I removed my kids from public schools after my sons friend was expelled from the district for the heinous crime of using his finger as a gun while playing “cops and robbers” on the playground. The school charged him with intimidation of another student as well as terroristic threats. He was only 7yrs old at the time,

This country is going to hell faster than you can say it. Sadder yet is that we are complicit by allowing the erosion of our basic freedoms while handing personal accountability over to the government. Shame on us all…..

The stupidity of a bureaucracy no longer amazes me. If you get to thirty and don't realize that at least one of your parents has had sex at least once you are clueless.

If you are forty -- and don't realize that kids will be kids -- you need to be in an institution that monitors your life for you.

The Harvard Law states: Under controlled conditions of light, temperature, humidity, and nutrition, the organism will do as it damn well pleases. -- Larry Wall

Definitely the AR-15. Maybe the Mayans were right.

I'm a fourth-generation school teacher. I left teaching public school back in 2004 because I couldn't stand being an enforcement agent for an ever-increasing group of rules and regulations that stripped children of their basic human rights, dignity, and freedom. It is only because of our horrible, prison-like schools that American adults put up with bullshit like the TSA.

I would love to run a dame school out of my house for my friends' children, because they would get a much better education from me and I would be much happier than I am temping, but the government is very, very interested in holding its monopoly over the education of the public, and makes it as hard as possible for people to use alternative education.

The general argument is "we have to make sure kids are getting educated! We can't be sure children are getting a good education at home!" No shit, especially since you can't ensure a good education in your child prison/warehouses.

The public school system is an unmitigated disaster. Even "good schools" aren't that good. Children are not built to be separated from loving caregivers (parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc.) for the majority of their lives. And they were not meant to be stacked in neat little rows and have often-useless knowledge jammed into their minds before they are emotionally capable of handling it.

Most homeschoolers (that I know) don't really start "doing school" until the child is 8. Historically, nobody got scared if the kid couldn't read until they were 8 or 9. It was understood that it was far better for the children to play, learn to use their bodies, care for themselves, and yes, begin learning household chores as part of self-care, for the first few years. That was the culture that built this country. Are we better, more responsible people than we were then?

An 8-year-old child who has had exposure to the written word (through parents reading stories, road signs, etc. to them) can be taught phonics and reading in 50 hours. A 6-year-old requires hundreds of hours, because his brain is not ready for that kind of abstraction.

We don't think of it this way because we are adults who've forgotten how weird it is, but the idea of a symbol standing for a sound is not intuitive. It's easy to see a drawing of a cat and understand that means "cat," but to see "ough" and know that makes six different sounds (oh, ooh, uff, off aw, ow) is hard.

Hammering away at a child's mind, forcing him to take in and retain information he cannot, on a developmental level, really understand, is as vicious and penetrative an act as rape.

And we wonder why children hate school!

Really? Schooling is rape, now? Is there anything that ISN'T?

My kids understood quite readily what they were reading in kinder. WHo are you to decide when kids are ready for what? They're 7 now, and their current favorite book is their Gpa's army survival guide he got when he enlisted a LONG time ago. And according to you, they should not even read yet because they can't understand the concept? Do your friends a favor and don't open a school.

Are any links to the original individual stories? All I get is the same list posted on right wing blogs.

So, basically, the only thing you won't get in trouble for at school is failing to learn...

@TheOriginalKit: You have really strange ideas of children's mental development. Kids of average intelligence naturally learn to read simple words by the age of 4 or 5, just by following along in children's books (assuming that their parents read to them on a regular basis). There's nothing "weird" about symbols standing for sounds: the human brain is wired for abstraction. Formalizing the reading process with phonics first-grade is important, as gives them a better basis to read words they haven't seen before.

Your comments about home-schooled kids not learning to read until the age of 8 is an excuse used by parents who are *failing* to educate their kids. "Historically" kids didn't have time for schooling, because they were out grubbing in the fields from dawn to dusk.

Home schooling done right requires discipline, organization and a lot of time. It also requires a certain temperament: most adults do not have the patience and ability to teach children well. The fact is: many home schooling parents would be better off getting a job, and using the extra money to send their kids to a private school.

momof4, I am happy for you that your children are smart and love reading. I am happy for your children that they grew up in an environment that nurtured them. Of course offering information to children who want it is good. I'm talking about force. I have personally seen the damage it does.

I spent the entire time I taught in public school as well as the years I have tutored attempting to undo the damage caused by FORCE, not love. I am talking about the degradation of the soul and mind of a child who is made to feel inadequate because their brains aren't ready yet.

I'm talking about the kids I worked with who begged for someone to help them, who told me about how much they dreaded school, hated their teachers, and the feelings of inadequacy and shame they carried from elementary school on.

I've seen the damage, and tried to help these kids, so yes, I do think that the soul-crushing methods and structure of schooling is horrible. I've seen the results. And as far as opening a school goes, my friends whose kids have gone from failing to acing their classes think differently.

a_random_guy, my "strange ideas" are based on the research I have put into learning how the brain works and develops. I'm sorry you disagree.

My experience with children who grow up in homeschool families where they "start late" is that by the time they are in the middle school age, they are typically ahead. Yes, there are bad, lazy parents homeschooling, but my experience has shown them to be the minority. People generally don't get into homeschooling because they're lazy parents.

John Dewey was a social planner in education and a still celebrated founder of our modern public schools:

"Independent self-reliant people would be a counterproductive anachronism in the collective society of the future where people will be defined by their associations (1896)."

"The children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society that is coming, where everyone would be interdependent (1899)."

Kit, I know too many kids who learned to read at 4 or 5 because they wanted to, because they loved the written word, not because they were forced to. These weren't super-genius kids. Just bright kids who grew up with books. Learning to read is not soul-crushing for most children.

The argument that we should do things the way they were done 200 years ago because that's somehow better falls flat. Things were done the way they were done because it suited the culture of the time. My father got his first job at 6 years old in 1927. His parents never bothered much with his education because it didn't matter to them, and they were barely educated themselves. He was barely literate, and by the time I was in the 3rd grade, I was helping him with his reading. In his time period, it still worked out fine because he could earn a middle-class income through hard labor alone. That's far less true now.

Maybe we could hold off educating kids until they are 8 or 9, but other parents won't be doing that. Chinese parents most certainly won't be doing that.