A nice collection of Great Quotes

My mother sent me a link to a site with some Great Quotes from Great Leaders.


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Technorati tags: great, quotes

Interesting: TradeStats Express™ - State Export Data

A friend sent me an interesting link to TradeStats Express™ - State Export Data.

From the help section:

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TradeStats Express displays the latest annual U.S. merchandise trade statistics -

• At national and state levels.
• In maps, graphs, and tables.
• As exports, imports, and trade balances.
• Custom-tailored to your year and dollar ranges and display preferences.

It is divided into two main sections: National Trade Data and State Export Data. For each section, the basic tools (for example, choosing product classifications, downloading the data, seeing a print preview) are the same. The links at left will help you use these tools.

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If you, or a child, is interested in business or trade, this is an educational web site.

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Technorati tags: trade

We've arrived

We arrived in Carlsbad around 6:00 PM yesterday. We checked in to a motel, then had dinner at Marie Calendars. For our daughters one of the most important things when traveling is to go swimming. We swam last night for almost an hour.

While traveling yesterday through Los Angeles I thought often Dionne Warwick's song "Do you know the way to San Jose?" One of the lines is:

"L.A. is a great big freeway."

The freeways go on and on and on.

The girls are now happily watching "Scooby Doo." We'll head down for breakfast soon and then off to Legoland.


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Technorati tags: legoland, vacation

Blogging may be light for a couple days

We are heading for Legoland in an hour or two. We'll drive down today, go to Legoland Thursday and Friday, then drive back on Saturday.

Janine and I will be sharing one laptop, so I don't know how much blogging we'll be doing in the next couple days.

It turns out this is a good time to go. The weather is suppose to be very hot inour city the next couple days, climbing close to 100, while down at Legoland it will be in the mid 70s!


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Technorati tags: legoland, vacation

The Carnival of Homeschooling is up

This week's Carnival of Homeschooling is at Mom is Teaching.




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Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, parenting, children, education, Carnival of Homeschooling

Powerful Learning Trick - the continuing saga

Three months ago I came across Lisa's blog, Home School Evangelist where she shares a tip on how to have a Powerful Learning Trick. The core of the trick is for the learner to consciously think about what they have learned and then record it. A two sentence summary can lock in a half hour lesson.

This seems like is a great technique. I pondered for awhile on how to get my daughters to incorporate it in their daily learning. I decided to start off by bribing them. We went to Office Max and each girl picked out a bound notebook. During our morning planning session I asked them to add writing in their learning journal as one of the things they would do that day.

In the evening, after dinner I reminded the girls about their learning journal. If they had remembered on their own they would get six points. If they hadn't, but would then go write down some of what they learned that day, they would get three points. I want them to develop the habit of recording the key points of a lesson, on their own. I want them to take ownership. Each point was worth a little candy, for example one chocolate kiss or two Skittles.

My thirteen and eleven year old girls have done pretty well. Over two thirds of the time they would remember to write something in their learning journal. My seven year old really struggled. She has a harder time. She is still learning how to spell words, and how to be responsible.

Today the youngest was so proud, she remembered and wrote down several sentences on her own!!! I am very pleased.

My plan is over the long run to reduce the frequency of the treats. Maybe I'll start doing it three times a day, then two times a day, and then once a week. I'll randomly pick a day, and if they happened to record something that day, then they'll get the six months.

Try out something like a learning journal for a couple weeks and let me know if it works.


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Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, parenting, children

Introduction to the Carnival of Homeschooling

The Carnival of Homeschooling is a weekly blog carnival. The carnival showcases posts about homeschooling from both seasoned and new bloggers. Various bloggers take turns hosting the carnival.

We welcome posts about homeschooling. You can learn how to submit a post.

The archive of past carnival will provide hours, or days, of distraction. The carnival started in January of 2006, so there are over a hundred editions.

The schedule has who will be hosting in the next couple months.


You can help promote the carnival by adding the carnival images. Learn how by going here.












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Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, parenting, children, education, Carnival of Homeschooling

We have the winners of the Carnival of Homeschooling images contest

Late last year we kicked off a contest for graphics to represent the Carnival of Homeschooling. We had great participation in January. You can see all the entries for small, medium and whatever sizes.

After getting dozens of submissions, my wife and I narrowed the contest down to a dozen or so. We then asked people to vote. The voting ended late in March.

Below are the winners. (I took so long to announce the winners because I was trying to figure out a good way to host the images.)


Nancy of The Kings Kreation won the prize for the small image:





Eric Novak of The Voice of Experience won the prize for the medium size image:





Amy of ....In Pursuit of Proverbs 31 won the prize for the Whatever size image:





Please use these images on your blog to help promote the Carnival of Homeschooling. You should be able to just add the following HTML to your template or a post and not have to worry about down loading and uploading the images.



Small:

<a title="Carnival of Homeschooling" href="http://whyhomeschool.blogspot.com/2008/04/carnival-of-homeschooling.html">
<img alt="Carnival of Homeschooling" width="80" height="15" border="0" src="http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll227/hcate3/SmallA.jpg" /> </a>


Medium:

<a title="Carnival of Homeschooling" href="http://whyhomeschool.blogspot.com/2008/04/carnival-of-homeschooling.html">
<img alt="Carnival of Homeschooling" width="75" height="75" border="2" src="http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll227/hcate3/ImageC.jpg" /> </a>


Large:

<a title="Carnival of Homeschooling" href="http://whyhomeschool.blogspot.com/2008/04/carnival-of-homeschooling.html">
<img alt="Carnival of Homeschooling" width="160" height="200" border="0" src="http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll227/hcate3/WhateverImageA.png" > </a>



Thank you all for your help and support.


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Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, parenting, children, education, Carnival of Homeschooling

I learned a new term: educational romanticism

Charles Murray is co-author of the Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. In The Age of Educational Romanticism he explains:

"Educational romanticism consists of the belief that just about all children who are not doing well in school have the potential to do much better. Correlatively, educational romantics believe that the academic achievement of children is determined mainly by the opportunities they receive; that innate intellectual limits (if they exist at all) play a minor role; and that the current K-12 schools have huge room for improvement."

As in the "Bell Curve" Charles Murray writes about the importance of people's native abilities, and the limits their basic intelligences has on what they can learn. He sees the NCLB law as being fundamentally flawed because it wanted to make all children above average:

"Many laws are too optimistic, but the No Child Left Behind Act transcended optimism. It set a goal that was devoid of any contact with reality."

Charles believes the Age of Educational Romanticism is coming to an end:

"The good news is that educational romanticism is surely teetering on the edge of collapse."

I am afraid I am not as optimistic. I think the lumbering education bureaucracy of government schools will continue to exist for another generation.

The Age of Educational Romanticism is a long article with several interesting points, well worth reading.


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Technorati tags: government schools, public school, public education, education

Are We Running Out of Food?

There has been a lot of news recently about how the government's push for ethanol has caused stravation in African countries. I enjoyed Kel Kelly's explanation in Are We Running Out of Food?


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Technorati tags: food

An Interview with Charles Barber: Comfortably Numb

I enjoyed Michael F. Shaughnessy's interview with Charles Barber on his book Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation. In the interview Charles Barber says:

"I make it clear in every interview I do that the drugs can be very effective – life-saving – for legitimate psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression.What's happened is that we've generalized the use of the drugs every outward to less and less severe conditions, and to everyday life problems.
As you move into lesser or non-mental illnesses, the cost-benefit ratio of the drugs becomes more dubious, and we overlook some common-sense approaches to everyday problems and milder depression that can be very effective --changes in diet, exercise, cognitive-behavioral and other therapies.
I argue that certainly for everyday problems of living the drugs are not the answer."

It looks like a book worth reading. I have read too much instances of children being giving heavy duty drugs for normal situations.


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Technorati tags: psychiatric, drugs, mental illnesses

Canadian Canadian Home Educators Blog Carnival is up

The 3rd edition of the Canadian Canadian Home Educators Blog Carnival is up.


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Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, parenting, children, education

What should we call schools run by the government?

David W. Kirkpatrick's recent column What Are "Public" Schools? challenges us to reconsider just what label we use when referring to schools run by the government.

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The working definition of words is ultimately whatever is most widely accepted and virtually everyone uses "public schools" to mean the current government owned and operated system. Government owned and operated is, by definition, socialism but to say so upsets the education establishment. A few persons have begun to use the term "government schools" as being more accurate.
To this many in the school establishment vehemently object. Like a character in Alice in Wonderland they want words to mean exactly what they say. They realize that to speak of "public" schools is more effective than to talk about "private" schools, especially when attempting to persuade taxpayers to foot the bill for them.
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I will start using the phrase "government schools" more often in the blog.

He continues with:

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Yet this was not preordained. As Milton Friedman pointed out, government uses tanks, planes and ships but does not own factories that manufacture them. Similarly, it uses private construction companies to build public buildings and highways. Yet somehow it eased into owning and operating an education delivery system even though that required overcoming strong public opposition, a history that has long since been forgotten, if ever recalled at all.. Private institutions which died did not do so because they didn't work but because they couldn't compete with a publicly funded "free" monopoly.
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I like the thought at the end of the column:

"Americans, with our supposed love of freedom and democracy, never question the right of the state to proselytize children. That to me is one of the great affronts to human liberty."
Gore Vidal, p. 44, MM Interview, pp 62-70, Tom Wicker, Modern Maturity, April-May 1994


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Technorati tags: government schools, public school, public education, education

The cost of public education is more than publicly acknowledged

The cost to educate students in K-12 is high. In the United States the national average is over $9,000 a year. That is per student, each year, $9,000! I've joked once or twice that it would be cheaper to offshore our public education. We could fly our students to India and educate them there, saving thousands of dollars, per student.

Well Richard G. Neal says the reality is the costs are much higher. In Free Public Schools are Far from Free Actual Costs Greatly Exceed Published Costs he explains:

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Unlike businesses in the private sector, public school budgets often exclude many significant costs when computing expenditures, thus giving misleading information to the public. The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (OCPA) found this to be the case in its comprehensive study, "Education in Oklahoma: The Real Costs." Based upon my hands-on experience with school budgets around the nation, the findings of this report are generally applicable to other states.
The report says that the state government's "official" per-pupil cost of education in Oklahoma in the 2003-04 school year (latest available figures) was $6,429. This amount was derived by the procedure commonly practiced in school districts nationally, that is, by dividing the (published) school district budget by the number of students in the district. However, when OCPA performed its thorough accounting according to the generally accepted accounting principles as promulgated by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, it came up with a shocking real per-pupil cost of $11,250.
Why the difference? Unlike private-sector businesses, the government's school accounting systems exclude many significant and legitimate costs. If the CEO and finance division of any publicly held company attempted to influence public opinion with such misstated public financial data, they likely would be subject to criminal and civil prosecution. Remember Enron and WorldCom?
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That is amazing. The true cost of public education may be twice as high as the published numbers.

Richard then goes on to explain some of the hidden costs:

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Unbelievably, the "official" per-pupil cost did not include – according to OCPA accounting procedures – a number of significant expenditures. (1) Oklahoma taxpayers subsidize the retirement benefits of Oklahoma teachers by having part of taxpayers' individual income taxes, sales taxes, and use taxes sent directly to the Teachers Retirement System of Oklahoma, thus bypassing incorporation into local school district budgets. (2) The state's Department of Career and Technology pays for part of middle and high school business and industry programs. Again, not reported in the local district budget. (3) Yearly depreciation of school buildings is not included in district budgets. This unaccounted-for wear and tear amounted to about $2.2 billion in 2000. (4) The Teachers' Retirement System of Oklahoma defined benefit plan annually adds debt that will be paid for by future generations. In 2003, the total unfounded liability of the retirement system was $1.93 billion. This same problem exists in state retirement funds throughout the nation, where 45 states have gaps between assets and promised benefits.
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Unfortunately there are even more hidden costs. Read Richard's column for more details.


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Technorati tags: public school, public education, education

Reminder - send in a post for the next Carnival of Homeschooling

The next Carnival of Homeschooling, which will be hosted at Mom Is Teaching.

As always, entries are due Monday evening at 6:00 PM Pacific Standard Time.

Here are the instructions for sending in a submission.


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Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, parenting, children, education, Carnival of Homeschooling

Maybe we should have our babies born in Canada

Recently I read a column about how some parents in Canada come to the United States for the birth of their children. Parents are not able to get good medical care in Canada in some situations. (I can not remember where I read this column.)

Judy Aron reports on a recent federal law which makes me wonder if now parents will be trying to have their children born in Canada. In Bush Signs Bill To Take All Newborns' DNA Judy explains:

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Last week President Bush signed into law a bill S. 1858, known as The Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act of 2007 which will allow the federal government to begin to screen the DNA of all newborn babies in the U.S. within six months. This is a move by the government to initiate the establishment of a national DNA database. (Wasn't there an episode of X-File like this?) The justification for this law is that it represents preparation for any sort of "public health emergency." The bill states that the federal government should "continue to carry out, coordinate, and expand research in newborn screening" and "maintain a central clearinghouse of current information on newborn screening... ensuring that the clearinghouse is available on the Internet and is updated at least quarterly." Like we want that information on the Internet too right?
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(Update I - 12 May 08)

My brother found a lecture by Mark Steyn which I think may have been what I vaguely remembered: “Is Canada's Economy a Model for America?”


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Technorati tags: baby, DNA

I am glad I'm not the principal at this school

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports:

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For school officials in Haverford Township, the challenge was daunting: What do you do when a 9-year-old student, with the full support of his parents, decides that he is no longer a boy and instead is a girl?
Parents of a third-grade student at Chatham Park Elementary School approached the administration on April 16 to ask for help in making a "social transition" for their child.
The Haverford School District consulted experts on transgender children, then sent letters to parents advising them that the guidance counselor would meet with the school's 100 third-grade students to explain why their classmate would now wear girls' clothes and be called by a girl's name.
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Wow. What a mess.

If the parents really want to go forward with this, it seems like it would have been better for the poor child to quietly withdraw him from one elementary school and enter the student at another school.

(Hat tip: Best of the Web)


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Technorati tags: parenting, children, public school, public education, education

Television show attacking fathers

Kathleen Parker has a good column at a planned FOX TV show designed to attack deadbeat fathers. In The Father of All Bad Ideas she explains why this show is a bad idea. There seems to be a trend to bash men, to bash fathers, and to bash males in general. This show will go after fathers who are accused of not supporting their children enough. But Kathleen explains:

"The more accurate picture of a deadbeat dad is an unemployed or underemployed bloke who sees more jail cells than golf courses. A common sequence of events for the poorest deadbeat dads goes something like this: Fall behind in child support, get arrested and put in jail, lose your job, fall further behind in child support."

I was surpised to learn:

"Clearly, some men are sinners and some women are saints. But sometimes the reverse is true. In fact, noncustodial mothers are 20 percent more likely to default on child support than noncustodial fathers, according to U.S. Census data. But we don’t see a reality show aimed at humiliating moms."


Glenn Sacks focuses on the double standard men are held to in the legal system. If a male teacher has sex with a student they can be facing decades in jail. If a female teacher has sex with a student they might only spend a couple months.

Recently he wrote Man Stabbed in Domestic Dispute, Almost Dies--and KABC Morning Hosts Think It's Funny:

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I was dismayed when KABC entertainment reporter Debra Mark (pictured) lightly and semi-laughingly mentioned that one of the film crew had been "stabbed in a domestic dispute."
In fact, according to the UPI article she was reading from (see below), the man almost died. Host Doug McIntyre (pictured below) and co-host Rob Marinko, both normally reasonable men, seemed mildly amused, too.
All together now--"If a wife was stabbed and almost murdered by her husband, would we be amused by it?"
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Glen is also opposing the TV Fox show:

"We oppose Bad Dads because it unfairly depicts divorced fathers as uncaring and selfish, when research clearly shows that most divorced dads pay their child support and remain a part of their children's lives, often under difficult circumstances. It also publicly humiliates children of broken families by depicting their fathers as not loving or caring for them."

You can learn how to voice your concern about attacking fathers by going here.


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Technorati tags: fathers

Popping the Higher Education Bubble?

I've written in the past that because for decades the cost of higher education continues to sky rocket twice as fast as inflation, that we may be reaching a point where it doesn't make cents to go to college. Last year I predicted that there would be a revolution in higher education.

Batman at Yeah Right sees similar fundamental changes, but for different reasons. In Popping the Higher Ed Bubble:

"Yesterday, Instapundit linked to an interesting article here about "the next market bubble" being higher education, where government subsidies (obstensibly, to improve access to higher education) have had the unintended (but certainly foreseeable) consequence of inflating the costs of college: "Over the last 10 years, after adjusting for inflation, tuition is up 48% at public schools and 24% at private schools."
There are several important parallels with the recent housing bubble; policy goals of extending participation (in higher education, in home ownership) led to people with serious credit risks borrowing a lot to pay a lot for something that, it turns out, isn't worth what they paid. (Instapundit also linked to a comment by Dean Esmay explaining his regret about ever bothering to pursue a college degree.)
This bubble, like all bubbles, will have its tragic stories, so I don't want to cheer this on. But if there's a silver lining, it's that it may make people rethink the value of those four years that polite society assumes you need."

It may happen sooner, or it may happen in a decade or two, but at some point higher education will have to adjust dramatically, or cease to exist as we know it.

I wonder if there will be a higher education homeschooling movement?

(Hat tip: Instapundit)


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Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, parenting, children, public school, public education, education

Good exposure for homeschoolers

Valerie Bonham Moon writes Now THIS is an article about homeschooling:

"Courtesy of Debbie Schwarzer, the legal chair of the HomeSchool Association of California.
What it takes to be a homeschool parent, 1 May 2008, abc7 News, KGO-TV/DT San Francisco, California (video report)"


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Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, parenting, children, education

Wake County school board has the right to assign students to year-round schools against parents' wishes

Decisions like this just confirm that public schools believe they are in charge - Court of Appeals gives Wake a win on year-round schools:

"The Wake County school board has the right to assign students to year-round schools against parents' wishes, the state Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.
The unanimous decision reverses an earlier Superior Court ruling. That opinion said the school board needed to get parents' permission to send students to year-round schools.
The school system has been seeking that consent for the 2008-09 school year in an effort to deal with overcrowded classrooms. Now, though, the Court of Appeals has ruled that such a move isn't necessary."


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Technorati tags: children, public school, public education, education

The start of something big: Manufacture and Sell Anything — in Minutes

Manufacture and Sell Anything — in Minutes is about how the design, built, and sell product cycle has shrunk from months and even years down to minutes.

I'll see if my daughters want to try making something out of this for a summer job.

(Hat tip: Instapundit)


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Technorati tags: cool, technology

How technology may destroy public schools

Robert X. Cringely (A pen name for Mark Stephens) write in War of the Worlds: The Human Side of Moore's Law about how technology affects the education process. I'll pull out a few interesting points, but the whole article is worth reading.


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The real power of Moore's Law lies in what the lady at the bank called "the miracle of compound interest," which has allowed personal computers to increase in performance a millionfold over the past 30 years. There's a similar, if slower, effect that governs the rate at which individuals are empowered by the technology they use. Called Cringely's Nth Law of Computing (because I have forgotten for the moment what law I am up to, whether it is five or six), it says that waves of technological innovation take approximately 30 years - one human generation - to be completely absorbed by our culture. That's 30 years to become an overnight sensation, 30 years to finally settle into the form most useful to society, 30 years to change the game.
The key word here is "empowerment." Technologies allow us to overcome limitations of time, distance, and physical capability, but they only empower us when they can be gracefully used by large, productive segments of our society. The telephone was empowering when we all finally got it. Now it is the Internet and digital communications.

Here, buried in my sixth paragraph, is the most important nugget: we've reached the point in our (disparate) cultural adaptation to computing and communication technology that the younger technical generations are so empowered they are impatient and ready to jettison institutions most of the rest of us tend to think of as essential, central, even immortal. They are ready to dump our schools.
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(I bolded the last line.)

Later he writes:

"These are kids who have never known life without personal computers and cell phones. But far more important, there is emerging a class of students whose PARENTS have never known life without personal computers and cell phones."

Most of the current generation of parents are comfortable with PCs and the internet. Their children are aggressive in their use of technology.

He makes the point that one of the things that keeps public schools going is reputation. When people work out ways to certify that a person has the equivalent of a high school education, public schools will be in real trouble.

Good article.


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Technorati tags: children, public school, public education, education

Disappearing Japan

Some of the industrialized nations have long term declining populations. Japan is one of the worse. This population trends are slow moving, unstoppable jugernauts. Japan Steadily Becoming a Land Of Few Children explains:

"The number of children has declined for 27 consecutive years, a government report said over the weekend. Japan now has fewer children who are 14 or younger than at any time since 1908.
The proportion of children in the population fell to an all-time low of 13.5 percent. That number has been falling for 34 straight years and is the lowest among 31 major countries, according to the report. In the United States, children account for about 20 percent of the population.
Japan also has a surfeit of the elderly. About 22 percent of the population is 65 or older, the highest proportion in the world. And that number is on the rise. By 2020, the elderly will outnumber children by nearly 3 to 1, the government report predicted. By 2040, they will outnumber them by nearly 4 to 1. "

It is hard to anticipate what this all means, but one things seems to be happening, the Japanese population is slowly diappearing.

(Hat tip: Instapundit)


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Technorati tags: Japan, population

Interesting thought on how to get what we crave most

From a recent A Word A Day:

There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life -- happiness, freedom, and peace of mind -- are always attained by giving them to someone else.
-Peyton C. March, general (1864-1955)


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Technorati tags: happiness, freedom, peace