As a homeschooling father, I am no stranger to explaining our family’s choice to home educate our children:
“Yes, they have plenty of socialization with other children.”
“Yes, we teach all the subjects.”
“No, you can simply buy the curriculum and it tells you what to do.”
By now I have the answers memorized. You can imagine my cringing, then, when reading Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Bartholet’s recent article in Arizona Law Review, calling for an outright ban on homeschool and the curtailment of private schools as well! Continue reading
What no one seemed to notice,” said a colleague of mine, a philologist, “was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.
Last year, singling out screen legends such as Marilyn Monroe and Marlene Dietrich, who died alone, Bardot told Dalya Alberge: “The majority of great actresses met tragic ends. When I said goodbye to this job, to this life of opulence and glitter, images and adoration, the quest to be desired, I was saving my life.”
Americans used to have great reverence for the spoken word. Before radio and TV, there were political speeches and the great orators were prized for their ability to move audiences to laughter, to tears, or to rage.
Unfortunately, most American public schools take the opposite approach.