Intolerance

How do we create a harmonious society out of so many kinds of people? The key is tolerance - the one value that is indispensable in creating community.

~ Barbara Jordan

I am deeply disturbed by some of the forum posts I see on some of the homschooling forums I frequent (not Secular Homeschooling). There are ignorant, intolerant, racist, bigoted people that post things that I cannot even believe people think, let alone believe are okay to post. I am starting to understand why non-homeschoolers have a bad taste in their mouth's for homeschooling. 

I am starting to think that when people say homschool kids are unsocialized they mean they are unable to socialize with mainstream children because their belief system is drastically different and they believe it is okay to spout off their nonsense to anyone that passes by. I think public school kids at least know they should hide their intolerance and bigotry a little better!

So how am I going to combat this in my own home:

1. Talk about how people are different and that diversity is a good.

2. Have them learn about different religions, cultures, lifestyles.

3. Travel to other countries

4. Discuss intolerance and the problems it creates in society and in the history of the world.

5. Volunteer

6. Have a wide variety of friends and acquaintances.

This will be my one true test as a parent. If my children are not tolerant and kind than I have FAILED as a parent. 

Quote found at betterworld.net

 

Mommy Is Too Tired To Play

I saw this book on another Blog and thought it was very appropriate. It makes me sad though to see my life written in a book. Maybe some day there will be a cure.

Unschooling

I checked out Cathy Duffy's Approaches to Learning from the library and have just started to look through it. She has a quiz for Approaches to Learning and it gives you a personalized score based on what homeschool approach may work best for you. I was actually quite surprised at my scores:

Traditional - 14%
Umbrella Program - 18%
Independent Study - 29%
Classical - 65%
Eclectic - 67%
Charlotte Mason - 87%
Unit Study - 91%
Unschooling - 91%

To be honest I haven't even really looked at Unit Study and am surprised Unschooling was so high (even though I grew up an unschooler.)

I was asked the other day on the Secular Homeschool forum if I was going to unschool my children. I think I got so caught up in looking at curriculum's that I hadn't looked deeply at my thoughts on unschooling. I am not even sure how people define unschooling these days.

The way our family did unschooling was that I would find a topic I was interested in and I would check out as many library books as I could on the subject. I would read and read and read until I moved on to another topic of interest. The only real sit down academics we did were math and my mom would just work on a few things with us at a time.

I remember deciding I wanted to learn cursive and my mom bought me a workbook at the grocery store. I taught myself how to write cursive in several days because by God I wanted to learn and so I taught myself!

We also took lessons in art, piano, violin, and french. My brother was a star athlete and I was a very good ballerina. We made lots of friends through our extracurricular activities and no one ever worried that we weren't socialized :)

We also spent hours playing outside and building forts. It was a wonderful childhood and I hope I can create a beautiful childhood like that for my children.