The New Family

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Writing instruction in our schools is terrible. We need to fix it.

 Columnist 
e Education Trust, a nonprofit that advocates for students from low-income households] collected 1,876 school assignments from six middle schools in two large urban districts in two states. The idea was to see how well English, humanities, social studies and science were being taught in the new era of the Common Core State Standards. The results are distressing and show that the instruction students are getting — particularly in writing — is deeply inadequate.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/writing-instruction-in-our-schools-is-terrible-we-need-to-fix-it/2016/08/14/a47b705e-6005-11e6-8e45-477372e89d78_story.html

FOR some parents primary and secondary school is just an enriched form of day care - a place for parents to send their children while mom and dad go to work. Others view educating their child as someone else's responsibility. For both, the lack of parental involvement can cause children to languish and fail to learn thereby falling behind their peers. No form of education, public, private, or alternative, can overcome parental apathy. In later years under-performing students tend to have more behavioral problems that disrupt the classroom. Some homeschoolers recognize this and decide to insulate themselves from it. A homeschooling parent is almost always a highly involved parent (for an exception see the unschooling movement).  

Monday, August 15, 2016

Common Ground Shared by Homeschoolers

HOMESCHOOLERS are a diverse lot. While the movement is typically associated with religious fundamentalists, many homeschool for secular reasons. Further, while homeschoolers tend toward the right side of the political spectrum, some on the left share homeschooling values too. Urban progressives want a good education for their children as do suburban conservatives. The common trait is a shared desire to provide the best opportunity and environment possible for their children so that they may reach their maximum potential. 

The following link is to a story in the August 15, 2016 Christian Science Monitor. 

Why more black parents are home-schooling their kids


Nikita Bush comes from a family of public school teachers: Her mom, aunts, uncles – nearly all of them have been involved in public education at some level.
But her own teaching career ended, she says, “in heartbreak” when she had to make a decision about where her own child would go to school.
After being reprimanded repeatedly for folding Afro-centric education into her Atlanta classroom, she left. Fifteen years and six children later, Ms. Bush leads a growing homeschooling co-op near Atlanta’s historic West End neighborhood. 
Despite the promises of the civil rights movement, “people are starting to realize that public education in America was designed for the masses of poor, and its intent has been to trap poor people into being workers and servants. If you don’t want that for your children, then you look for something else,” she says. To her, the biggest flaw in public education is a lack of character education, an "absence of a moral binding," that contributes to low expectations – and lower outcomes for children of color.

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Homeschooling News

DAD saw this recent article.

How Homeschooling Helped Propel Simone Biles to the Olympic Gold


BY TYLER O'NEIL AUGUST 9, 2016

"At age 13, Simone Biles broke down in tears. She had decided not to attend a normal high school, opting for homeschooling in order to practice her gymnastics."
...
"In 2013, she became the United States champion at the U.S. National Gymnastics Championships, and then went on to win the 2013 World Championships in Belgium."

"At the global event, she won four medals — two of them gold — and became the first female African-American all-around world champion. In 2014 and 2015, she held on to her title, and racked up 10 gold medals from those three world championships. At the Olympics, she has already won the gold medal with the women's Team U.S.A." 

https://pjmedia.com/parenting/2016/08/09/how-homeschooling-helped-propel-simone-biles-to-the-olympic-gold/

Competing at that level incurs opportunity costs. The more time spent preparing for competition reduces time available for alternative pursuits. 

Homeschooling can be a better alternative than traditional public school for exceptionally gifted children, even if that "gift" is mediocrity or even a disability. 

For Olympic athletes, child stars, and many other non-traditional children, homeschooling is the overwhelming option because it allows the student the flexibility to pursue non-academic excellence by adapting education curricula  to the student's schedule. Traditional schooling, both public and private, is largely inflexible because it requires students to adhere to its timetable for instruction, study, and other activities. 

At the other end of the spectrum, for students with disabilities like autism, highly involved parents with sufficient motivation and resources can provide a more suitable and highly tailored environment to meet their child's needs than can be found in a traditional classroom. It is not easy, but it is possible. 

But homeschooling merits little consideration for some, otherwise very caring, parents. For them excellence, of either the educational or non-academic variety, is not the primary purpose of schooling. For them the primary reason is structure. It is the requirement to adhere to a schedule imposed by authority. This, they reason, prepares the student to perform well at employment later in life. Non-academic and academic excellence is a nice supplementary goal as long as it is confined to the rigors of standard school days and hours. It must not interfere with the child learning rules and routines - the characteristics of a reliable employee. To them success in life is not defined in becoming a celebrated exception, but in attaining the mean. They tacitly believe that in pursuit of mediocrity, while their child(ren) may never achieve greatness, they are also immune from failure. They perceive that there is security in being within the range of + 1 standard deviation from the middle. However illusory this security actually is or is not is irrelevant to the much more frightening possibility of failure from non-conformance to socially accepted norms of traditional education. Hence, learning to be on time and prepared to work day in and day out is of far more important than lofty dreams or alternative pursuits. 

Dad believes the traditional schooling model is adequate for the majority of students and their parents. Most students are not going to compete at Ms. Biles level of proficiency.  Many parents lack the ability or desire to provide a non-traditional school environment. A smaller number of disadvantaged students are actually better off in the structure of a school environment than at home. However, he believes differently for his own children.

Thursday, July 21, 2016

Parental Alienation

DAD came across this article. It is a narrative of a child of divorce's experience with her own divorce. 

I was led to believe, all of my life, that my father wasn't interested in a relationship with me, that he had access to see me and chose not to. The truth was that he made regular attempts all through my childhood to send me packages and letters, to call, and to visit, and his efforts were ignored or refused. I was allowed to think that I was forgettable, inconsequential, and not worth his time. I was told all kinds of nasty things about him and encouraged to distrust him and to be grateful to my mother for shielding me from his influence. Meanwhile, he suffered the loss of his daughter who was coached to hate him. I couldn't be that monster who would raise my children with low self-esteem and the belief they were abandoned while robbing their father of his flesh and blood!
If there is a legitimate reason why a child should not be with his or her parents, such as substantiated abuse, then the police, children's services, and the courts should be left with the responsibility of sorting out those details. Otherwise, when a man and woman lay down together and make a child, it's a commitment of "for better or for worse" to that child, if not for a marriage. Even if the adult relationship doesn't last forever, the mother and the father are bound by blood and by eternity to the child. Perhaps we should be more careful of who we lay down with if we can't bear to parent with that person!
Not liking the other parent, embarrassment about the past relationship, or avoidance of the complications of visitation are simply not good enough reasons to erase a loved one from a child's life. I wish that I could go back in time and make different decisions for my life, but what's done is done.  Whether or not my marriage to my ex was a mistake, I can say that he gave me the greatest gift anyone could ever give me: my children. We don't agree on everything, but we can harmonize in our shared love and admiration for our children and our mutual desire to see them grow up healthy and well-adjusted.
http://divorcedmoms.com/blogs/divorce-warrior/why-i-wont-alienate-my-kids-from-their-father

Parental alienation also takes a softer form than the one exemplified above. A custodial parent need not actively undermine the relationship between the children and the former spouse. That parent can also naively alienate that relationship through simple passivity, undermining the parent child relationship by simply failing to facilitate a relationship between them.

The harm though, doesn't merely extend to the relationship between alienated parent and child. Alienated children are likely to blame the alienating parent for their behavior when they become aware of the alienation, thereby harming that relationship too. Children develop their own minds as they grow and mature and don't really care about why Mommy or Daddy prevented them from having a meaningful relationship with the other spouse.  

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Relationships

DUMB Stuff People Do: Give an Ultimatum in a Relationship. “I gave him a marriage ultimatum — we divorced two years later.

Um, yeah, that is never going to work out favorably, and even if it did, why would he want to be with someone that gave him an ultimatum? Moreover, dear author, why would you want to be with him if you could bully him into [fill in the blank]? His acquiescence would only decrease your respect and increase your contempt for him.

It would also burden his future decision making and self respect. No one likes a despot. 

Dad’s advice is to spend some time in meaningful introspection before entering into a relationship. Know yourself, proceed slowly, and be willing and able to respectfully end it before committing too many resources to it. Then, if you do proceed to make a commitment, honor it. 

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Sad Day

TODAY the New Family Mom and Dad are no longer legally married. After over a year of separation they reached a final resolution to dissolve their marriage. Mom and Dad will move forward separately. 

It is a sad day.

Dad acknowledges the pain, the loss, his contribution to the outcome, and the disadvantages the Twins now find themselves in. Gone is the emotional, financial and physical security the Family once enjoyed and he was once proud to provide. Gone is the iron that sharpened iron - the volley of ideas between peers, the unified purpose of their partnership, the challenge between two sinners to strive toward being Christlike. Gone is his raison d'etre, a calling that God Himself pressed on Dad's own heart. But Dad will not dwell on loss. He will not use it to justify self pitying or as an excuse not to fully press the advantages and blessings he still has. Dad is not a victim. He will move forward constructively as best he can with what he has left. And he has a lot left.

While Dad can no longer speak for Mom, he believes that they still share the goal of raising their children in the best way possible. There will be challenges. They passionately disagree about what is the "best way possible" and how to achieve it. Mom has her strategy. Dad has his. They will individually implement them. However, Dad has not changed. He married with the purpose of being a father and being the best father possible.  

Hopefully, the antagonism and conflict will subside and they will work collaboratively on parenting the children. There is no current assurance of this. But Dad has hope, and a not unfounded optimism, that he and Mom will reconcile their relationship well enough to effectively fulfill their roles as a Mother and a Father.

This blog will continue in a limited way. It has always served multivariate purposes, one of which is to be a record for the Twins at a time when they are old enough to have an interest in their early life. It will continue to do so albeit within the constraints of the new reality. 

Sunday, April 10, 2016

Homeschool Update

Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15


After acquiring his entire elementary and secondary education from OpenCourseWare and MITx, Ahaan Rungta joined the MIT Class of 2019 at age 15.


"Ahaan Rungta and his family moved from Calcutta, India, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 2001, the same year MIT announced OpenCourseWare (OCW), a bold plan to publish all of MIT’s course materials online and to share them with the world for free. Little did his parents realize at the time that their two-year-old son — already an avid reader — would eventually acquire his entire elementary and secondary education from OpenCourseWare and MITx, and would be admitted to the MIT class of 2019 at the age of 15."

http://news.mit.edu/2015/ahaan-rungta-mit-opencourseware-mitx-1116