"Should I Homeschool?"

Most families that homeschool at one time or another will get a question from a non-homeschooling family about whether they should educate their own children at home. My normal response is that I don't know whether it's the right thing for them to do. It's worked for our children for quite a while and I wouldn't dream of sending them off to school. But just because it has worked out for our family does not necessarily mean that it will work for someone else. Every family is different and each couple has to decide whether they are both willing and able to undertake the homeschooling journey.

An op-ed in the Denver Post by an expectant father raises some good questions about homeschooling. Since I am always happy to share our experiences with someone who is curious about homeschooling, I thought I would take this opportunity to address some of the author's concerns.

He starts out by saying that he's pretty sure that he and his wife couldn't homeschool. I don't know either one of them personally but I'm willing to bet their probably selling themselves short. To the uninitiated, the idea of homeschooling a child may seem a bit staggering. Many of the succesful homeschool families we know (ourselves included) wrestle with feelings of inadequacy. This is a perfectly normal feeling to have and by itself shouldn't be an inhibitor to considering homeschooling your children.

Another common fallacy among non-homeschoolers is that in order to be successful you have to operate your homeschool on the same type of schedule that public schools operate on. By this I mean that a lot of families think they need to devote six or seven or more hours of classroom time a day to get all of the work done. My wife was a schoolteacher when we first met and she has told me many times that there is much time wasted in a typical public school day. While everyone's experiences are different, we've found that we can usually accomplish what needs to be done in about four hours a day and sometimes less time than that. The reason for this is simple: with fewer students (we only have two daughters) it's easier to focus on their needs and maximize the instruction time with them.

The author also brings up the typical concern about socialization. Our kids are involved in a lot of stuff that dovetails into their school experience that gives them an opportunity to meet other kids and learn to deal with relating to them. Sure, it is a concern, but most homeschool parents will tell you that their kids don't lack for opportunities to socialize with other kids.

Homeschooling does take sacrifice. There are extra costs involved that you wouldn't have to pay if you send your kids to public school. It requires a lot of time and a lot of work. By choosing to homeschool you are potentially setting yourself up for ridicule by neighbors, friends and parents who don't understand why you're doing this to your children.

But let me offer some other things to be considered. The rewards of homeschooling (at least in our experience) far outweigh those costs. Remember, too, that homeschooling is not for everyone.

First, before you decide to take the plunge and homeschool, talk with other families that are currently homeschooling. You'll find a wide range of experiences from these families and each can give you their own unique reasons for deciding to homeschool.

Second, don't feel like you have to make a lifetime commitment. Homeschooling is best taken one year at a time. When we started, we were only signing on for a year. In fact, we started because our oldest daughter had missed the cutoff for public school by one day. At five years old, however, she was already starting to read on her own. We figured we had nothing to lose by homeschooling her that first year since she couldn't go to public school until after she turned six. We haven't looked back since. However, we've known several families that have homeschooled for a few years and then returned their kids to public school. Every family's choice will be different. You need to not be afraid to make the choice that will work best for you.

Third, remember that you are never alone. It's important to seek out support from other homeschooling families (likely the same families you talked to when you were deliberating about whether to start). Other families and co-op groups can help fill in the gaps especially in the high school years as subjects become increasingly complex. You also will need to have people around you that you can discuss your frustrations with when you've had a particularly tough day (and it's inevitable you'll have some of those along the way).

Fourth, flexibility is your friend. If something isn't working you can change it. This is especially true when it comes to selecting curriculum as there are numerous options out there and no one program will fit every child's needs. You will also discover that learning is not only confined to the classroom or to your school time. Instead, life becomes your classroom and opportunities to learn will present themselves at every turn.

Finally, homeschooling will offer your child the opportunity to learn far more than he or she can in a public school setting. The reason that homeschool students typically perform better on those standardized tests is that they are getting a broader education that is more tailored to their needs and their learning style than a public school ever can be.

There's no doubt that homeschooling is more difficult than sending your child to public school. But in our experience it is a far more rewarding choice.

If you'd like to discuss homeschooling further or have questions about our homeschooling journey, please feel free to e-mail me at tomshelley at comcast dot net.

Things I Wish I Knew When I Was In College

Like most of my fellow students, I was totally unprepared for my college years. Looking back there are plenty of things that I wish that I knew then. I think they would have made me a better student and I probably would have gotten more out of those four years than I did. Paul Spears has a great list of things that he wishes he knew. It's a great list to pass on to anyone about to go into college.

Hat tip: Joe Carter

Monks Under Fire

As if we need any more examples of the government trampling on individual liberty, here's a real winner: monks that are facing jail time and fines for the high crime of building caskets. Yep, you read that correctly. Read the whole story and be outraged.

It's Just as Well That This Is Over

I'm forever giving advice to my daughters on things to look for in a potential mate. Now I can add this to the list: if the guy won't sacrifice himself to protect you from a foul ball then he's not worth having. Case in point:

Now the girl would like us to believe that their relationship didn't end because of the foul ball. But I think we all know better.

Hat tip: Powerline

Some Thoughts On Homeschooling

One of the questions I often get from folks when I tell them that we homeschool our girls is about socialization. I've seen lots of other homeschoolers who have faced the same question. Here's one mom's answer to that perennial question and a really good one at that.

More Advice for Guys

Consider this a counterpoint to the other list I linked to earlier that compiled things every guy should be able to do. Joe Carter returns with a list of things guys should never do. I especially like #6 and #28 but it's all really sound advice.

Some Advice for Guys

Pay attention, guys. Here's a list of 50 things that every man needs to know how to do. Looking over the list it looks like I have my work cut out for me.

So Long, Lou

Chicago Cubs manager Lou Pinella has announced he will retire at the end of the season:

After managing 23 seasons, winning one World Series and three Manager of the Year Awards, Lou Piniella has decided to retire after finishing the season with the Cubs.

Piniella, who turns 67 on Aug. 28, issued a statement on Tuesday, saying he wanted to enter a new phase in his life.

"I couldn't be more appreciative of the Cubs organization for providing me the opportunity to manage this ballclub," Piniella said in his statement. "I've had four wonderful years here that I wouldn't trade for anything in the world.

"I've grown to love the city and the fans, but at my age, it will be time to enter a new phase in my life," he said. "It will enable me to spend more valuable time with my family -- my wife, my kids and my grandchildren. God has blessed me to have been able to work this many years in the game that I love."

Pinella's contract was due to expire at the end of the season and there had been extensive speculation swirling around the Cubs whether he would stay on after this year. No doubt the team's lack of success this year had to be a factor.

Two questions: First, who will be his successor? Ryne Sandberg is the sentimental favorite but if Joe Torre decides not to re-sign with the Dodgers at the end of the season he could be the top candidate. Second, will Lou Pinella be elected to the Hall of Fame? I think the answer is yes, eventually, he will get in but with Bobby Cox retiring this year and Joe Torre and Tony LaRussa both shoe-ins for the Hall as soon as they retire he may be waiting a little while for the call from Cooperstown.

Thanks for the memories, Lou. It's been a great ride.

Quick Takes 7-2-10

A few random links of interest for the Independence Day weekend:

Reflecting on the results of Jefferson's efforts.

What Congress took out of the Declaration of Independence.

Independence Forever!

The Federalist Society now has a blog.

50 reasons why America isn't what it used to be.

Examining Bonhoeffer.

Have a great weekend

Poirot Murder on the Orient Express 2009

One of Agatha Christie's most famous novels has to be "Murder on the Orient Express". David Suchet's version of the film appears here in the US on July 11th and it promises to be absolutely fantastic. Click on the video below to watch the trailer.

Leadership

In a time of crisis, the public expects its leader to be able to step up and, well, lead. A lot has been written on President Obama's failure to lead during the Gulf Oil Spill crisis and much of that criticism is well-founded. But the first step in leading during a crisis is to recognize that you have a crisis to begin with. This got me thinking about a scene from one of my favorite movies, Apollo 13, in which flight director Gene Kranz (played perfectly by Ed Harris) sets the tone for management of the crisis right from the outset:



Kranz would several times throughout the rescue effort have to focus his people on the fundamental problems facing them. He was the one who coined the phrase "Failure is not an option" and made that his team's slogan. He also focused his team on the goal which was getting the astronauts home and didn't get caught up in assigning blame for the accident. He knew there would plenty of time to sort that out later on.

President Obama could learn a thing or to from Gene Kranz. Perhaps if he had handled the oil spill the same way Kranz handled the explosion aboard Apollo 13 there would be a lot less oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.

Put Me In, Coach

In 1984, John Fogerty was trying to make a musical comeback with his album, Centerfield. He didn't know at the time the album would end up being a huge hit. The title track was his love song to baseball. He didn't think that would get much airplay. He was wrong. It was an immediate sensation and was played at ballparks everywhere. More importantly, it's been the opening song played at the National Baseball Hall of Fame's induction ceremony for the past 10 years. On July 25, the Hall of Fame will honor the song during this year's induction ceremony. If baseball didn't already have an anthem in "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" then "Centerfield" would certainly be it.

Baseball's Anthem

It's over 100 years old and one of the most popular songs ranking only behind "Happy Birthday" and "The Star Spangled Banner" in how many times it is sung. It was written by a guy who had never even seen a baseball game (at least up to that point). It wasn't sung in ballparks until about thirty years after it was written yet it was a huge hit at the time of its initial release. It is of course, Take Me Out to the Ballgame. The Baseball Hall of Fame has the entire fascinating history of the song.

On my very first trip to Wrigley Field, I got to join in with the crowd and the king of the anthem, Harry Caray in singing the song during the 7th inning stretch. Caray more than anyone else helped popularize the song.

So Long, Ernie

One of the all-time great baseball broadcasters is gone. Ernie Harwell, long time voice of the Detroit Tigers, has died.

Tiger fans had as close a connection to Harwell as any fans have had to an announcer. In one of the most knuckleheaded moves ever, the management of the Tigers' flagship station WJR allowed Harwell's contract to expire at the end of the 1991 season. The outrage from fans was so great that the station brought him back in 1993 and he would broadcast until he retired in 2002.
He's also probably the only announcer to ever be traded for a catcher. That's how he started his major league career in 1948 when the Brooklyn Dodgers acquired him from the minor league Atlanta Crackers. It seems the Crackers needed a catcher and one of the oddest trades ever was born.

When he was inducted into the Hall of Fame, he closed out his acceptance speech with his own definition of baseball. (Audio) He got it exactly right:

Baseball is the President tossing out the first ball of the season and a scrubby schoolboy playing catch with his dad on a Mississippi farm. A tall, thin old man waving a scorecard from the corner of his dugout. That’s baseball. And so is the big, fat guy with a bulbous nose running home one of his (Babe Ruth’s) 714 home runs.

There’s a man in Mobile who remembers that Honus Wagner hit a triple in Pittsburgh forty-six years ago. That’s baseball. So is the scout reporting that a sixteen year old pitcher in Cheyenne is a coming Walter Johnson. Baseball is a spirited race of man against man, reflex against reflex. A game of inches. Every skill is measured. Every heroic, every failing is seen and cheered, or booed. And then becomes a statistic.

In baseball democracy shines its clearest. The only race that matters is the race to the bag. The creed is the rulebook. Color merely something to distinguish one team’s uniform from another. Baseball is a rookie. His experience no bigger than the lump in his throat as he begins fulfillment of his dream. It’s a veteran too, a tired old man of
thirty-five hoping that those aching muscles can pull him through another sweltering August and September. Nicknames are baseball, names like Zeke and Pie and Kiki and Home Run and Cracker and Dizzy and Dazzy.

Baseball is the cool, clear eyes of Rogers Hornsby. The flashing spikes of Ty Cobb, and an over-aged pixie named Rabbit Maranville.

Baseball just a came as simple as a ball and bat. Yet, as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes. A sport, a business and sometimes almost even a religion.

Why the fairy tale of Willie Mays making a brilliant World’s Series catch. And then dashing off to play stick ball in the street with his teenage pals. That’s baseball. So is the husky voice of a doomed Lou Gehrig saying, “I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.”

Baseball is cigar smoke, hot roasted peanuts, The Sporting News, ladies day, “Down in Front”, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, and the Star Spangled Banner.

Baseball is a tongue tied kid from Georgia growing up to be an announcer and praising the Lord for showing him the way to Cooperstown. This is a game for America. Still a game for America, this baseball! Thank you.

So long, Ernie. We'll miss you.

The Health Insurance Mandate and the Constitution

One of the more controversial provisions of the recently-enacted health insurance reform bill is the mandate for all individuals to purchase health insurance. But as Randy Barnett points out in a op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today, the mandate isn't likely to pass constitutional muster:

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) includes what it calls an "individual responsibility requirement" that all persons buy health insurance from a private company. Congress justified this mandate under its power to regulate commerce among the several states: "The individual responsibility requirement provided for in this section," the law says, ". . . is commercial and economic in nature, and substantially affects interstate commerce, as a result of the effects described in paragraph (2)." Paragraph (2) then begins: "The requirement regulates activity that is commercial and economic in nature: economic and financial decisions about how and when health care is paid for, and when health insurance is purchased."

In this way, the statute speciously tries to convert inactivity into the "activity" of making a "decision." By this reasoning, your "decision" not to take a job, not to sell your house, or not to buy a Chevrolet is an "activity that is commercial and economic in nature" that can be mandated by Congress.

It is true that the Supreme Court has interpreted the Commerce Clause broadly enough to reach wholly intrastate economic "activity" that substantially affects interstate commerce. But the Court has never upheld a requirement that
individuals who are doing nothing must engage in economic activity by entering
into a contractual relationship with a private company. Such a claim of power is
literally unprecedented.

Professor Barnett also co-authored a more detail analysis of the individual mandate found here. He also wrote an excellent analysis on the constitutionality of the legislation here.

ObamaCare was passed with little regard for the constitutionality of its provisions. Although there is a popular move to repeal the bill the more likely dismantling of the law will come through the courts. With Justice Stevens retiring, the President's Supreme Court nominee takes on a new importance.

NARAL Chief: "They Are So Young!"

According to LifeSiteNews, NARAL president Nancy Keenan has grudgingly admitted what many in the pro-life movement have seen: young women are flocking to the defense of the unborn (Hat tip: James Taranto):

The pro-life movement in America is growing in leaps and bounds, attracting young, zealous women to defend the unborn in droves - a fact that even the president of NARAL has now admitted.

NARAL's Nancy Keenan told Newsweek last week that she considers herself a member of the "postmenopausal militia" – a phrase that captures the situation of pro-abortion leaders who are aging across the board, including the leadership of Planned Parenthood, and the National Organization for Women. Newsweek's Sarah Kliff notes that "these leaders will retire in a decade or so."

Keenan also remarked on the enormity of this year's March for Life in Washington, D.C., and, according to Newsweek, is troubled that such passion has faded among the youth on her side of the movement.

"I just thought, my gosh, they are so young," Keenan said about stumbling on this year’s March for Life in Washington. "There are so many of them, and they are so young."

While March for Life estimates it drew 400,000 pro-lifers to Washington for this year's March, Planned Parenthood's "Stop Stupak" rally in December only
drew about 1,300 attendees.

In addition, Newsweek revealed that NARAL's own research on American youth shows more reason for Keenan to worry: a survey conducted by the group found that, while 51 percent of pro-life voters under 30 considered abortion a "very important" voting issue, only 26 percent of abortion supporters in the same demographic felt similarly.

James Taranto attributes this "enthusiasm gap" among abortion activists to what he terms "the Roe Effect". In simple terms, the theory is that pro-abortion women are not having babies and therefore are not raising children to carry on their pro-abortion beliefs. While it may still take a while to play out politically, perhaps we are finally starting to see signs that America is becoming a more pro-life nation at last.

Miracle on Ice

It's been thirty years since the Miracle on Ice and this video still gives me chills to watch:

DVD Review: Emma

My review of Emma has been posted at Blogcritics. Please check it out and let me know what you think. Also, if you've seen the series, I would love to know what you thought of it.

It seems inevitable with any new adaptation of a Jane Austen novel there are comparisons to previous versions. I think this one was as good as the previous version with Gwyneth Paltrow. It doesn't have the same amount of humor but the relationships seem to be better developed due to the fact there was more time taken to tell the story.

DVD Review: Return to Cranford

My review of Return to Cranford is now available at Blogcritics. Be sure to go check it out.

After we finished watching it the first time we then watched the first series and then the second series back to back. The second was very good but still not quite as charming as the first. I think that mostly has to do with the fact that both Michael Gambon and Eileen Atkins had wonderful roles in the first series (but both characters die during the course of the first series) and they really stood out from everyone else.

It really says something to me when my girls (12 and 14) are asking me to watch these series (or whatever other British period drama) we're in the middle of instead of other things.

Jon Miller To Be Honored By Hall Of Fame

Frankly, this honor is long overdue:

Jon Miller grew up doting on some of baseball's legendary broadcasters, and has spent the last 36 years working with -- and on occasion memorably impersonating -- new generations of verbal artists.

Monday, Miller joined the legends of the booth as the 2010 recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award.

Well into his fourth decade behind the mic and currently the vibrant voice of the San Francisco Giants, Miller was announced as the latest honoree of the award presented annually since 1978 in recognition of contributions to baseball broadcasting.

Ford C. Frick Award winners have their own wing in Cooperstown's Hall of Fame, and announcement of Miller's selection by a specially-selected 20-member electorate was made by Jeff Idelson, the president of the Hall of Fame who called the 36-year veteran of local and national broadcasts "one of baseball's most recognizable voices."

Miller is currently play-by-play announcer for the San Francisco Giants as well as the voice of ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball. If Jon Miller is calling the game it doesn't matter as much to me who is playing. I know it will be a great game to listen to knowing he's behind the microphone. Congratulations on this long overdue recognition by the Hall.