Does anyone else feel like we're all in kindergarten, and some kids got out of line, and the teacher makes everyone stay in from recess; while the principal bails out the misbehaving kids, gets them out of trouble— but the rest of us still have to stay inside as a punishment for the bad kids?
We've worked really hard to live against the norm. We paid off our home mortgage. We don't buy cars until we can pay for them. We have credit cards but we limit them, and pay them off each month. In other words, contrary to the country, we aren't in debt, and we even save money. We gave our government "economic stimulus" check (doesn't that seem a farce now?--of course, it did then, as well) back to the government by paying our property taxes with it.
When we went to the bank, they wanted to give us a bigger home loan, but we refused. We had to be the mature adults and tell the bank where to go with their big loans and high interest rates. But apparently, there are quite a few Americans who fall for those big numbers, and think banks know what they're doing. Now we know they don't. But why should we all have to pay for their mistakes?
Monday, September 22, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
agreed, but I think homeschoolers have little experience of your analogy.
ReplyDeleteJoe: There aren't very many of us homeschooling parents who were homeschooled ourselves (an therefore ignorant of the idea of "kindergarten". Many of us have had a real experience of kindergarten, and will therefore understand the analogy, I think.
ReplyDeleteI suspect even those who have been homeschooled understand group punishments. One child in the family misbehaves, and we are all told we can't go to the park now. Etc.
And after saying all this, I still suspect you're just teasing.
;-)
And after saying all this, I still suspect you're just teasing.
ReplyDeleteyes... a bit!
Also you mentioned a few posts ago a dream of winning great arguments over your writing; so there you go.
My wife and I are not homeschooling our five children. We've considered it for each of our kids, but in each case decided against it. I like to think that I'm raising a batch of rebels and sending them out for guerrilla warfare as soon as they can fight. And being of many strong opinions, I get to teach their teachers a bit when I find that public schooling isn't exactly going the way I want it to. Then there are the classmates from abusive homes, the ones with interesting family trees, some that don't speak English, the ones from "bumper sticker" families, the ones who don't bathe regularly, etc. I just don't think I'd be able to put together such an interesting fellowship for a homeschool group, but my local public school does a pretty good job of it.
- Joe in TX
A fellow homeschooler and I were just waxing eloquent yesterday over the extreme diversity of our respective homeschooling group families.
ReplyDeleteAnd as Chesterton so rightly stated, there is diversity enough in one family (or extended family, as was his understanding of the term "family") to teach us everything we need to know about tolerance, patience, justice, diversity, and humility.
And as Chesterton so rightly stated, there is diversity enough in one family ... to teach us everything we need to know about tolerance, patience, justice, diversity, and humility.
ReplyDeleteI agree. I even can learn patience by listening to my homeschooling friends wax eloquent on their extreme everythingness :)
My primary interest in public schooling is the opportunity for my family to come into contact with a real cross section of the city population every day. Evangelization.
Joe: You may be commended. Homeschoolers choose to meet the public, well, in the public; as opposed to, well, in the trial-by-fire, educational-theories-are-younger-than-the-students, age-segregated-peer-pressure -stronghold place we call school.
ReplyDeleteWe want our kids to be strong enough first, while they're growing, to become evangelizers.
But, stay involved, let the teachers know you care, you're watching, and you're holding them accountable, and you might be ok. But you know you can still decide to homeschool any time. ;-) Like when they start teaching your kids sex-ed. Or when your kids come home knowing who they should vote for, because the teacher said so.
Here here Nancy. I think the price we pay for this bailout will be oh so much more than staying in from recess. I'm afraid the political and economic fallout will be astronomical. Can anyone say Great Depression?
ReplyDeleteThis economic situation has been the one time my laziness has paid off, so many times relatives and friends told us to move, it would be easy to get a bigger (and unrealistic)mortgage. I like my small little abode. That said, you are right, now in the future it will be much harder for anyone to get financing, even within reason. To keep with your analogy, none of us get to go to the park now.
ReplyDeleteThis whole situation is very reminiscent of The Road to Serfdom by Hayek. I think it's astonishing that I got to watch his thesis take place so glaringly. For those who haven't read it, it says that although many think Socialism and Fascism to be opposites and were surprised to see "communist" states turn into fascists, fascism is a logical consequence of socialism. The reason for this being because Socialism is not a working system, so when the group of price controllers, et alia mess everything up because they can't possibly communicate with eachother effectively enough to change millions of prices ans such, a leader comes in and promises to fix everything if only they will give him absolute power because he won't be burdened by the existing bureaucracy and rules that are hampering the system now. This is what I see the current proposal of giving 700bn dollars to be given out without any restrictions and with no congressional or judicial oversight. We're put between a rock and a hard place because we all know that congress can't do it, and maybe Paulson can, but that brings us too close for comfort to one man rule and fascism.
ReplyDeleteI second Hayek. You may want to consider giving it to your high school student Nancy.
ReplyDelete