Fireworks illegal.  Happy Fourth of July!

All fireworks.  At one time, at least, that included sparklers, though the police seemed to have enough to do that one day without crashing barbecues to confiscate sparklers from children.

Last year, I and every other driver crossing over the border at Brownville got pulled over.  Police officers peered through the windows and inquired:

Are you transporting any fireworks?

Because just up the road a tad, over in Missouri, you can still buy things that blow up.  Way up.  They are illegal here, but according to the sign, at least, you can buy one and get three free.

Looking out for the public health and safety is certainly one of the jobs of local government, but does banning all fireworks really make things any safer?  When I was younger, we generally only fired off a few at a time before moving to another location.  Or drove outside city limits to set them off down some country road.  A friend of mine took his out to a nature center because, well, there just wasn’t anyone around.

Looking over some of the damage caused by fireworks so far this year, I’m struck by a few things.  Some people are just plain stupid.  No law is going to protect a seventeen year old kid who sticks a firework between his legs to muffle the sound.  Nor will it protect communities where kids are found to be driving about aiming them at people.  But there were a few grass fires started, as well.  And I think about my friend back in high school.

That “the laws don’t work” is not really a very good argument.  No laws really “work” or there would be no crime.  But do anti-fireworks laws and campaigns really do anything to make us safer over the holiday?  Or could they inadvertently encourage nincompoops like the teenager mentioned above?  After all, fireworks safety is rarely part of the discussion.

Granted it was put out by the American Pyrotechnics Association which has an obvious interest in the sale of and use of fireworks, but I think they make a good point about safety education.

The NFPA is a powerful voice when it comes to public safety education. They have done a commendable job educating the public on fire safety and burn prevention with their other programs like Sparky the Fire Dog and Risk Watch. The APA believes that if the NFPA joined forces along with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, National Council on Fireworks Safety and fire departments across the country in promoting safety tips for responsible consumer fireworks use, that message would have a significant impact in helping to further reduce the misuse of fireworks.  The Free Library

So what do you think?  How can communities best balance public safety with the public’s desire to blow things up at least once per year?

And will you be setting of fireworks this year?

Either way, I wish you a Happy Independence Day!

fireworks Fourth of July Independence Day anti-fireworks

I simply don’t.  At least not in the way the other person seems to think.  Most people seem to be under the impression that having two school-aged children means I have two separate curricula to go through, while pulling off a little preschool with the four year old and keeping the younger two occupied as best I can.

Answering questions based on a misperception has always been difficult for me, especially when the conversation is with someone I scarcely know who is just curious about homeschooling.  Answering directly makes it sound like I’m not really doing anything with the younger children, while discussions regarding the differences between schooling and home education take longer than the normal social limits set on small talk.

Sometimes, I really do feel like I’m speaking a different language.

My eldest is really the only one who ever balks at homeschooling.  I made most of my mistakes with her, and there is a lot I would change about how we started if I could.  For the younger ones, however, it is all they’ve ever known.  They have grown up playing at my feet while Mouse and I discussed a book, went over math or tried a science experiment.  When they were old enough, they were drawn into the conversation.

Or more accurately, they demanded to be a part of it.  My two year old breaks down in tears if I call for the children to come to the table and I have nothing prepared for her.  My six year old wants to know more about everything and is continually asking me to write new things he has learned in his old lapbooks.

I teach and they learn what they are ready for.  But then there is this notion that somehow the younger children will miss out on something.  As if the fact we covered amphibians last month means we will never talk about them again and my younger children will grow into adulthood never knowing the life cycle of a frog.  But around here, no lesson is ever really over.  In fact, that is why we are drifting away from lapbooks.  They run out of room for all the additions my children want to make over time, and these additions represent something very important in education I want to encourage:  Just because the unit has ended doesn’t mean we are finished learning about the subject.

And that all goes to show that I should have foreseen the first real difficulty I’ve experienced teaching children of different ages together.  How, in all my planning, did I think I was going to get away with assigning The Hobbit as silent reading?  Barely into the introduction, as I mentioned that JRR Tolkein and C.S. Lewis were friends, I had the rapt attention of four little imaginations.

Send Mouse off with the book by herself?  I think there would have been a revolt and definite claims of favoritism.

homeschool homeschooling home education multi-aged homeschooling

But how do we explain this [the reasons we homeschool] to a five year old without a.) giving him the impression that he’s missing out on something fantastic, b.) running the risk that he looks down his nose at other kids who do go to school or c.)getting the impression that schools and everything associated with them are to be avoided?  Homeschool Diplomacy

They are good questions and the answers deserve some pondering.  After all, short of sending your children off to school for an extended period, any answer given will only be part of the story.  It’s like trying to explain a foreign culture without it coming down to food, holidays and national costumes.

I don’t have an answer.

Actually, I have more questions.  Essentially, they are the same questions, broadened and not specific to homeschoolers.  How do we explain differences and diversity to our children?  Whether it is a woman dressed in a sari, or with a hijab covering her head, a child with obvious physical deformities or a man behaving bizarrely on a street corner, how do you address the questions your children have?

As a child stands staring, the most common reaction I see from parents is a swift diversion and a muttered “It’s impolite to stare!” as the child is whisked away.  Now, it is impolite to stare, and an important part of raising children is teaching them these finer points of social life.  But in that moment, the child has also noticed something:  people are different.  We come in different colors, shapes and sizes, we have different customs, we speak different languages and some of us suffer from diseases and disorders that make us noticeably different.  Some of us are hurting, are hungry and even smell.

But it is impolite to stare, so we whisk our children away.

I’d be the last to say that it is appropriate to turn the person into an object lesson. . .although a man with a neck injury at McDonald’s once told me he never minded the children staring.  It was the parents shuttling them out of sight that got to him.  But I can’t help but wonder how many parents pick up the conversation with their children later.

I wonder, because a lot is learned in that moment.  A lot more than perhaps we realize.  It brings us back to that socialization issue homeschoolers are so fond of:

The process whereby a child learns to get along with and to behave similarly to other people in the group, largely through imitation as well as group pressure.  Answers.com

It is also a process which occurs without critical analysis.  That quick but firm redirection (with perhaps a touch of shock) may teach our children a lot more about our culture than simply that it is impolite to stare.  After all, there seem to be certain “things not spoken of” that we aren’t even supposed to look at.

But how do we (and how should we) discuss these issues with young children?

homeschool homeschooling diversity socialization

Eric Potter urges me to take a look at the Parental Rights Amendment, emphasizing:

Do not wait until our great nation becomes a nation where the government controls the minds and souls of our next generation.

Even Crimson Wife, of Bending the Twigs, who seems to be about as excited about a parental rights amendment as I am, is having second thoughts.

I’ve been on the fence when it comes the proposed Parental Rights Amendment but with the UNCRC being used as justification for proposed restrictions on homeschooling, I’m leaning more and more towards supporting it…

But do we really need a constitutional amendment to protect parental rights?  I know the argument.  Once signed and ratified, a treaty becomes the supreme law of the land, replacing state and federal law unless it directly contradicts something already in our Constitution.  The treaty in question of course being the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

I have a problem with this.  I have a problem with it for the reasons I mentioned last time I asked whether we really needed a parental rights amendment.  Now that this treaty may indeed come before the Senate in the near future (although maybe not quite as soon as Farris predicts), I have another problem with it–a serious one.

It is a distraction.

Ratifying the treaty requires 2/3 of the Senate to vote for it.  Sixty seven senators.  An amendment, on the other hand, will require 2/3 of the House, 2/3 of the Senate and 3/4 of the states to sign on to an amendment which hasn’t seen considerable success even at the state level.  At the federal level, it will stall for all the same reasons it stalled in state legislatures.  In the meantime, we will lose valuable time which we could be using to research the treaty, determine its strengths and weaknesses and formulate a reasoned response.

In other words, if we are afraid of the treaty, we should oppose the treaty, not use some “backdoor measure.”  Especially one with so little hope of success and one which may be built on a faulty foundation to begin with.  And perhaps we should take a page or two from the opposition’s playbook.

Looking specifically at the Parental Rights Amendment push in Colorado, conservatives were initially quite confident, with 76% of registered voters supporting it.  A number of organizations opposed the amendment, however they did not swing opinion from 76% in favor to 57% opposed by rallying their base and getting the information out.  Nor did they do it by introducing alternative legislation.  Instead, they spent some time researching beginning a full year before they expected the measure to be put on the ballot.

Immediately upon becoming campaign manager, Mendez urged the campaign to conduct a detailed statewide poll of voters’ reactions to the amendment. “It was one of the smartest things we did,” says deputy campaign manager Steadman, “because it told us what issues resonated with voters.”  The Gutmacher Institute

From this survey, they found that Colorado voters were indeed wary of the government overstepping its bounds with regards to parenting, but they also found several points about the amendment itself that concerned voters.  It was from these concerns that they developed their talking points rather than from the concerns of their own members.

The American Family Association, the Home School Legal Defense Association, and Eagle Forum, on the other hand, are very good at speaking the language of those who agree with them.  (I have little doubt this applies to many of the organizations on the Allied Organizations List.)  They know how to spread information and action points quickly and rally their base.  Unfortunately, after awhile it gets to be like yelling into an echo chamber.

Imagine if we were able to step out of that chamber and actually communicate with other parents. What if we could focus the discussion on what the average American parent worries about rather than what the average conservative, Christian homeschooler worries about?  Would it perhaps be conceivable, then, that we could end up with 34 senators opposed to ratification?

Because 34 senators is all we need if we can successfully hit the UNCRC directly.

homeschool homeschooling, UNCRC Convention on the Rights of the Child Michael Farris Parental Rights Amendment

To inspire our creativity and give us a broader range of names not featured in either Dora the Explorer or Diego, Mouse is hosting her first contest and giveaway.  In exchange for name ideas, she will give a little something to one random commenter.  So hop on over to The Science Mouse and give us some ideas!

Seated beside a mom with coiffed hair, polished nails and an elegant suit, I listened wide-eyed as audience members talked about a world I had totally misunderstood and stereotyped.

. . .

None of them were hippies. None seemed overly religious or way out there. In fact, the only trait they shared was a conviction that they – as moms and dads – could better prepare their children for life.

She does have one question, however:

Research shows home-schooled kids outperform their public-school peers. So why so is there little or no financial encouragement for parents to take it on?

I don’t know how these things work up in Canada, but down here in the states I think the question is fairly easy to answer.  For the most part, we don’t want the money.  We don’t want the oversight and we don’t want the control.

We just want to be left alone to follow our convictions and educate our children in freedom.

Some previous discussion about tax credits, for the interested:

Federal tax credit for homeschoolers

MO looks at parental rights, tax credits for homeschoolers

homeschool homeschooling home education tax credits for homeschools

*******************

Dear friends,

Today the Swedish Government released its suggestion for a new Swedish school law which has been in the works for many years.

The position on homeschooling in the suggested law is a return to darkness. It is unbelievable.  Homeschoolings will NOT be permitted for those referring to philosophical or religious reasons according to the European convention on Human Rights!

The reason given is:

“…that the education in school should be comprehensive and objective
and thereby designed so that all pupils can participate, regardless of
what religious or philosophical reasons the pupil or his or her care-
takers may have.”

Thus, the suggested law argues:

“…there is no need for the law to offer the possibility of
homeschooling because of religious or philosophical reasons in the
family. All together this means that this suggested change cannot be
said to contradict Swedens international obligations Human rights
conventions].”

The quotes above are my [the author of the original letter!] translations from the suggested law on page
584. The suggested law can be downloaded in Swedish from the Swedish Government homepage: http://www.regeringen.se/sb/d/11355/a/128290

That the Swedish Government is making homeschooling illegal is Sweden showing off its worst totalitarian socialist roots. We will need international support to show that Sweden, as a member of the international democratic community, cannot take such a position. As Sweden is often seen as the great social utopia of the world, it is important for Swedish homeschoolers to win this battle.

Sensible international suggestions about the new Swedish school law can be sent to: skollagen@education.ministry.se

You are welcome to contact me at: jonas@rohus.se or the whole Rohus board at: styrelsen@rohus.nu

Best regards

Jonas Himmelstrand
Member and pedagogical advisor of the Rohus board

*************************

Hopefully this does not go through, but from my understanding, homeschooling in Sweden is a very rare event.  According to A to Z Home’s Cool, there are only about 200 homeschooling families.  Like the situation in England, it appears that it is official interpretation of international treaties that is behind the attempt to restrict homeschooling.  At the same time, homeschoolers in Sweden are using the language of the Convention on the Rights of the Child as a defense.

homeschooling homeschool home education Swedish homeschooling

What is education?

Looking for a quote, I stumbled across an interesting assembly of education quotes with a thought provoking observation:

One must search diligently to find laudatory comments on education (other than those pious platitudes which are fodder for commencement speeches). It appears that most persons who have achieved fame and success in the world of ideas are cynical about formal education. These people are a select few, who often achieved success in spite of their education, or even without it. As has been said, the clever largely educate themselves, those less able aren’t sufficiently clever or imaginative to benefit much from education. English historian Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) put it this way: “The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.”

So what is education?  And what is it about formal education that brings out the wit in Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, Beatrix Potter and countless others?

When you are done pondering that, take a moment to join the Summer Party going on at this week’s Carnival of Homeschooling.