Home Schooling and the DR.

[frank12]

Oops..i almost forgot one more:

8.) What if your parents are one of the millions of Dominicans or other South Americans who believe in Flying Witches, and swear to you that two Flying Witches collided over Moca this past December or January and crash landed on the roof of a house, and that their are several eye-witness testimony to this fact!! Now, how about if one of these eye-witness testimonial parents want to pull their children out of school becuase the school system has the audacity to question the veracity of eye-witness accounts of flying Witches in Moca ...on Broomsticks no less!!

Every single Dominican at my work place believe this story hook-line-and-sinker. Would you say that they're qualified to home school their children...seeing how they believe rumours about colliding witches and then swear to me that it is true, despite not being there or anywhere around Moca during the collision.

This world is so screwed up with absurd, frightening, unrealistic, unimaginable, and unverifiable beliefs that it is nothing short of scary. I'm sorry, but I don't want any of these parents yanking me, my children, or even their children out of school and teaching anyone about anything.

Love Frank

 

[Chirimoya]

frank, if parents believe in any of the above they will be pushing it on their kids with or without homeschooling.

FWIW most people I've come across who homeschool tend to be new-agey types, or conventional folks who live in areas with no decent schools, or families who don't spend enough time in one place.

 

[cobraboy]

FWIW most people I've come across who homeschool tend to be new-agey types, or conventional folks who live in areas with no decent schools, or families who don't spend enough time in one place.

Most I know are disgusted with the pathetic PC public school system where "feel good" trumps the three R's...

 

[frank12]

9.) How about if your parents are one of the millions of Muslims that deny the Holocaust ever happened and want to yank you out of a Western Secular education system becuase they're teaching you that the Holocaust really did happen and they're failing you on your history tests becuase you've been taught at home that the Holocaust is a Western Lie used to propogate and oppress Muslims.

In Norway, where i live part of the year, they have or had a Muslim school in Gronland (downtown Oslo, near my apartment) and, like hundreds of other muslim schools throughout Europe right now, they were teaching a re-branding of history. Now, let me ask you this: Do you think these parents have the right to yank their kids out of secular education system in order to send them to an all religious school? Do you think these parents are "Qualified" to educate their children at home, or B.) send them to an all Muslim school?

It goes on all throughout Europe. In Turkey they even have a re-written History book (I'm looking for the article about it now), where they downplay western inventions and totally re-write the history of Western Europe--including WWII--and the world.

Great education they're getting over there.

Frank

 

[frank12]

frank, if parents believe in any of the above they will be pushing it on their kids with or without homeschooling.

FWIW most people I've come across who homeschool tend to be new-agey types, or conventional folks who live in areas with no decent schools, or families who don't spend enough time in one place.

CHirmoya,

Excellent point, and i agree with you 100%, but at least, at a secular school with other kids from other religions and backgrounds and nationalities, they're going to get challenged and questioned on their absurd beliefs. In other words, their forced to re-evaluate their beliefs that they're being taught and indoctrinated with at home. This helps them modify or re-question what they thought was true.

Frank

 

[cobraboy]

9.) How about if your parents are one of the millions of Muslims that deny the Holocaust ever happened and want to yank you out of a Western Secular education system becuase they're teaching you that the Holocaust really did happen and they're failing you on your history tests becuase you've been taught at home that the Holocaust is a Western Lie used to propogate and oppress Muslims.
?
In Norway, where i live part of the year, they have or had a Muslim school in Gronland (downtown Oslo, near my apartment) and, like hundreds of other muslim schools throughout Europe right now, they were teaching a re-branding of history. Now, let me ask you this: Do you think these parents have the right to yank their kids out of secular education system in order to send them to an all religious school? Do you think these parents are "Qualified" to educate their children at home, or B.) send them to an all Muslim school?

It goes on all throughout Europe. In Turkey they even have a re-written History book (I'm looking for the article about it now), where they downplay western inventions and totally re-write the history of Western Europe--including WWII--and the world.

Great education they're getting over there.

Frank

Frank, did you ever read the manifesto that Anders Breivi researched and wrote prior to his rampage? It may still be available on the net in .pdf. I have a copy if you're interested...

 

[cobraboy]

CHirmoya,

Excellent point, and i agree with you 100%, but at least, at a secular school with other kids from other religions and backgrounds and nationalities, they're going to get challenged and questioned on their absurd beliefs. In other words, their forced to re-evaluate their beliefs that they're being taught and indoctrinated with at home. This helps them modify or re-question what they thought was true.

Frank

Not if their critical thinking skills are not developed and slavish acceptance to education bureaucratic GroupThink orthodixy is emphasized...

 

[frank12]

Here's an article i wrote and was published in 2008 about the state of beliefs in Europe right now: PJ Media ? Allah in Europe – And on the Moon

Frank

 

[belgiank]

I think we are missing the point here. Yes, there are hundreds of thousands of lunatics, all over the world, and probably a lot of them will want to indoctrinate their kids.

That is not what this is about. This is about home-schooling, in other words giving your kids a regular education at home, so they can get their diploma, and apply for college or university. I assume that, if you teach your kids some crazy ideas about the evolution theory, they will flunk some science classes. If you teach them WWII did not happen, they will flunk history. Etc...

A number of years ago, I saw a documentary about home-schooling in Australia, where it is a necessity. The whole system was quite well organized. The kids had to sit regular hours in front of the computer, or in some cases in front of the communication system, and were in constant contact with their teacher. They had to do homework, and sent it in. They had to take oral exams, etc... And the teachers and parents also had regular contact.

Now, for me, that is a system which could work here, both for kids of expats, and the local kids.

As for the other home-schooling, I have always wondered how they can determine who takes the SAT test at the other end of the computer? Maybe daddy is a nuclear physicist, and is taking the test, while his moron of a son is playing Mario on the X-box.

Home education is allowed in Belgium, if there are valid reasons for it. An illness or disability for example. Nevertheless, at the end of the year that kid will have to take a test before a jury, and believe me, these tests are not easy. (if necessary the jury will go to the house)

BelgianK

 

[jojo2130]

A number of years ago, I saw a documentary about home-schooling in Australia, where it is a necessity. The whole system was quite well organized. The kids had to sit regular hours in front of the computer, or in some cases in front of the communication system, and were in constant contact with their teacher. They had to do homework, and sent it in. They had to take oral exams, etc... And the teachers and parents also had regular contact.

Now, for me, that is a system which could work here, both for kids of expats, and the local kids.

As for the other home-schooling, I have always wondered how they can determine who takes the SAT test at the other end of the computer? Maybe daddy is a nuclear physicist, and is taking the test, while his moron of a son is playing Mario on the X-box.

Home education is allowed in Belgium, if there are valid reasons for it. An illness or disability for example. Nevertheless, at the end of the year that kid will have to take a test before a jury, and believe me, these tests are not easy. (if necessary the jury will go to the house)

BelgianK

Hi BelgianK IMHO I wouldn't classify that as Home Schooling in the context I was considering. I Call that Connecting to the classroom via internet. The teacher is still delivering the lessons and the student is still one of many , albeit via digital attendance.
AS Pointed out earlier
You can Actually take the SATs here in the DR , And in Specified And authorized areas.

International students and the SAT

Last year, over 200,000 students took SAT? Program tests in over 175 countries outside the U.S. The SAT and SAT Subject Tests™ are offered overseas six times a year: in October, November, December, January, May, and June.

International test takers can choose from more than 1,000 international test centers listed online in the Student area of the website. A list of international test centers is also provided in the international edition of the The SAT Codelist, International Edition. Occasionally, supplementary test centers are opened on request where and when necessary. In most countries, students living more than 121 km (75 mi) from the nearest test center can request that we open a test center closer to their home.

See the list of SAT International Representatives who distribute test materials to test centers and students in the Middle East/North Africa, Africa, Asia, Australia, and Europe.[/SIZE]

Resource : SAT Testing - For International Students

 

[LaTeacher]

BelgianK, all standardized tests are taken in testing centers. So, the SAT is a presence-required exam with pretty strict standard (in New York, they sent some kids to jail for cheating (selling IDs for others to "sit the exam") And, in most places, the homeschooled students are required to take the local standardized tests (for record keeping purposes), and that means they have to take them in a school, not at home with their astronomical physicist mama taking the test for them.

 

[bob saunders]

CHirmoya,

Excellent point, and i agree with you 100%, but at least, at a secular school with other kids from other religions and backgrounds and nationalities, they're going to get challenged and questioned on their absurd beliefs. In other words, their forced to re-evaluate their beliefs that they're being taught and indoctrinated with at home. This helps them modify or re-question what they thought was true.

Frank

My middle son after attending his first ten years of school in British Columbia's public school system did his Grade 11 at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic High School in Tottenham Ontario where he had his first exposure to a religion class. He though it was awesome. They went to the Holocaust museum in Toronto, went to a Sikh temple, a Mosque, a Synagogue....etc. They covered all the major religions, discussed the similarities and the differences. He even wrote an essay entitled " There is no God " and received an A. He even liked wearing the uniform. Currently 24, he is not religious at all, but his Chinese girl is Buddhist.

 

[La Rubia]

It's not enough that i have to listen to a pastor talk about how Evolution is a Liberal Conspiracy, now i have to listen to FourSquare members, Jehovah Witnesses (a swedish girl that i want to get into her pants), Evangelists (a couple of hot girls i want to get into their pants as well), Mormons, Baptists, and a myriad of other religiously inclined people who gravitate down to this island to escape "Secularism."

That's totally messed up if they're at the bar. I'm starting to understand where your passion on the topic stems from. I live in the bible belt and don't hear much of that. Guess they need to go where the "sinners" are.

On a more personal note, I'm sure you'll have better luck getting some from the religious hotties AFTER brief and multiple "conversions".:devious:.

The point I am trying to make is that, in my opinion, few parents are able to educate their children on their own. Not due to lack of love or dedication, but teaching is a gift.

I am not against home-schooling, but it is for the select few. Unless there is a fantastic back-up system in place, with gifted teachers.
BelgianK

Think that's the heart of the matter.

 

[belgiank]

BelgianK, all standardized tests are taken in testing centers. So, the SAT is a presence-required exam with pretty strict standard (in New York, they sent some kids to jail for cheating (selling IDs for others to "sit the exam") And, in most places, the homeschooled students are required to take the local standardized tests (for record keeping purposes), and that means they have to take them in a school, not at home with their astronomical physicist mama taking the test for them.

Thank you for that answer. I just wondered how it worked.

So where is this test center in the DR?

 

[Chirimoya]

This article from the BBC website looks at another reason why some parents are homeschooling in the US:
BBC News - Home schooling: Why more black US families are trying it

 

[~~anna~~]

Then you misunderstand me.

You yourself said you were encouraged to study and advance. IMO, that is the very essence of what parents should do.

Even though minimally edumacated your parents understood the importance. That is a HUGE first step, and you have to start somewhere.

I hit the 'like' button but somehow accidentally hit the 'dislike' also. I totally agree that parents educate their children whether they intend to or not. Everything a parent does educates their child for good or bad. Parents, even if they themselves are not highly educated, can teach the importance of learning to others. All learning does NOT come from a book.
My mom only had an 8th grade education due to health and finances in her family in the 30's, but she was by no means uneducated! Hers just wasn't book learning....put her in the kitchen and she could put Paula Dean to shame and she knew how to do it on a very limited budget. Put her behind a sewing machine and all those hand-me-downs that this puny little girl rec'd from the neighbor's kids were restyled into something that fit to perfection. Show her a pic in a magazine and she could replicate it perfectly. I learned much from my 'uneducated' mom!

 

[frank12]

This article from the BBC website looks at another reason why some parents are homeschooling in the US:
BBC News - Home schooling: Why more black US families are trying it

CHiramoya,

Excellent find! Great article. i particulary found these quotes interesting:

"But home-schooling has traditionally been dominated by white Christian families in the rural south, who object to what they see as the public schools' liberal agenda on sex education and Darwinism."

"Another common complaint is that teachers are too ready to blame behavioural problems on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and encourage them to medicate their children with drugs such as Ritalin or Adderall."

"But even its most ardent advocates concede that home schooling is not for everyone.Only the most committed parents, who want to be involved in every aspect of their child's development and enjoy spending time with them, can make it work. Not all parents can keep up with the demands of the curriculum, particularly if they want their offspring to go to college. Many children who are home-schooled in their early years return to the class room when they reach secondary school age."


"Home-schooled children regularly win national spelling bees and get into top universities. But, argues Prof Rob Reich of Stanford University, nobody really knows how well the average home-schooled child measures up academically because it is hard to take a large enough random sample."
"We have little evidence to conclude home schools are better than public schools," he says.
"He says home-schooled children should be tested annually "to discover whether or not they are making even rudimentary progress" - and that public schools often produce better citizens because children are exposed to a greater diversity of beliefs and people."
"What you are looking to avoid is either the tyranny of the state in standardising every child in its own image - or the tyranny of the parent controlling every last aspect of a child's socialisation."
"You want a balanced authority that acts as a check on the potential tyranny of each agent."

 

[southwardbound2]

From what I am reading on this thread, I get the sense that very few posters have personal experience with "other than public" schooling, for either their children or in their own education.

Is that feeling I have correct?

 

[frank12]

Well, it took me a while to find this New York Times Article, but here is. It's one of the scariest stories i've read in a long time, especially when you think about the millions of children that will be raised with this history book: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/science/17book.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Here is a summary of what this guy is doing. Basically, he sent thousands of copies of a 12lbs re-written/white-washed History book around the world to nearly every major university. It was estimated that it would have cost millions of dollars just to print, publish, and mail thousands of his 12lbs books to every university and history professors throughout the world. His book is being used throughout Turkey and Islamic countries to teach a re-written, totally white-washed history of Islamic children. How would you like to get intot a debate with someone who took his history book as fact:

CreationismThe spread of organized Christian creationism to Islam began in the 1980s, when the Muslim minister of education in Turkey turned to the Institute of Creation Research (ICR), a Christian institution in Dallas Texas, for help in developing twofold curriculum that would teach evolution and creation side by side.
In 1990, the Science Research Foundation (BAV in Turkish) was formed in Istanbul, headed by Oktar.^[32]
Oktar for many years drew on the writings of young earth Christian creationists to develop his case against evolution. However, Islam does not require belief in Young Earth creationism, and making use of the fact that earth may have existed for billions of years, Oktar later produced material which was more similar to Intelligent Design. So similar in fact, that Harun Yahya's website was listed as an 'Islamic intelligent design' website by the Discovery Institute.^[32] However Oktar does not embrace use of the term 'Intelligent Design' due to its lack of specific mention of God, calling it 'another of Satan's snares'.^{[32] [33]}
In early 1998, the BAV launched its first campaign against evolution/Darwinism.^[7] Thousands of free copies of Adnan Oktar's book, The Evolution Deceit, and the booklets based on this book were distributed throughout Turkey.^[34] They regularly ran full-page ads against evolution in daily Turkish newspapers and even ran an ad in the U.S. magazine TIME.^[5] The funding of the campaigns is unknown.^[11] BAV spearheaded an effort to confront Turkish academics who taught evolutionary biology^[35] A number of faculty members were harassed, threatened and slandered in fliers, leading to legal action against BAV (see "Legal Issues" below).
In 2005, Professor ?mit Sayın summed up the effect of the BAV's campaign when he said to The Pitch:^[30]

In 1998, I was able to motivate six members of the Turkish Academy of Sciences to speak out against the creationist movement. Today, it's impossible to motivate anyone. They're afraid they'll be attacked by the radical Islamists and the BAV.
​

In September 2008 Oktar issued a challenge offering "10 trillion Turkish lira to anyone who produces a single intermediate-form fossil demonstrating evolution". He has claimed, "Not one [fossil] belongs to strange-looking creatures in the course of development of the kind supposed by evolutionists." Dr Kevin Padian at the University of California has criticized the notion that such fossils do not exist, stating that Oktar "does not have any sense of what we know about how things change through time. If he sees a fossil crab, he says, 'It looks just like a regular crab, there's no evolution.'"^[36]
However, the reaction of scientific community is negative and dismissive.
Taner Edis has said "there is nothing new in the Yahya material: scientifically negligible arguments and outright distortions often copied from Christian anti-evolution literature, presented with a conservative Muslim emphasis" concluding it "has no scholarly standing whatsoever".^[37] According to Richard Dawkins, Oktar "doesn't know anything about zoology, doesn't know anything about biology. He knows nothing about what he is attempting to refute".^[11]
In France, scientists spoke out against the book, and American scientists are unimpressed.^[38]

 

[southwardbound2]

Well, it took me a while to find this New York Times Article, but here is. It's one of the scariest stories i've read in a long time, especially when you think about the millions of children that will be raised with this history book: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/science/17book.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Here is a summary of what this guy is doing. Basically, he sent thousands of copies of a 12lbs re-written/white-washed History book around the world to nearly every major university. It was estimated that it would have cost millions of dollars just to print, publish, and mail thousands of his 12lbs books to every university and history professors throughout the world. His book is being used throughout Turkey and Islamic countries to teach a re-written, totally white-washed history of Islamic children. How would you like to get intot a debate with someone who took his history book as fact:

(rest of quote deleted due to length)

What does this have to do with homeschooling your children in the DR?