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We homeschool/unschool -- however, at great expense in terms of professional opportunity cost. As others have pointed out to echo your point, there is a big difference between "schooling" and "education". This is true even in the very "best" school districts which can be terribly oppressive places for children whose interests are not mostly academic or, in some cases, artsy and who don't plan to go to a top college and so would bring down the schools college acceptance scores. This can include hands-on practically-oriented children or wide-ranging people-oriented children or free-thinking imaginative children and so on who may not do well in settings focusing on abstraction or interactions with only-same age peers and authority figures or working on assigned tasks with arbitrary structure and with arbitrary timetables.

Your point also connects with bullying, A normal resolution to bullying by another kid might be to avoid him or her and choose different kids to associate with. However, school structure does not permit that for kids crammed together in a classroom. Izzy Kalman and "Bullies to Buddies" provides help for for unavoidable bullies though.

See also by John Taylor Gatto:
"The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher"
http://www.worldtrans.org/whol...
"After an adult lifetime spent teaching school I believe the method of mass-schooling is the only real content it has, don't be fooled into thinking that good curriculum or good equipment or good teachers are the critical determinants of your son and daughter's schooltime. All the pathologies we've considered come about in large measure because the lessons of school prevent children from keeping important appointments with themselves and with their families, to learn lessons in self- motivation, perseverance, self-reliance, courage, dignity and love and lessons in service to others, which are among the key lessons of home life.
Thirty years ago these things could still be learned in the time left after school. But television has eaten up most of that time, and a combination of television and the stresses peculiar to two-income or single-parent families have swallowed up most of what used to be family time. Our kids have no time left to grow up fully human, and only thin-soil wastelands to do it in. A future is rushing down upon our culture which will insist that all of us learn the wisdom of non-material experience; a future which will demand as the price of survival that we follow a pace of natural life economical in material cost. [PDF: I question the previous point on material scarcity...] These lessons cannot be learned in schools as they are. School is like starting life with a 12-year jail sentence in which bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it.
I should know."

More by John Taylor Gatto (1992 New York State Teacher of the year) here: https://www.johntaylorgatto.co...

Especially: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com...
"Before you can reach a point of effectiveness in defending your own children or your principles against the assault of blind social machinery, you have to stop conspiring against yourself by attempting to negotiate with a set of abstract principles and rules which, by its nature, cannot respond. Under all its disguises, that is what institutional schooling is, an abstraction which has escaped its handlers. Nobody can reform it. First you have to realize that human values are the stuff of madness to a system; in systems-logic the schools we have are already the schools the system needs; the only way they could be much improved is to have kids eat, sleep, live, and die there."

Also: http://www.the-open-boat.com/G...
"Schooling is a for

According to NYS Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto, almost all school teachers scar children in common ways:
http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
"Look again at the seven lessons of schoolteaching: confusion, class assignment, dulled responses, emotional and intellectual dependency, conditional self-esteem, surveillance -- all of these things are good training for permanent underclasses, people derived forever of finding the center of their own special genius."

See also:
"State Controlled Consciousness"
http://www.the-open-boat.com/Gatto.html
"Schooling is a form of adoption. You give your kid up in his or her most plastic years to a group of strangers. You accept a promise, sometimes stated and more often implied that the state through its agents knows better how to raise your children and educate them than you, your neighbors, your grandparents, your local traditions do. And that your kid will be better off so adopted.
    But by the time the child returns to the family, or has the option of doing that, very few want to. Their parents are some form of friendly stranger too and why not? In the key hours of growing up, strangers have reared the kid.
    Now let's look at the strangers of which you (interviewer) was one and I was one. Regardless of our good feeling toward children. Regardless of our individual talents or intelligence, we have so little time each day with each of these kids, we can't possibly know enough vital information about that particular kid to tailor a set of exercises for that kid. Oh, you know, some of us will try more than others, but there simply isn't any time to do it to a significant degree. ..."

Sorry, you do not seem to know the first thing about homeschooling/unschooling based on any research or first hand experience. On what do you base such harsh opinions of two million or so homeschoolers in the USA? No doubt you could find some examples of what you say, same as I could find endless examples of school bullying (which is much more common), but are you suggesting the vast majority of homeschooled kids are suffering socialization problems? Are you suggesting that learning only to socialize with same age peers of roughly the same age and social class and one authoritarian teacher, trapped with no option but to return day after day, is your ideal of social skills learning, as opposed to learning to interact with people of all different ages in all different situations? If so, why are homeschoolers getting preferred admission to many colleges these days?

Just one of many starting points if you wish to break out of your schooling rut and really learn:
http://homeschooling.about.com/od/socialization/Socialization_How_to_deal_with_it.htm

Another place to start:
http://www.holtgws.com/teachyourown.html
"...I have used the words "homeschooling" to describe the process by which children grow and learn in the world without going, or going very much, to schools, because those words are familiar and quickly understood. But in one very important sense they are misleading. What is most important and valuable about the home as a base for children's growth into the world is not that it is a better school than the schools but that it isn't a school at all. It is not an artificial place, set up to make "learning" happen and in which nothing except "learning" ever happens. It is a natural, organic, central, fundamental human institution, one might easily and rightly say the foundation of all other institutions. We can imagine and indeed we have had human societies without schools, without factories, without libraries, museums, hospitals, roads, legislatures, courts, or any of the institutions which seem so indispensable and permanent a part of modern life. We might someday even choose, or be obliged, to live once again without some or all of these. But we cannot even imagine a society without homes, even if these should be no more than tents, or mud huts, or holes in the ground. What I am trying to say, in short, is that our chief educational problem is not to find a way to make homes more like schools. If anything, it is to make schools less like schools."

As to public school indoctrination, that is well documented here by NYS Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto:
"Underground History of American Education"
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
Or here, also by Gatto:
http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt

Are you too a prime example of schooling to lash out so fast with no research behind your points, convinced you are right because you were told by authorities in school that school was best for you?

Still, the fact is, up until recently I used to believe much of what you are saying here. So, don't feel too bad. But please at least try to learn a little more about educational alternatives and why the current schooling system we have is essentially broken beyond repair. Is this is the kind of socialization you are saying is better than children being around people who truly care for their emotional and intellectual growth and have the time to help with it?
"The War on Kids - Trailer"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlnwm11d6II
Note the great socialization experience during the SWAT raid... Is that what

So true a poem, and so sad; a recent related documentary:
    http://www.thewaronkids.com/
Also related:
    "The 7-Lesson Schoolteacher"
    http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
""" ... After an adult lifetime spent teaching school I believe the method
of mass-schooling is the only real content it has, don't be fooled into
thinking that good curriculum or good equipment or good teachers are the
critical determinants of your son and daughter's schooltime. All the
pathologies we've considered come about in large measure because the
lessons of school prevent children from keeping important appointments
with themselves and with their families, to learn lessons in self-
motivation, perseverance, self-reliance, courage, dignity and love and
lessons in service to others, which are among the key lessons of home
life.
            Thirty years ago these things could still be learned in the time
left after school. But television has eaten up most of that time, and a
combination of television and the stresses peculiar to two-income or
single-parent families have swallowed up most of what used to be family
time. Our kids have no time left to grow up fully human, and only thin-
soil wastelands to do it in. A future is rushing down upon our culture
which will insist that all of us learn the wisdom of non-material
experience; a future which will demand as the price of survival that we
follow a pace of natural life economical in material cost. These
lessons cannot be learned in schools as they are. School is like
starting life with a 12-year jail sentence in which bad habits are the
only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it.
    I should know.
"""

See also the link betwen vitamin D deficiency (from an indoor lifestyle and no outdoor playtime) and mental problems...

From:
    http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt

"After an adult lifetime spent teaching school I believe the method
of mass-schooling is the only real content it has, don't be fooled into
thinking that good curriculum or good equipment or good teachers are the
critical determinants of your son and daughter's schooltime. All the
pathologies we've considered come about in large measure because the
lessons of school prevent children from keeping important appointments
with themselves and with their families, to learn lessons in self-
motivation, perseverance, self-reliance, courage, dignity and love and
lessons in service to others, which are among the key lessons of home
life.

            Thirty years ago these things could still be learned in the time
left after school. But television has eaten up most of that time, and a
combination of television and the stresses peculiar to two-income or
single-parent families have swallowed up most of what used to be family
time. Our kids have no time left to grow up fully human, and only thin-
soil wastelands to do it in. A future is rushing down upon our culture
which will insist that all of us learn the wisdom of non-material
experience; a future which will demand as the price of survival that we
follow a pace of natural life economical in material cost. These
lessons cannot be learned in schools as they are. School is like
starting life with a 12-year jail sentence in which bad habits are the
only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it."

Homework only makes the problem worse!

Don't be so hard on yourself. Your's was a normal reaction to an abnormal situation.

See:
    "Underground History of American Education"
    http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.ht m
"The shocking possibility that dumb people don't exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the millions of careers devoted to tending them will seem incredible to you. Yet that is my central proposition: the mass dumbness which justifies official schooling first had to be dreamed of; it isn't real."

Or:
    "The 7-Lesson Schoolteacher"
    http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt

This free school teaches all kids without coercion or drugs:
    http://www.albanyfreeschool.com/overview.shtml
"Though we are by no means a special school for problem children, we frequently serve as a safety net for children who have been falling through the cracks of the conventional education system. At any given time, approximately half of our students are referrals from the public and parochial schools. Our reputation with students that are struggling academically and/or behaviorally, and whose needs the system has failed to meet, is such that an increasing number of kids are coming to us having previously been tagged with labels like ADHD and placed on Ritalin and other biopsychiatric medications. Their parents seek us out because they're concerned about the side effects of the drugs and because they've heard that we work effectively with these children without drugs of any kind. Our active, flexible, individually structured environment renders the drugs entirely unnecessary."

For those with a philosophical bent, I recommend Finite and Infinite Games. A very thought provoking exploration of what constitutes a game, and how they blend with reality.

The internal good feeling of being true to one's self is the only real reason to do anything.

And the Dairy Council is a direct example of competitors cooperating, how can that be a false argument? Dairy producers compete in the same market, yet they cooperate. One would think that in a world of complete competition, direct competitors in a marketplace would never cooperate. One would think that corporations would be run with internally competing divisions. Yet we see the opposite. When competitors cooperate, we see that competition is not the end-all, be-all. We see that when we look only for competition, that is all we find, and we ignore the cooperation that is also happening, even between so-called competitors.

I'm not saying competition doesn't have it's place, but the pernicious sort of system where someone is required to lose in order for others to win has no place in a modern, rational world. If you want a more insightful look at this issue than I can provide, you might want to read the book "Finite and Infinite Games." Here's an excerpt.

One must remember that in the selfish actor theories, everyone is a selfish actor, and everyone acts assuming that everyone else is selfish actor, and this precludes certain kinds of cooperation. The experiments I mentioned test just these kinds of assumptions. For instance, in one experiment, people are given a relatively large sum of money. They can keep it or give any or all of it to the other player. What they give is multiplied by a percentage, so if I give you $100, you get, say $150 (I can't remember the details.) Then you have a chance to give some back to me and that is also multiplied. Selfish actor theory says I will not give any to you, as I know you will be selfish and keep it all. And if you give any to me, I should keep it all. What the experiment shows is that people generally play fair. Some always do, some never do, and the vast majority play fair if they can be reasonably sure the other person will as well. But it is important to note that many will play fair and give some back when they get some even when they don't know the identity or reputation of those they are playing with, or if they will be playing with them in future rounds. That definitely contradicts the predictions of selfish actor theory.

In another experiment, a goup of people are all given money. They can keep it all or put some or all of it a communal pot. At the end of a number of rounds of this, the pot is multiplied and split evenly amon all players. Selfish actor theory says that no one will put money into the pot, as everyone else will be thinking along the same lines and will freeload. The results are similar, some will always be "nice" and put some in, some won't, some will if they see others doing it. Now change the rules slightly, and say that in addition, the subjects can punish one another by spending money. I pay $100 to ding you for $200 if you don't cooperate. Then as one would suspect, cooperation increases if non-cooperation can be punished.

In the end, the selfish actor theory is correct in the same sense that Newton's theory of gravition is, i.e. it works in many cases but doesn't go far enough. Overall it is correct because cooperation is in the selfish best interest of the individual if reciprocity can be assured, but the point is that we have been programmed by evolution to try strategies of cooperation even when it can't be assured because this is better for survival than pure shortsighted selfishness.

As for Maslow's heirarchy of needs, you have hit upon an important point but, I think, misinterpreted it. Yes, needs are those things you don't have and are unsure of your ability to get. If you have really satisfied a need, it means you are satisfied of your ability to get that need met continually. And people do sublimate their unmet needs, which is what I think companies have really hit on. That is to say that if you can't be sure of having your need for close human contact met, you might sublimate that need into consumption. The main point of the heirarchy is that (for example) no one will seek companionship first if they are starving, no one will seek education if they don't have and don't know how to get companionship, and no one will seek self realization unless they are reasonably assured of all their more basic needs being met.

As to Mondragon, yes, they are in fact closer to capitalism than some forms of Utopianism (I assume you mean some form of socialism/communism by this, as there are many forms of Utopianism.) But they are based more on cooperation as a motivating force than on competition. I must also point out that by competition I mean the particular form where one or more parties must fail or lose in order for the other to be declared the winner. I suggest reading Finite and Infinte Games by James P. Carse (excerpted here) for more on that point.

Hundredth Monkey, anyone?

Should be perfect for Florida and other places with "high winds"[....]

Then it'd probably withstand pretty much any level of wind--until something that wasn't streamlined (e.g., palm tree, SS Minnow, old lady on bicycle) slammed into it . . . .

Maybe advanced materials are what's needed to finally achieve Old Bucky's goals (even though they supposedly could have been built for the price of an automobile instead of the price of a house). I'll buy one.

"Finite and Infinite Games - A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility" by James P. Carse
ISBN 0-345-34184-8, Ballantine, $4.95

Excerpts here.

That second line should more properly end "It is free of substance." Tee hee. ;-)

To develop on this a little, what if our current laws of nature are not fundamental but merely a phase? They could change in the future based on some larger circumstance outside our present sphere of perception. The fact that from our point of view the universe looks as if it is and has been behaving under a set of coherant rules may be merely a coincidence. All our so-called natural laws could simply go away, leaving formless, meaningless chaos. But this is a theme fairly commonly explored in science fiction.

Fortunately, in my humble opinion, the formless, meaningless chaos must be truly infinite, and so 'contain' an infinite number of sets of coherent systems. Any of these systems including ours will be finite by definition.

WaterKeeper.ca, the site for the Lake Ontario Waterkeeper (part of Robert F. Kennedy's Waterkeeper Alliance) had the same problem, but with SORBS. WaterKeeper.ca is hosted on a server at a hosting company, shared by many other customers. The problem is, one or more of the other customers were allegedly sending spam messages, and SORBS blacklisted the whole box, leaving Lake Ontario Waterkeeper unable to communicate with many people who depend on their newsletters to keep up to date with environmental battles they are fighting.

Since 1996, I've been involved with running SMTP servers in some capacity, and I've always felt that the real-time blacklist services, while good intentioned, are a poor way to deal with the problem of SPAM. Too often, legitimate organizations get blacklisted because a few (and sometimes, only one) twit(s) forget that they've opted in to something and decide to report a message as spam. We're not talking about someone or some organization buying a mailing list here, either. In 100% of the circumstances that I've been involved with where someone has been blacklisted by an RBL, the messages that triggered the "spam" complaints have been totally opt-in newsletters - the people sending the messages haven't purchased their mailing lists, but instead, compiled them by having the users -specifically- request the content.

What makes things worse is that SORBS, for example, requests a "donation" to a charity in order to have you removed from their list. To me, that borders on extortion.

What makes it even worse still is that with SORBS blacklisting the whole box, all the other legitimate use e-mails being sent from that machine to SORBS-enabled mail servers are left out of luck. It's one thing to punish -one- "spammer", but with hosting companies as popular as they are, blacklisting an IP sometimes blacklists dozens (or even hundreds) of customers at a time, all sharing the same server. Suddenly, many people sharing a server have a problem, because one person was "spamming" and the RBL's are far too wide a net to cast over that single offender as they try to deal with the problem. When does the "service" they provide become a disservice because of the collateral damage it causes?

It's high time we abandon the clearly flawed RBL concept (and any other technological forms of dealing with spam) and start -really- putting pressure on our elected officials to enact sufficiently strong anti-spam legislation. Consider that many forms of copy protection and DRM have been cracked, replaced or upgraded, then cracked again... and you see that where there is a will, there is a way. Everytime we suceed in blocking spam by some means, it takes little time for the spammers to find another way to get their junk into our inboxes.

Not until we make spam a significantly expensive proposition (in the form of fines - I personally would love to see chronic spammers tarred and feathered, but I digress), will the "internet marketing" companies finally be stopped from flooding my mailbox with their messages.

Clearly, there are issues of jurisdiction standing in the way of this... but in my opinion, if copyright laws can be shared and upheld through a multi-national treaty, why can't a similar anti-spam treaty exist?

Now, I should point out that the unrealistic elitist in me remembers when spam didn't really exist, because not everyone and their grandmother had decided to rape the internet so that they could make a quick buck. Spam just reminds me - hundreds of times a day - that for all things good in the world, humanity finds a way to take advantage of it, use it until it's ruined, then move on to the next thing... you know... kind of like what 2nd wave style industry (to reference Toffler) is doing with our planet. Spam is just the next form of pollution that

..Greatly improved chances for a better life.. ?

Sovereignty first.