First of all, you and your closed-minded group of colleagues here do not have to "explain" anything to me.

I am not opposed to homeschool. But you are more interested in trying to prove that I am because you believe that I am a liberal, an enemy.

So you continue to try to paint me as an enemy of homeschool, which certainly, in this discussion, takes precedence over any concern you might have for supplying books to homeschoolers. It is so obvious this is this instance, but none are so blind as those who won't see.

I suggested that if you were that concerned with homeschoolers getting books, you could start such a program. But that doesn't interest you. What does is continuing to try to portray me as an enemy of homeschooling.

This is an anti-education stance if there ever was one. Refusal to consider ideas based on what you perceive to be ideological differences.

Yes, I do think children who are at risk of illiteracy are in greater need of books than homeschoolers. You seem to have no concern about such kids at all, preferring instead to say that one-income households have a greater need for books. If one-income homeschooled households are homeschooling at all, it can be assumed that they have some access to books!

This is why this forum never grows, because you intentionally try to exclude anyone who does not see eye to eye with you on political matters. This is why this forum is a closed society like the ones described by Karl Popper in the Open Society and Its Enemies, interestingly enough about Plato, Hegel and Marx.

You are unwilling to consider any ideas that are not aligned with your own political viewpoints, saying instead that:

This lie, another one of your lies, reveals your own bias and prejudice against anyone who is not a "classical liberal." Further, I never claimed to be a conservative, anywhere, ever.

You also, in defending your hero Frederick Taylor, never cease to remind people of your two degrees, your management experience and your own investment in conventional schooling - schooling, not education. Not for you are the examples Gatto cites of people who are successful without college degrees. You have demonstrated your own belief in conventional schooling, proudly citing your college degrees as if that meant you'd learned something. Degrees, credentials, state-certified accredited college seals of approval to try to prove you know what you're talking about. You don't.

Your underhanded tactics in attempting to portray me as an enemy of homeschool are just that - underhanded and dishonest.

It is people like you who Gilbert Highet must have had in mind when he wrote this:

"As a scholar in an era in which democracy, communism, and fascism vied for supremacy, he believed it was the duty of the intellectual to support freedom and defend pluralism. 'The aim of those who try to control thought is always the same,' he wrote. 'They find one single explanation of the world, one system of thought and action that will (they believe) cover everything; and then they try to impose that on all thinking people.'"

By continuously disparaging what I write here and claiming that I serve the oligarchy, you make it clear to anyone who knows how to read just how closed-minded, intolerant, bigoted and anti-pluralism you are.

Louise,
It still comes down to what you do as opposed to what you say. If I run across George Orwell I will show him your long correspondance justifying why we should disregard reality in favor of what you say. He collects that sort of language.
Ron

Maybe some people WOULD homeschool if the books were free or reduced cost, if they received a little support.

It does appear that you are not in favor of homeschooling or helping homeschoolers.

You are always complaining that people can't homeschool for various reasons. Wouldn't supplying books to ALL kids (say, they could apply for financial qualification for assist) make more sense? And help people homeschool who might not otherwise be able to??

But when you want to get together with him to denounce anything I post here, you must believe he has some discrete pockets of lucidity remaining.

You both seem to overcome any mutual animosity when the topic is getting together to prove I am wrong.

I did not post ANYTHING against homeschooling. If you are eager to help homeschoolers get books, start such a program for them!

Why won't you address the point he made? Why the attempts to divert?

>>>> did not post ANYTHING against homeschooling. If you are eager to help homeschoolers get books, start such a program for them!<<<<<

Yes, private assistance for the homeschoolers, the govskool kids got THEIRS!!!

I agree, actually. And as I posted above, I suspect these books are PC, eco-worshipping modern propaganda. I suspect they are not literature, they are certainly not intended as reading matter for kids. They are corporate "curriculum" aids for teachers.

Keep the gulag pushing crap and the homeschoolers can go to thrift stores and used book shops and online and get decent books to READ.

You take pains to downplay it but your disdain for homeschooling shows through. I don't get it. Why?? Because they are escaping the gulag indoctrination? Because so many are Christians? What's your beef?

I post an article about books for kids who are at risk of illiteracy and you insist it must mean I disdain homeschool.

It "shows through" to you, since you are ever looking for ways to prove that I am an enemy of whatever you think is the "way to live."

I am a strong proponent of unschooling, or open source learning, which allows children to gravitate toward learning in their own way, at their own pace, toward their own interests. I also like democratic schools. You don't, insisting that democracy is mob rule.

If you don't like my ideas and insist I am against homeschooling, DON'T READ MY POSTS! I guess you'd rather start fights and clutter the forum with words like commie and crap and crud. I guess that provides you with cheap entertainment that you'd be missing otherwise. Try attending a roller derby instead of responding to my posts. That should give you the thrills you're after.

>>>>I post an article about books for kids who are at risk of illiteracy and you insist it must mean I disdain homeschool.<<<<

No, not on the article you posted, it is your response to Ron that is so odd....for a homeschool "supporter".

>>>>It "shows through" to you, since you are ever looking for ways to prove that I am an enemy of whatever you think is the "way to live."<<<

No. Ron has accused you of it before but I never saw it. But here you clearly are biased against homeschooling. You complain about how hard it is for some to homeschool, justifying the gulag, yet HELPING people to perhaps homeschool and get out of the gulag does not apparently appeal to you.

>>>>>I am a strong proponent of unschooling, or open source learning, which allows children to gravitate toward learning in their own way, at their own pace, toward their own interests. I also like democratic schools. You don't, insisting that democracy is mob rule.<<<

Which it obviously is and you have never been able to explain how it is not. And you would think that you would reassess your deotion to it because of that...but you won't. Because you LIKE the idea of mob rule, the majority of the herded and dumbed down tyrannizing the few who are not.

>>>>>If you don't like my ideas and insist I am against homeschooling, DON'T READ MY POSTS!<<<<

I can recall a time when I begged you to ignore mine. And you proceeded to trash me in posts to others and I didn't realize it until I read someone ELSES post referring to a comment you made. So I now know better.

>>>>> I guess you'd rather start fights and clutter the forum with words like commie and crap and crud. I guess that provides you with cheap entertainment that you'd be missing otherwise. Try attending a roller derby instead of responding to my posts. That should give you the thrills you're after.<<<<<

Sorry my "rhetorical flourishes" are lacking in your view. LOL!

JS,
You did not actually say so but ultimately encouraging home schooling will reduce the cost of public schooling. That is an obvious conclusion based on what you did say.
Removing home schoolers wouldn't necessarily be a case of removing the best students but it seems to me that we would probably be removing the students with the most involved parents. Maybe that is part of what the public schoolers fear?
Ron

Removing the best students is a bogus argument against homeschooling. No one would go to a crummy MD or lawyer just to support them. Why do it for "schools", sacrificing your kids in the process?

Ron, let the gulag HAVE the books. They are probably full of PC lies and CRAP anyway as are most modern books. Did you read the article? These are not books for kids to actually READ. They aren't supposed to be actually READING anyway. We KNOW the gulag does not educate.These books are for TEACHERS to plan CURRICULUMS. They sneer with disdain at kids shoving USED books into backpacks to READ individually.

Homeschoolers need to go to the thrift stores and library book sales (that POOR people are too stupid to know to do????) and get the GOOD books, the classics being dumped by the truckload, the old reading texts from before the worst of the great dumbing down, Bibles.

JS,
Amen, I never could grasp grammar. On the contrary I loved literature, mathematics and the other liberal arts subjects.
Finally in a fit of somekind I searched out and bought one of the standard grammar texts of a hundred yeas ago - or was it 150 years ago?
That was much, much better but still fell short. Finally I discussed the matter with a girl buddy that was an engineering graduate before the depression hit. She pointed out that what we usually call "grammar" consists of two major divisions and that the rules change depending on the context. That fact is always assumed but never explained in my experience.
Thus armed I went back to the books and tackled them again. I found that my friend's two division analysis was correct but that even the writers of grammar texts can never keep that simple fact straight.
Ron