There's actually a lot of "homeschool" specific groups out there - in addition to general out-of-school sports teams (my sister did soccer; my brother did football), there was a 100% all-homeschooled band class (run by a retired music teacher), clubs, etc. And of course, the general "run around with friends in the neighborhood" after school.
Although it seems to be changing, most home-schoolers are still of the religious fanatic variety, who just want to make sure their children *don't* learn certain things, including science, history, civics, and, most importantly, anything about "safe" sex.
I'll give you "some", but not "most". A few reasons I know of:
Rural areas where it's just simpler to teach in-house than put the kid on the bus two hours a day.
Issues with school administration - things like bullying being unaddressed.
Issues with the teacher.
Not saying that you're guaranteed to get a better education home-schooled than teacher-schooled, but the fact that your teacher-student ratio is 1:1 makes up for a lot of inexperience.
Do you work for OnLive? Then how do you fail to acknowledge that for games that are highly dependent on reaction speed even a few millis of latency may add up to a laggy experience? The problem may be exacerbated by the reporter's distance from the server, sure. But for serious gamers it is common knowledge that remote playing will not ever be as quick as a LAN frag fest.
Sadly, I'm at work and can't dig up the YouTube link, but there was a talk/tech demo given at Columbia where they seemed very upfront about the technical challenges. In particular, it was stated that the time budget from "push button" to "see result on screen" was 80 ms, and was then broken down in to the various categories (so much time for local routing, so much time for video processing, etc). IIRC, the budget for data transport was 24 ms (which worked out to 1000 miles client to server).
Can't say whether it's a good idea (I'd be more likely to go for it as a monthly subscription model rather than a "pay full price but don't get anything" system, myself), but the talk was remarkably frank about what the restrictions were and how they planned to work around them.
Oddly, this is true. While it's quite the cluster from an academic view, from the social view the kid's probably a hero. He built something cool *and* got them out of class for a few hours *and* made the teachers look stupid. In my school that was pretty much the trifecta, right there.
Here's a fun thought: you have access to electronics, and you're in a public school. In terms of fun:trouble ratio, a bomb is clearly suboptimal. Build a widget that turns the school TVs on and off. Jam the faculty wireless network. The options are endless (and now that we've proven the school can't tell what stuff does anyway, it's all easily deniable.)
No, I'm thinking that if you're going to let him carry a freakin' assault rifle on board the aircraft, the rest of the security inspection is rather pointless.
I think terrorists are now more likely to dress as a member of the US military, since instead of futzing with MacGyver-reject bombs, you can just.. oh.. shoot the passengers.
Heck, I had a science teacher walk us through making alcohol from fruit once. (In the "purely theoretical" sense, of course).
Man, I miss those teachers - the ones that realized that just a little forbidden knowledge went a long way into maintaining class interest. (Because who's going to risk skipping class if there's a chance he's gonna teach something *cool*?
For the period January 1990 to February 28, 2002 the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) recorded 1,055 incidents of bombs being placed in school premises.
So, assuming an even spread (no two "bombs" in the same school), a school has a 0.84% (less than 1 in 100) chance of being involved in a single incident over the last 12 years. Now, IIRC, US schools run on the four-year system (grades 1-4 in one school, 5-8 in another, 9-12 in the third, right?), which means that over 12 years, that's three generations of kids going through the doors - two-thirds of the student population over the time listed, even if their school was "hit", weren't a student there when it happened anyway.
If my 8am math is working right, that gives your school a 0.281% chance of being involved in a "bomb incident" during your child's four year stay. And that's before you start removing the incidences where the bomb is an alarm clock with a few wires sticking out (the "I didn't do my homework" bomb) rather than an actual explosive of any kind.
Students were evacuated from Millennial Tech Magnet Middle School in the Chollas View neighborhood Friday afternoon after an 11-year-old student brought a personal science project that he had been making at home to school, authorities said.
I am thinking that TFA kinda duped Slashdot into thinking this was a school sanctioned project. TFA says the student had been making this thing in his garage and was just showing it to his friends when the VP saw it and said it looks dangerous. This is DEFINITELY an overreaction but it was not a school sanctioned project that the VP saw and flipped out about. This kid brought a crazy lookin thing into school without warning any administrators they flipped. The policy he violated was probably against bringing electronic things like that into school without approval. As another poster noted below it looks like TFA is saying the kid needs counseling because he was so shaken up by the event NOT because he did something wrong.
Weird: a kid who's actually studying on his own time, and the school punishes him for it. (And yes, calling the bomb squad counts as "punishment", as in "negative reinforcement")
Also, without knowing which "authority" wants them to get counseling, it's hard to say what the motivation is. If it's the school, I'd call it a total CYA move (let's them "prove" the kid had issues). If it's the cops/fire department, more likely it's due to trauma.
Given how 'cooperative' his parents were with the authorities, most likely. Pity, though, few have such enthusiasm so young.
If such a thing had happened to me, my parents would've been in school the next morning to demand a public apology from both the school and the vice-principal himself, as well as any required paperwork necessary to transfer me to another school.
I suspect the parents went along with the fire department as a simple five-minute "no, our kid isn't a terrorist; would you piss off now?" fix. Yeah, they could have made a big stink, but they probably don't want their kid's reputation muddied any further. (I can see the headlines now: "Bomb suspect's parents refuse safety inspection: is your neighbor building WMDs?")
Agreed on the apologies though. Not necessarily the transfer - once you've got school administration by the short and curlies, your child's academic options look a lot better...
And, since they have NO evidence of ANYTHING, they will loose.
Sadly, they won't lose.
If the parents choose to make an issue out of this, the school division will line up solidly behind this guy, and it will sit in lawyer hell until after the kid's graduated. I know an example where the parent's lawyer told them it would cost $250,000 and ten years, and at the end the school will give them a very nice apology - basically, that it wasn't worth pursuing.
The best solution for the kid and parents is preferably to change schools - the place advertises itself as a tech-focused school, but freaks out when kids make science projects? Barring that, you're stuck playing passive-aggressive with the admins - send notes excusing your kid from homework because of "concerns that it may be mistaken for explosive devices"...
How about some valid counterarguments instead of hiding behind moderation like a little bitch?
Sure, I'll bite.
Not being a rocket surgeon, I can't speak to whether "useful" Science is being done up there or not (or at least Science that couldn't be done by our future robotic overlords).
What I see going on at the ISS is basic research into keeping people alive. Because while it was fun to day-trip out to the Moon, in the long term we need to be able to get there and set up shop. Which means we need both halves of the space program (actually thirds, when you figure it's smarter to send the robots first to find landing zones, etc).
Space exploration is the answer to the ennui that is "oh, we've discovered everything". In the grand scheme of things, we know squat - the rest of the universe is out there. Do we want to be the finders or the found? (Keep in mind local history - the folks who "discovered" the new lands tended to fare better.)
Yeah, it costs an arseload of money. I figure, the world governments just need to bomb a few less people, and ta-da, there's your extra budget.
I had the ability. The standard public school system is just a complete failure in math and science.
Are you sure it just wasn't a failure of your math and science teachers?
I was fortunate enough to move around a fair bit growing up, so ended up in a new school every couple of years through elementary-junior high. There are some really bad teachers out there. There are a lot of good teachers out there. And there are some really great teachers. Probably follows basic bell curve.
Pro tip: just because the class covers a subject at pace X doesn't mean you can't self-study and work ahead of the book. (I once managed to end up a full two-months ahead of the class; ended up doing a lot of tutoring that block.)
It's worse than ever, the number of students pursuing science degrees has been declining.
Assuming that this is correct (and it sounds right to my ears), I'd attribute this to the general belief that there's not a lot of future in science careers.
I'm not *that* far out of school, and it was drummed into us by all corners that you needed to be in business or computers, because that's where the money was.
I'm a firm believer that a dedicated parent can do a better job of educating one's children than the public school system. If things go according to plan, if I raise children, I will put my money where my mouth is, and attempt to prove myself true.
-uso.
It's true. Of course, you're ignoring two important points:
One: your child is getting a one-to-one student/teacher ratio, while public schools are lucky to get 25-1 (around here they're starting to approach 30-1). So, a lot of that better education is simply from more personalized education.
Two: by home-schooling, you're hiring yourself as the teacher (and forgoing whatever salary you would make in the world). Great if you can make it work, but let's not pretend that every family can keep someone at home.
I went through public schools, my siblings were home-schooled. Near as I can tell, we're pretty equivalent in general idiocy - they had a more personalized education, but mine was more well-rounded. Contrary to the usual assumptions, they're better socialized than I am, but I've had more post-secondary education. Again, it's a wash.
I think the real secret is simply parental involvement - if your kid isn't learning something, teach that subject yourself (or at least talk to the school and check options). That's what my parents did with me (I just didn't know it until I was older), and that's my plan when my daughter starts.
Dogma
There really is very little you need to believe in, in order to be Catholic. It's basically summed up by the Apostle's Creed.
I hadn't thought of it that way (although you're right). To be only a teeny bit snarky, all Catholics need to believe is
1. There's a Guy, and he made this place.
2. He's got a Kid (and only one), he's a boy (let's call him Junior), and Guy put him in charge around here.
3. Junior came to be by the power of Spirits, and Mrs. Guy wasn't terribly experienced.
4. Junior hung out with PP, it didn't turn out so well.
5. Three days later Junior was feeling well enough to be out and about again.
6. But he moved back in with his parents.
7. He'll be back.
8. There are wicked good Spirits.
9. Junior has a fan club and groupies.
10. And if you screw up (like PP did), he'll get over it.
11,12. You get extra lives.
The vast majority of religiously devout people are rather quiet about it, and very down to earth. They will not participate in these annoyances or make themselves heard, as they simply have better things to do with their time.
Agreed - and the true believers are usually too busy helping people to argue with the True Believers about which people to help.
So altering your beliefs in the light of new evidence is a bad thing, according to you?
Well, when you've spent a few thousand years locking people up and killing them for not believing what you do, yes.
Or put another way, if the Vatican is now admitting it's been wrong about life on other planets (oh, and about the whole sun-revolving-around-the-earth thing), what else does it have wrong?
Slashdot Mirror
There's actually a lot of "homeschool" specific groups out there - in addition to general out-of-school sports teams (my sister did soccer; my brother did football), there was a 100% all-homeschooled band class (run by a retired music teacher), clubs, etc. And of course, the general "run around with friends in the neighborhood" after school.
Although it seems to be changing, most home-schoolers are still of the religious fanatic variety, who just want to make sure their children *don't* learn certain things, including science, history, civics, and, most importantly, anything about "safe" sex.
I'll give you "some", but not "most". A few reasons I know of:
Not saying that you're guaranteed to get a better education home-schooled than teacher-schooled, but the fact that your teacher-student ratio is 1:1 makes up for a lot of inexperience.
What are you talking about? Home-schooled kids don't have friends, and they won't have them when they grow up, either.
Yeah, because kids never talk to each other after school.
My brother and sister were both homeschooled, and they're both easily more social than I am.
Don't you enjoy your updates, Citizen? Enjoyment is mandatory.
Do you work for OnLive? Then how do you fail to acknowledge that for games that are highly dependent on reaction speed even a few millis of latency may add up to a laggy experience? The problem may be exacerbated by the reporter's distance from the server, sure. But for serious gamers it is common knowledge that remote playing will not ever be as quick as a LAN frag fest.
Sadly, I'm at work and can't dig up the YouTube link, but there was a talk/tech demo given at Columbia where they seemed very upfront about the technical challenges. In particular, it was stated that the time budget from "push button" to "see result on screen" was 80 ms, and was then broken down in to the various categories (so much time for local routing, so much time for video processing, etc). IIRC, the budget for data transport was 24 ms (which worked out to 1000 miles client to server).
Can't say whether it's a good idea (I'd be more likely to go for it as a monthly subscription model rather than a "pay full price but don't get anything" system, myself), but the talk was remarkably frank about what the restrictions were and how they planned to work around them.
Oddly, this is true. While it's quite the cluster from an academic view, from the social view the kid's probably a hero. He built something cool *and* got them out of class for a few hours *and* made the teachers look stupid. In my school that was pretty much the trifecta, right there.
Here's a fun thought: you have access to electronics, and you're in a public school. In terms of fun:trouble ratio, a bomb is clearly suboptimal. Build a widget that turns the school TVs on and off. Jam the faculty wireless network. The options are endless (and now that we've proven the school can't tell what stuff does anyway, it's all easily deniable.)
No, I'm thinking that if you're going to let him carry a freakin' assault rifle on board the aircraft, the rest of the security inspection is rather pointless.
I think terrorists are now more likely to dress as a member of the US military, since instead of futzing with MacGyver-reject bombs, you can just.. oh.. shoot the passengers.
I am sure they found many potential bombs around that house. How about the can of fuel for the mower? I wonder if they did anything about that?
I had the same thought, but in the context of the school itself - how many things in an average school are (or could easily be made) dangerous?
Heck, I had a science teacher walk us through making alcohol from fruit once. (In the "purely theoretical" sense, of course).
Man, I miss those teachers - the ones that realized that just a little forbidden knowledge went a long way into maintaining class interest. (Because who's going to risk skipping class if there's a chance he's gonna teach something *cool*?
Or if you must think of the children like that, go get a job as an airport screener so you can justify looking at naked kids as "national security".
For the period January 1990 to February 28, 2002 the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) recorded 1,055 incidents of bombs being placed in school premises.
And apparently, there are 125,000 schools in the US
.
So, assuming an even spread (no two "bombs" in the same school), a school has a 0.84% (less than 1 in 100) chance of being involved in a single incident over the last 12 years. Now, IIRC, US schools run on the four-year system (grades 1-4 in one school, 5-8 in another, 9-12 in the third, right?), which means that over 12 years, that's three generations of kids going through the doors - two-thirds of the student population over the time listed, even if their school was "hit", weren't a student there when it happened anyway.
If my 8am math is working right, that gives your school a 0.281% chance of being involved in a "bomb incident" during your child's four year stay. And that's before you start removing the incidences where the bomb is an alarm clock with a few wires sticking out (the "I didn't do my homework" bomb) rather than an actual explosive of any kind.
Students were evacuated from Millennial Tech Magnet Middle School in the Chollas View neighborhood Friday afternoon after an 11-year-old student brought a personal science project that he had been making at home to school, authorities said.
I am thinking that TFA kinda duped Slashdot into thinking this was a school sanctioned project. TFA says the student had been making this thing in his garage and was just showing it to his friends when the VP saw it and said it looks dangerous. This is DEFINITELY an overreaction but it was not a school sanctioned project that the VP saw and flipped out about. This kid brought a crazy lookin thing into school without warning any administrators they flipped. The policy he violated was probably against bringing electronic things like that into school without approval. As another poster noted below it looks like TFA is saying the kid needs counseling because he was so shaken up by the event NOT because he did something wrong.
Weird: a kid who's actually studying on his own time, and the school punishes him for it. (And yes, calling the bomb squad counts as "punishment", as in "negative reinforcement")
Also, without knowing which "authority" wants them to get counseling, it's hard to say what the motivation is. If it's the school, I'd call it a total CYA move (let's them "prove" the kid had issues). If it's the cops/fire department, more likely it's due to trauma.
Given how 'cooperative' his parents were with the authorities, most likely. Pity, though, few have such enthusiasm so young.
If such a thing had happened to me, my parents would've been in school the next morning to demand a public apology from both the school and the vice-principal himself, as well as any required paperwork necessary to transfer me to another school.
I suspect the parents went along with the fire department as a simple five-minute "no, our kid isn't a terrorist; would you piss off now?" fix. Yeah, they could have made a big stink, but they probably don't want their kid's reputation muddied any further. (I can see the headlines now: "Bomb suspect's parents refuse safety inspection: is your neighbor building WMDs?")
Agreed on the apologies though. Not necessarily the transfer - once you've got school administration by the short and curlies, your child's academic options look a lot better...
Found it (emphasis mine):
Socially Responsible Behavior includes, but is not limited to the following:
The Administrative Golden Rule strikes again.
And, since they have NO evidence of ANYTHING, they will loose.
Sadly, they won't lose.
If the parents choose to make an issue out of this, the school division will line up solidly behind this guy, and it will sit in lawyer hell until after the kid's graduated. I know an example where the parent's lawyer told them it would cost $250,000 and ten years, and at the end the school will give them a very nice apology - basically, that it wasn't worth pursuing.
The best solution for the kid and parents is preferably to change schools - the place advertises itself as a tech-focused school, but freaks out when kids make science projects? Barring that, you're stuck playing passive-aggressive with the admins - send notes excusing your kid from homework because of "concerns that it may be mistaken for explosive devices"...
How about some valid counterarguments instead of hiding behind moderation like a little bitch?
Sure, I'll bite.
Not being a rocket surgeon, I can't speak to whether "useful" Science is being done up there or not (or at least Science that couldn't be done by our future robotic overlords).
What I see going on at the ISS is basic research into keeping people alive. Because while it was fun to day-trip out to the Moon, in the long term we need to be able to get there and set up shop. Which means we need both halves of the space program (actually thirds, when you figure it's smarter to send the robots first to find landing zones, etc).
Space exploration is the answer to the ennui that is "oh, we've discovered everything". In the grand scheme of things, we know squat - the rest of the universe is out there. Do we want to be the finders or the found? (Keep in mind local history - the folks who "discovered" the new lands tended to fare better.)
Yeah, it costs an arseload of money. I figure, the world governments just need to bomb a few less people, and ta-da, there's your extra budget.
I had the ability. The standard public school system is just a complete failure in math and science.
Are you sure it just wasn't a failure of your math and science teachers?
I was fortunate enough to move around a fair bit growing up, so ended up in a new school every couple of years through elementary-junior high. There are some really bad teachers out there. There are a lot of good teachers out there. And there are some really great teachers. Probably follows basic bell curve.
Pro tip: just because the class covers a subject at pace X doesn't mean you can't self-study and work ahead of the book. (I once managed to end up a full two-months ahead of the class; ended up doing a lot of tutoring that block.)
It's worse than ever, the number of students pursuing science degrees has been declining.
Assuming that this is correct (and it sounds right to my ears), I'd attribute this to the general belief that there's not a lot of future in science careers.
I'm not *that* far out of school, and it was drummed into us by all corners that you needed to be in business or computers, because that's where the money was.
If you really want to improve education, how about removing the distractions, and actually teaching out of the book?
Other than that a lot of those textbooks suck? (Written by the lowest bidder, remember)
I'd trade most of my textbooks for a knowledgeable teacher every time.
I have two words regarding technology in early-childhood education:
"Baby Einstein".
Oh, if I ever get the chance to meet the idiots that came up with "Baby Einstein" in a dark alley...
Better name for it would be "Baby Brain Rot". I'll watch Elmo before I subject a child to that crap again. (My daughter hated that DVD, bless her.)
I'm a firm believer that a dedicated parent can do a better job of educating one's children than the public school system. If things go according to plan, if I raise children, I will put my money where my mouth is, and attempt to prove myself true.
-uso.
It's true. Of course, you're ignoring two important points:
One: your child is getting a one-to-one student/teacher ratio, while public schools are lucky to get 25-1 (around here they're starting to approach 30-1). So, a lot of that better education is simply from more personalized education.
Two: by home-schooling, you're hiring yourself as the teacher (and forgoing whatever salary you would make in the world). Great if you can make it work, but let's not pretend that every family can keep someone at home.
I went through public schools, my siblings were home-schooled. Near as I can tell, we're pretty equivalent in general idiocy - they had a more personalized education, but mine was more well-rounded. Contrary to the usual assumptions, they're better socialized than I am, but I've had more post-secondary education. Again, it's a wash.
I think the real secret is simply parental involvement - if your kid isn't learning something, teach that subject yourself (or at least talk to the school and check options). That's what my parents did with me (I just didn't know it until I was older), and that's my plan when my daughter starts.
Dogma There really is very little you need to believe in, in order to be Catholic. It's basically summed up by the Apostle's Creed.
I hadn't thought of it that way (although you're right). To be only a teeny bit snarky, all Catholics need to believe is
The vast majority of religiously devout people are rather quiet about it, and very down to earth. They will not participate in these annoyances or make themselves heard, as they simply have better things to do with their time.
Agreed - and the true believers are usually too busy helping people to argue with the True Believers about which people to help.
So altering your beliefs in the light of new evidence is a bad thing, according to you?
Well, when you've spent a few thousand years locking people up and killing them for not believing what you do, yes.
Or put another way, if the Vatican is now admitting it's been wrong about life on other planets (oh, and about the whole sun-revolving-around-the-earth thing), what else does it have wrong?
My wife and I created our daughter. That doesn't make us gods. (And as a three-year-old, she reminds us of such every day :)
You can be a Creator without being All-Knowing, All-Seeing, and All-Powerful.