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Do moms unwittingly help create nanny state?
By Cindy Rollins On my blog this winter we are reading Anthony Esolen’s book Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child (2010, ISI Books). I won’t share with you all 10 chapters but I thought February, that worst of months for the homeschool mom, would be a good time to talk about the
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Without form and void; do manners matter?
By Franklin Sanders Culture gives a society form. Like a potter shaping his pots, culture forms and shapes not only art and literature, but all of everyday life in manners. Manners prescribe the form we use to deal with each other in every encounter, the form for properly dealing with birth, death,
Writing, if done often, becomes easier
By Cindy Rollins You may have noticed I tend to generalize. Richard Weaver in the introduction to his excellent book Ideas Have Consequences writes, “It is useless to argue against generalization; a world without generalization would be a world without knowledge.” Generalization is a tool that we
Traditional notions about college invite debt, prolonged adolescence
By Matt Trewhella In America today, everyone thinks you should just go to college after you’re done with high school. Parents just assume it is their duty to make sure their child goes off to the university. Very little thought goes into this decision — other than which university. I want to
True education reorders the affections
By Cindy Rollins In recent newsletters I have written a lot of what could be called “philosophy.” This can be frustrating for some moms. You can hear them shouting, “Don’t tell me what to think, tell me what to do.” But the truth is if you get your thinking straight you can make almost any
Interruptions & the homeschool autopilot
By Cindy Rollins With school starting, we generally turn our minds toward planning and comparing. Some moms are busy bees planning all summer long, and other moms like to fly by the seat of their pants or maybe I should say enjoy the more serendipitous route. I have seen families successfully homeschool
How the factory school serves big business and breeds dependency
One of our all-time favorite books is John Taylor Gatto’s “Underground History of American Education,” a narrative of how industrialists, behaviorists, humanists and intellectual luminaries brought about the landscape-changing institution commonly known as public school. This excerpt will be well
The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher
Call me Mr. Gatto, please. Twenty-six years ago, having nothing better to do, I tried my hand at schoolteaching. My license certifies me as an instructor of English language and literature, but that isn’t what I do at all. What I teach is school, and I win awards doing it. Teaching means
Homeschooling—with cleats on
By Cindy Rollins It comes as no surprise that many families decide not to homeschool through high school. All kinds of things factor into the equation: The abundance of private education in our area, moms feeling inadequate, misconceptions about public education, misunderstandings about getting children
Homeschooling with God in the driver’s seat
By Yvonne Clark As a mother who teaches her young children at home, I am frequently asked, “What are you gonna do about teaching chemistry?” Admittedly, chemistry is not the only subject that people are concerned about, sometimes it’s also physics, foreign language, calculus, or biology. Homeschooling