be allowed to pressure other children into doing things they don’t want to.”

No, they cannot be allowed to pressure anyone into anything until they are properly socialized by education, and preferably elected by our new overlord, Democracy.

“Children must learn about sexuality, otherwise things can go very wrong,” said Langfeldt. “Children can’t object to something they don’t know about, and children can more easily and readily report assaults if they already are aware of their own sexuality.”

Ahhh. Now I see. My young daughters need to be molested by other children under the sanction and watchful eye of their “teachers” so they can recognize when they are molested by the evil pedophiles that are lurking behind every bush.

Leave My Child Behind. We have .45 ACP around here to deal with this sort of thing. Call me an extremist if you like. But this is why I’ve rearranged my entire life to make sure my children are exempted from government schooling. I fear nothing, but I see far more need to protect my children from government schooling than the imaginary pedophile that Chris Hanson would like me to believe is stalking them on the internet or every corner of our town.

As an aside: This is ultimately another result of feminism. It’s a demonization of men. Any man that shows any interest in children is suspect because he must be a pervert. While at the same time, under the watchful eye of caring, sensitive pedagogues, a toddler should be encouraged to masturbate so she can learn how to identify and report those evil Chesters that molest her.

I wonder why 9 of 10 stories I read these days about teachers “molesting” students in government schools are involving female teachers?

Feminists are children that never grow up. There has never been a mature person in the history of humanity that subscribes to feminist philosophy. At its root, it’s entirely about avoiding adult responsibility. At all costs.

Even if that means encouraging 2 year olds to masturbate in public. Or boys to use the girls locker and rest rooms in government high schools.

This is a cross-post of a comment that I originally posted at fark.com. I have added a bit to expound on the original comment for this blog post. In the interest of transparency, what I’ve added to the original Fark comment is in brackets.

The original op-ed that started the thread is here. The first paragraph is quoted from the original article. I presume it was written by someone holding a degree in journalism, the only degree that rivals a degree in education for it’s ease of acquisition by those prone to “schooling” and incapable of being “educated.” I still recommend reading it for context, if you care. Or if you just need a good laugh at what college graduates are paid to “write” for newspapers these days.

Indeed, as more than one former teacher has opined about this issue, high school is a good place to learn about rules, discipline and surrender of individual will to achieve a greater goal than fulfillment of one’s self-expression.

[I don’t care one whit about the opinions of any teacher, former or current, and] this is likely made up by the ignorant writer, but what “more than one former teacher has opined” is, unfortunately true. Government school is the best possible place to “learn about rules, discipline and surrender of individual will.”

THIS is why I’m a home educator. It’s not easy, only because of opposition - the kids learn on their own mostly. [I don’t struggle to get them to learn. To the degree that I fight at all with this, it’s with those who would rather they be “socialized” than educated.]

There are no “public” schools. There are only GOVERNMENT schools and private schools. If the private Jewish schools teach Jewish fundamentals and the private Catholic schools teach Catholic fundamentals… What do you suppose Government schools teach?

Since you likely “graduated” from one of their government indoctrination camps, let me spell it out for you.

SIT DOWN. SHUT UP AND DO WHAT YOU’RE TOLD.

Take your number and get in line.

Test results demonstrate conclusively that teachers, as a group (and I only point that out because I’m a fierce individualist [ - there are always exceptions that prove the rule]), are THE DUMBEST of ALL college graduates. Test results also let out the dirty secret that government school administrators are the dumbest of the teachers - like most government, the least capable rise to the top.

This first year principal is likely plum stupid. At the very least he’s ignorant and clumsy. He’s trying to establish power and authority. Typical of those with below average IQ and test scores.

Green-hair girl needs to be brought down a peg. She’s smart. THAT will not be tolerated in any government institution.

If you’re smarter than the mental deficients running the institution, you WILL be punished.

That’s the end of the original comment at Fark. All I would add is that I’m not personally on board with this girl dying her hair green. But that’s not the issue anyway and if my daughter decides to dye her hair green tomorrow or when she’s 17, I won’t stop her. It’s silly but on the other hand… it’s just silly. The real matter at hand is that we have some schmuck who is so stupid that he aspired to a government job as a principal and has never overcome the jealousy that he has for the smart kids and the jocks. (Green-hair girl is BOTH - she’s 4.0 AP and varsity volleyball. I’ll lay $10 at 3-1 that he’s never been either.)

He’s an idiot with an inferiority complex and with good reason - I dare him to take a public IQ test. It will show that he’s over-employed and would do much better at one of those jobs the immigrants are taking because he won’t. (Or doesn’t have to.)

THIS IS GOVERNMENT, friends. This is why I refuse to accept it and I work to shield my daughters from it as best I can.

In government, those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those that can’t even teach are promoted to administrators in “education.”

It’s not easy to remain committed to the choice of home education. There is an organized, concerted effort to make it difficult. The primary opponents would make it completely illegal if they could and that alone says much about what drives them. But I’ve found that even those that nominally support the concept are often challengers simply by ignorance.

I’ve been asked often - and in many different contexts - why I’m so determined to shield my children from the government indoctrination camps. In fact, I often ask myself that question because I need to bolster my resolve in the face of a world that disagrees with me. Everywhere. All the time.

There are many, many reasons, but here’s the shortest, easiest answer:

I’m not raising employees. I’ve been given responsibility for two wonderful little people and I want them to be employers.

Here is the longer explanation of that statement:
I don’t want my children to ever need to work for someone else. I want them to learn business and trades (multiple) and skills (multiple) that will allow them to pursue their passions and create multiple income streams, hopefully of the passive variety. Those are the things I’m pursuing now. With God’s Blessing on “everything I set my hand to” it’s going well. But it took me way too many years to get here and, in my opinion, I’m just now at the starting point.

It’s a sappy cliche that all parents want their children to have “a better life” than they did. It’s also either not true or there are a whole lot of very, very ignorant parents. I suspect it’s the latter, it’s by design and it’s ultimately forced government schooling that is to blame.

Don’t misunderstand me - there is no shame in working for someone else. But it should be a temporary situation if it’s necessary at all. Selling nearly half of your waking hours to others for nearly half of your life is not “living.” It’s plum stupid. It’s also unnatural. We were created as sovereign beings and tasked with subduing the earth. For the last 150 years (or so) in this country, there has been an organized concerted effort to redirect us from that God-given directive into subservience and it’s done primarily, if not entirely, through compulsory government schooling.

There is no one in a government school that can teach you how to be an employer because there aren’t any there. Everyone who has ever wasted twelve or thirteen years in a government school and gone on to eventually become an employer did it in spite of that “education,” not because of it. It doesn’t take a genius to figure this out; you can’t learn from someone what they don’t know. There is no one involved in government schooling, at any level, that is an employer.

It’s a machine; a headless monster. Everyone there is a victim of the system. No, you can’t reform it from within. No, you can’t fix it. It’s broken by design and it’s running smoothly, accomplishing its intended purpose.

That purpose is to condition its victims to quietly obey arbitrary authority and irrational rules. Sit down, shut up and do what you’re told. The teachers and administrators - no matter what their intentions - are just as much victims as the students. It is evil on a very basic level and it is the root of everything wrong with America.

If you intend to change my mind about this, you’ll need to show me the individual in charge in that mess. Be careful if you go seeking that, though. That “i” word is impermissible inside the machine.

In summary, home education to me is simply a return to the way God intended things to be and the way things were in this country at its start. My job, as I see it, is to teach my children how to prosper as sovereign individuals. The hardest part of that is explaining to them that the ever-growing government is a violent beast that hates them, not their friend.

If you disagree with me about any of this, I’ll smile and listen to your opinion with sympathy. It’s OK. Do what you feel is best for your children. My children will need employees just like I do.

My five year old has recently taken to coming into my office while I’m working or reading online and reading “over my shoulder.” (She actually stands next to me between me and the monitor; she’s a little short to literally read over my shoulder.) A few days ago she did this while I was working. I happened to be at the jQuery web site reading the developer documentation for a plugin to that excellent Javascript library. She understood none of it but, much like her Dad, it’s unnatural to her that words within her range of vision should not be read.

So without missing a beat, she just started reading out loud, “Using jQuery.extend to extend jQuery itself. In the above section, we checked if any options are given before we applied jQuery.extend(settings, options). The reason for this: If you specify only one parameter, the jQuery object itself is extended with the given object.”

She never so much as struggled with any of it, reading it almost as quickly as I do. (As an excuse, I’ll say that I read it slower than I could because I’m trying to actually comprehend it and she’s not. So there! Thfffttt!) She even correctly read the oddities in the first line, a section header, as “using jay-query dot extend to extend jay-query.”

No matter how many times I see her do these things, I still find it amazing.

That night, I was reading Opinion Journal’s “Best of the Web” while the kids were getting ready for bed. She came in and again automatically began reading. This time, I decided to record it for those who don’t have the opportunity to witness firsthand what home education can do.

That was completely impromptu. She had no preparation and had never seen the text before. The SMOG calculator says that the column she was reading is at grade level 13+ and the section she reads in the recording above is nearly grade level 12. You can hear me helping her some in the audio but what you hear is all the assistance I gave her. I was not helping her in any silent way.

Granted, the SMOG rating is the grade level at which one understands everything they have read and I’m sure she didn’t understand what she read. Then again, I’m not sure anyone including Dubya understands the current Iraq policy. (HA! couldn’t resist!) Anyway, I suspect that is what the ignorant/evil critics of phonics are getting at when they say comprehension suffers - it’s because phonics allows one to read way beyond their level of understanding. Help me understand how that’s a bad thing.

She had real trouble with the words “Rwanda,” “Sunnis,” “ideological” and “Shias.” My guess would be that many high school graduates in this country would as well. Other words, such as “century” and “nonstrategy,” she had to work at but she got them on her own. (It should be noted that “nonstrategy” isn’t actually a word either.)

She made a few mistakes, too. But as someone that has seen her do this frequently, I can also say she wasn’t in her top form when I recorded her. It was past her bedtime and she was very tired.

This child is not yet six years old and would be two months into kindergarten if we had not chosen to educate her at home. Incidentally, my older daughter can read just as well but usually doesn’t. She’s an artist and not as interested in reading so she tends to get in a hurry and guess at the words instead of actually reading them.

Athor’s taken an undeserved beating and handled it like a man. He’s absolutely right and has been knocked around enough by people that have missed what he’s saying.

I would probably qualify as what he calls a “true believer” and I know he meant that as an insult. But I didn’t take it that way. I absolutely and totally believe that you can’t read unless you know phonics.

I also understand what he’s saying and it seems to me that everyone here is talking past one another. He’s also right that phonics is helpful with 90% of the English language, useless with the other ten percent and that I’m using the part that works. I learned the concept first with spiritual things - eat the meat and spit out the bones.

I before E except after C unless it says ‘ay” as in neighbor and weigh. That’s weird.

I would challenge those of you that think you disagree with Athor Pel to go back and reread his comments here. He’s made more than one salient point.

My guess would be that he’s better at what you do than you are.

Do you want a point to this post? Here ya go:

Schools are designed from the ground up to take the fun out of learning and make it seem like work. Way too many “homeschoolers” mean well but try too hard and because of that, they end up repeating the evil they’re trying to avoid. I’ll never allow anyone to make my daughters work at learning or deceive them into believing it’s not fun.

They’re already way ahead of their peers. Watch and see where they go from here! Spanish and Latin are both on this year’s to-do list. We live in Texas, so they’re both already pretty good at the former.

My recent post on home education has gotten more response in a shorter time and from a much more varied readership than anything I’ve done in months. Before you start chuckling to yourself, I’m way ahead of you. I haven’t given y’all much to work with lately. I apologize for that. That will be changing.

Anyway, there were a number of great comments on that post. I suggest you read them all.

Difster did a pretty good job responding to Jason, but I think I can sum up what he said more concisely (or at least add to it): You can’t comprehend what you cannot read. Without phonics or assistance, you cannot read any word you’ve never seen before. What Jason has heard about that concept is some of the propaganda they use to batter phonics. (deputyheadmistress made the point better than I can with a link that’s worth clicking.)

Everyone should read The Underground History of American Education. You have no excuse now. I have a signed pre-publication copy but I had to con a friend into buying it for me. You can read it for free if you’re a good enough student to scroll, investigate and clickety-click. I suggest you check out a little more about the author first because it would be very easy to be skeptical about the outrageous charges he makes if you haven’t read his bio and credentials. (And by “credentials,” I mean accomplishments. In Texas we have a saying, “It ain’t boastin’ if ya done it.” He’s done it. Belly of the beast and all that.) In fact, unless someone here will do it for me, I’ll have to dig up the link to his acceptance speech when he won the New York State Teacher of the Year Award. He told them the truth in his acceptance speech and, though the material is sad on it’s face, I’ve read it more than once and laughed out loud each time. He knew he was on the way out and had the balls to tell them the truth.

I’m getting sidetracked but you have to read that book to understand. It changed my life because for the first time I understood specifically why I hated school so much and why I wanted to spare my kids that horror. Back to the point, the “teachers” are mostly ignorant pawns and the people creating the curriculum don’t want children to know how to read. The propaganda is just that. Propaganda.

My only possible disagreement with Athor Pel’s comments is that he implies (at least the way I read it) that phonics doesn’t work for some kids and that for some kids, something else may work instead of phonics. If you don’t understand phonics, you don’t know how to read. Period. It would be like saying that you can learn multiplication and division without understanding addition or subtraction. More precisely, it would be like saying that you could understand any kind of advanced math without ever learning to count.

Maybe I read too much into what Athor typed there, but learning phonics (as Dif said) is essential to understanding the English language. The understanding of phonics is a building block that is required to ever get beyond “functionally literate.” Most of what I know that matters in the real world, I’ve learned reading things I don’t understand. I’m thirty-five and I still will sit for hours reading something that I don’t understand at all. By definition, those things are usually filled with words I’ve never seen before. (I don’t even think about this consciously anymore, but…) I look at the letters, sound out the word and, with rare exception, I recognize it as a word I heard but have never seen. (You have to listen too! Especially when you’re around smart people. That’s far less often than you think.) Having done that for thirty of my thirty-five years, my experience has been that if I put the time in, reading something that I don’t understand at all, within a year I’ll know it well enough to teach it or write the article.

See, I still love learning. I do it every day. It’s not a discipline. It’s not a habit. I didn’t train myself to do this. It’s a passion. It’s like air to me. If I didn’t stretch my mind yet today, I can’t go to bed yet. The day’s not yet done. I have to find something that baffles me and (hopefully) figure it out.

People used to think it was cute when I was a little kid and they would say, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And I would reply…

“I don’t care what I am when I grow up. I just want to KNOW EVERYTHING!” (”Isn’t that adorable? *chuckle* He wants to know EVERYTHING! You’re smart enough to do it too!”)

I’m thirty-five and nobody finds it cute when I say that now. I don’t understand. I didn’t say I do know everything, though I’m often accused of that crime. I know what I don’t know - most everything. I’m just saying that’s my goal. I understand ignorance of a topic and I’m quick to admit it.

Just when you thought I was rambling…. I had a point once and I think I remember where I left it.
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My cousin has a masters degree in elementary education. I’ve known her since her birth and she’s intelligent, compassionate and loves children. So if she can piss me off, there’s a problem with the system.

Yet she has nearly every time I’ve encountered her since having children. She’s great with my kids on a social level and they love her - she knows how to play with them real, real good. She sees them once a year, if that, and is always astounded at how much they know and how “smart” they are. It’s become much more relevant since my wife shipped my oldest off to the government babysitter for a few months. My oldest daughter was in first grade. (Thank God she’s home!) Since my cousin is a first grade teacher they have much to talk about.

Sing-songy, talking to a little kid voice: “Can you count to twenty-five?”
My thought: “She’s seven! She could do that when she was three! Do you have a challenge?”
Sing-songy, talking to a little kid voice: “Wow! That’s great. You must have a really good teacher!”
My thought: “Yeah. Sittin’ right here with no college education, fool.”
Sing-songy, talking to a little kid voice: “Can you count to a hundred?”

At this point, I spoke up and said, “Emily can. She can count to two hundred by ones or tens. Take your pick.” (Emily is my youngest that *gasp* hasn’t been to SCHOOL!)

Sing-songy, talking to a little kid voice: “You can?!?! Really?!?! You can’t count to two hundred!”
Sing-songy, talking to a little kid voice: “Wow! That’s great! You’re both smarter than anybody in my class!
Sing-songy, talking to a little kid voice thins: “I’ll have to get your address so I can send your Daddy some really good stuff to do with numbers to help you learn even more!”

My thought: “Don’t bother. I did all that and more without the stupidity you were taught in college.”

She also asked Emily, “So when will YOU get to go to school? Next year?” Emily very non-chalantly said, “Prolly.” and I thought, “When Daddy’s dead. I have to protect them from people like you.”

This is also a woman that informed me a few years ago that it’s “completely wrong” to teach a child to read with phonics and now is amazed at how well my seven year old reads. Oops! Can’t argue with results. Reading with my daughter she says, “Look at the picture. Look at the picture. What are they doing there?” My daughter responds, “I don’t look at the pictures to read ’cause a lot of books don’t have them. I just look at the letters and sound out the words.”

Oops.

Based on what she said, my five year old reads better than any of her students. You have to understand both that I was separated from my kids for most of two years before I got custody and also that she (teacher, masters degree girl) works in “the highest paying school district” here. This ain’t the inner-city we’re comparing my kids to folks.

This is also someone that said she asked “her” children what was the true meaning of Christmas and had to say, “No” when a student answered, “It’s the birth of Jesus.” When pressed by her father, she said, “I can’t acknowledge that in the classroom! The true meaning of Christmas is giving!”

Read my lips:

SCHOOLS WORK PERFECTLY BECAUSE THEY ARE ABOUT SCHOOLING. NO ONE GETS AN EDUCATION THERE EXCEPT THE TEACHERS SMART ENOUGH TO LEAVE.

It’s no place for a kid. Especially one you love.

You’re doing fine, Heidi.

I haven’t done a good anarcho-capitalist, anti-government rant lately and I just ran across something from a while back, while cleaning out my email. I thought I would share it with you unsuspecting victims who no doubt came here looking for more cute kiddie or beefcake pictures.

My mother forwarded the following email to me and a whole bunch of other people, including everyone else that works at her small company and her 85 year old aunt. She caught me at the wrong time and I was infuriated that people were so brainwashed by their government education that they actually believed we had improved on most of the things on the list. So I decided to reply to all when I responded.

I seriously doubt the accuracy and/or validity of a number of these “facts” to start with, but decided not to get into a pedantic snopes-a-thon to prove it. For instance, the “average American worker” didn’t work very hard if they were making 22¢ an hour and only making $200-$400 a year.

My response follows the original email.

               “THE YEAR 1903″

Where we were a century ago. This ought to boggle your mind.

The year is 1903, one hundred years ago… what a difference a century makes. Here are the U. S. statistics for 1903….

The average life expectancy in the US was 47.

Only 14% of the homes in the US had a BATHTUB.

Only 8% of the homes had a TELEPHONE.

A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost $11.

There were only 8,000 CARS in the US and only 144 miles of paved ROADS.

The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California. With a mere 1.4 million residents, California was only the 21st most populous state in the Union.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.

The average wage in the US was $0.22/hour.

The average US worker made between $200-$400/year.

A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000/year, a dentist $2,500/year, a veterinarian between $1,500-$4,000/year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000/year.

More than 95% of all BIRTHS in the US took place at HOME.

90% of all US physicians had NO COLLEGE education. Instead, they attended medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as “substandard.”

Sugar cost $0.04/pound. Eggs were $0.14/dozen. Coffee cost $0.15/pound.

Most women only washed their HAIR once a month and used BORAX or EGG YOLKS for shampoo.

Canada passed a law prohibiting POOR people from entering the country for any reason.

The five leading causes of death in the US were:
1. Pneumonia & influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke

The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii and Alaska hadn’t been admitted to the Union yet.

The population of Las Vegas, Nevada was 30.

Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn’t been invented.

There were no Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.

One in ten US adults couldn’t read or write.

Only 6% of all Americans had graduated from HIGH SCHOOL.

Coca Cola contained cocaine.

Marijuana, heroin and morphine were all available over the counter at corner drugstores. According to one pharmacist, “Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and the bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.”

18% of households in the US had at least one full-time SERVANT or domestic.

There were only about 230 reported MURDERS in the entire US.

Just think what it will be like in another 100 years.

It boggles the mind!

My response…

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…with one of my favorite editorial writers in America. Vin Suprynowicz is the Assistant editorial-page editor for The Las Vegas Review-Journal and has been for many years now. He’s also a nationally syndicated libertarian columnist and author of Send In The Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998 and The Ballad of Carl Drega (both non fiction). His newest work is a novel entitled The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Resistance.

In catching up with his past columns tonight, I came across one published February 6, 2005 that’s titled, Teaching preschoolers to read ‘not encouraged’ Here are a couple of excerpts where he’s quoting a disgruntled government teacher:

But, “Arithmetic was not the only institution that has gone by the wayside. Teaching in general had been all but banned,” Mr. Lewis, former director of studies at Washington’s World Charter School, finally figured out. “A genre of lesson planning and required ‘pedagogies’ had sprung up that allowed a maximum of about 10 minutes of actual teaching per class period. The remaining class time had to be devoted to a combination of ‘touchy-feely’ techniques, politically correct propaganda, and ‘activities.’”

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“I not so long ago looked into some federal funds for preschool reading programs under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act,” Mr. Lewis continues. “I was initially optimistic, as I had recent success getting 3- and 4-year-olds reading fluently. … On inspection of the grant materials, I found I did not qualify for the simple reason that the government ‘absolutely’ did not encourage the teaching of actual reading to preschoolers. Recognition of the letters of the alphabet was the maximum acceptable instruction.”

I hope this is enough to get you to click the link and read the entire column. In his subtle, inimitable way, Vin proceeds to tie the whole thing into gun control. After you’ve finished that column, click the first link and bookmark it so you can read the rest of what he’s written, and will write. It’s well worth the time.

(Also, additional information about Vin is available from his web site.)

Reading that column I was reminded of my 4 year old coming to me today with a stack of Bob books in her hand and saying, “Daddy? Want me to read one of these to you?” (I was working and she was interrupting, but you’ll never get me to discourage reading. There’s always time for reading together.) She proceeded to pick out the tenth of twelve books. (They’re numbered and get progressively harder.) I encouraged her to pick one of the lower numbered books because I haven’t had time to work with her on them much. After a bit of negotiation, we settled on number 5 and she read the whole thing with only very minimal help. That’s not the beginner set in the Bob series, either. We skipped that one. We started with the second set and we’re going to have to get the next level soon because my 6 year old has mastered the ones we have and the 4 year old is close. (It pains me to think where they would be now if they had a mother that cared and hadn’t kept them from me for the better part of the last 3 years.)

I was informed by my children today, that the four year old of the woman I wrote about in Dumb broads and home education, cannot count to 10. They were astonished. My daughters were both counting to 10 both forwards and backwards by the time they were two years old. My four year old can count to 40 or 50 now and I haven’t had much time to actively work with her yet. The older one can count to 100 now. After a year of preschool and a few months of kindergarten (both against my wishes) she told me she could count to 100. She couldn’t get past 49 because she had been taught by memorization. I spent about 20 mins. with her showing her how the numbers relate with patterns and she can now count to 100 (and beyond) every time. Her younger sister listening in on that lesson is the reason she can count to 50 now and is doing basic arithmetic in her head. At four.

But what do I know? It’s not like I have a degree from Columbia Teachers’ College or anything. Heck, I don’t have any degree in anything. I haven’t spent a single second of my life in a college classroom (while class was going on). I’m just a dumb, uneducated redneck.

I’m sure the government knows best.