Take the inner cities. There are some highschool students that really want an education, but they have to work, too. This means that they don't have the needed time to study, and thus will get bad grades. Now if they homeschooled, they could get all the books they needed for free at the library, and both their work and school hours would be extremely flexible, thus giving them itme to to both to their heart's content.
------------------ "This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!" -- Adolph Hitler, 1933
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Problem is, a lot of inner-city parents aren't qualified to homeschool, largely because they aren't any better educated than their children.
Or aren't home. Or are in other circumstances causing them to be unfit learning models. (Today for chemistry, we're going to manufacture methamphetamines!)
------------------ "Nobody knows this, but I'm scared all the time... of what I might do, if I ever let go." -- Michael Garibaldi
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You can't be serious, First, or I have done a poor job of presenting what I'm trying to say. Did you just suggest that students should be forced into substandard school environments because of how they practice their religion? Does anyone honestly entertain the idea that it is better to expel kids from nontraditional religions in order to make room for public prayer? This is the sort of thing the first amendment is supposed to guard against.
"a lot of inner-city parents aren't qualified to homeschool"
Most homeschool parents from _anywhere_ aren't qualified to teach, but that doesn't mean that they're unqualified to homeschool. All my parents do is keep up with what I do. (Well, my dad helps me with my math on the rare occasion that I need it, and he checks it, too, but he DOES have a masters in mathematics from Vandy, so that's more of a bonus. I could live without it.) The idea is to learn to teach yourself. I've learned a good bit of Latin with no help from anyone, for example.
Sol:
Substandard? Excuse me? I just got my achievement test results back, and I scored 99th percentile in everything except spelling (82nd, if you care). Homeschoolers consistantly score well above their public and private school counterparts.
And thanks for the link. I've changed my .sig accordingly. Funny thing, that I can't seem to find where I found it to begin with...
------------------ "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed." - Noah Webster, Author, An American Dictionary of the English Language
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Omega: What I meant is that it's not a sure thing that a high-schooler is going to be homeschooled adequately if his parent is illiterate, or has only a marginal education him/herself. "Us gonna learn ya trigonometry today." Doesn't quite ring right, does it? Forunately, this is a worst-case scenario.
Sol: What Omega said. As prayer in school goes, what I have stated so far is as far as I am willing to compromise. The line must be drawn somewhere. Let the Shakers (or whomever you're referring to) found their own schools, if they want to schedule special times for screaming out in the name of the Great Potato.
Or, from my point of view... "I'll tolerate the loonies, so long as they're quiet about it."
------------------ "Nobody knows this, but I'm scared all the time... of what I might do, if I ever let go." -- Michael Garibaldi
posted
I've been thinking about it more, and the more I think, the more of a conundrum I seem to work myself into. With the plethora of existing (indeed, possible) religions, in theory you could have a school with so many different belief systems that require rituals that would interrupt the cirriculum that it would be impossible to adapt. Admittedly, this has no effect on my religion, but it's still an interesting problem. I can't use the analogy of roads ("Sure, drink all you want. But if you do it while driving, thus endangering others, we shoot you."), because you're not actively endangering the lives of others.
Perhaps if there was a rule enacted in which you could not enter or leave a classroom once class has commenced except in cases of emergency...
You know, that just might work. Just pick up your work after the class is over, and you shouldn't miss much. Just as long as you don't loose credit for not being physically present. After all, it's what you know that matters, not where you are. If the sole problem is that things like having to bow toward Mecca at certain times or the like requires leaving the classroom, thus disturbing the other students, that would seem to fix it.
Whadda ya think?
------------------ "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed." - Noah Webster, Author, An American Dictionary of the English Language
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I think you people scare me. The idea behind the creation of schools was to educate children in the things their parents don't know.
The quality of an education recieved at home seems rather random to me. Of the the homeschooled people I've known, the one I knew the best had a frighteningly spotty education. She was a brilliant girl, no doubt about it. Well spoken, literate, etc. She also had almost no grasp of basic scientific concepts. Her parents weren't scientists, and so hadn't seen it necessary to push these things. Which is fine, so far as it goes, I suppose.
Perk up, Omega, I'm about to give what passes as mad props to George II here. The ideal behind our educational system is that something like a high school diploma means something quantitatively. This person has studied x, y, and z. Arguably, the current system isn't living up to this standard, and a diploma from Moscow, Idaho might mean this student is ready for college, while one from Miggleburg, Iowa means that the student managed to avoid killing anyone during high school. This is a big problem. Homeschooling only exacerbates it. And I'm not even particularly anti-homeschool. I just think it is highly undesirable as a national standard, and should not be typical.
As to the prayer thing, I don't think we're firing on the same cylinders here. What I'm saying is this: students currently have every right to pray, so long as their prayer, like any other activity, does not interrupt the class. There is no ban on school prayer. (Though there are hypersensitive school employees.) What certain elements desire is to remove the laws that prohibit schools from acknowledging any one religion. This is what I think is silly. The defense is made that the school isn't really going to be advocating a single religion, but making room for all of them to pray publicly in class. But I'd like to see how long that claim lasts after the first student with a pocketful of salt draws a magic circle around his desk.
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"I just think it is highly undesirable as a national standard, and should not be typical."
Well, considering that on average, as I've stated, homeschoolers are actually better educated that most people in the country, I'd say homeschooling probably is a pretty good standard. Yeah, of course there are people who do it specifically to get their kids out of doing any work. But when those people get out into the real world, then they're pretty much screwed. With the state of public education, the MAJORITY of the graduates are pretty much screwed when they get to the real world.
And a high school diploma doesn't really mean ALL that much when you're trying to get into college. SAT and ACT scores are far more important. If it were me, I'd just say that you didn't need a diploma to get in, but I'm not the dean (or chancellor, or whatever).
In fact, SAT scores would be a pretty good way to determine who can certain jobs. Say you had to score 400 on a (company-sponsored, if you hadn't already taken one) SAT to work at McDonald's.
------------------ "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed." - Noah Webster, Author, An American Dictionary of the English Language
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And as for school prayer, I now think I agree with you totally. Just as long as you don't take it too far and start trying to take down documents that are supposedly supportive of a particular religion, like, say, the Constitution. They did that in Kentucky. Had to take the state constitution out of a historical exibit.
------------------ "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed." - Noah Webster, Author, An American Dictionary of the English Language
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Interestingly, an an A-grade pass in Chemistry A-level mean spretty much the same thing, whether you went to school in Liverpool or Manchester. Now, Universities are a different thing, but a First class degree from a "real" university (Demontfort University my arse), is still pretty good.
And I have to say: "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed."
Do you really believe this crap? Or do you think that all the presidents and Prime Ministers of European counties are really passing unjust laws saying "he he he, we can get away with this because our citizens can't kill each other from 5 metres away"?
Come on, name ONE unjust rule that the UK has. Or France. Or Germany.
Sometimes hostory can help us shape the present. Sometimes gistorical significance means bugger all.
------------------ "A fully functioning, cybernetic, technologically advanced team of superheroes... and NOBODY'S got a flashlight?" - Polly Ester; Samurai Pizza Cats
That quote's from quite a while back (like, centuries). I'd put a date on it, but I don't have one. To avoid confusion of the less informed, I have changed my .sig yet again.
And sure, I can name unjust laws in any country with gun control. The gun control laws. Removing someone's ability to defend their rights is violating those rights. Unless, of course, in those countries the people have some other way to defend said rights. Care to name one?
------------------ "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed." - Noah Webster, Author, An American Dictionary of the English Language
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One of the first "life lessons" people should be getting after high school is that, in the real world, test scores are essentially meaningless. Even most colleges are more interested in your learning history than your performance in one isolated instance.
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