Teaching your children to follow their passion sounds promising, but when you reflect on the word passion, you realize it's a misnomer. We don’t actually want our children to follow their passions.
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I took my kids trick-or-treating on a few occasions, but the more I thought about the messages we were communicating to our kids, the more I began to think trick-or-treating might not be such a great idea.
Ironically, while growing up, Halloween was one of my favorite holidays. What kid doesn't like candy? Having a free-for-all candy night with no adult supervision was the equivalent of kid Heaven.
But now, I stand on the side of those who think we should ban trick-or-treating.
Letting our children trick-or-treat contradicts our position that sugar is bad for their teeth and bad for them. We limit the sugar our children eat all year, but one day a year we give them a free rein to eat as much sugar as they want.
Do you have any idea how much sugar they consume? The average kid consumes three cups of sugar on Halloween!
Eating Halloween candy is not limited to one night, either. For however long it takes them to get through their bag of candy, that's how many days they are filling their bodies with harmful amounts of sugar.
The gross amount of sugar consumption creates severe sugar spikes in our children's blood levels, leaving them feeling not so well.
Overeating candy comes with the underconsumption of wholesome foods, which only exacerbates the problem.
Allowing our children to trick or treat on Halloween and eat so much candy is not practicing what we preach, nor is it responsible parenting. I'm guilty too, but when the facts are on the table—wow.
I read that one dentist pays children $2.00 for every pound of Halloween candy they give him. While I can appreciate the intention behind this gesture, is it sending our kids the right message?
We buy the candy, the kids knock on our doors, we give them the candy, and then the kids sell it to the dentist.
How can turning our kids into greedy candy peddlers be a solution? Greed is the #1 problem in the world today, and we are all suffering because of it. We don't want to encourage greediness in our children, do we?
We teach our kids not to talk to strangers, and we teach them that it isn't polite to ask people for things, yet, one night a year, we let our kids knock on the doors of strangers and ask them for candy.
One shameful moment for me as a kid happened one day on my way home from school. I had just turned twelve, and my best friend Bridget and I were famished after a long day sitting in classrooms.
At about 3:20 in the afternoon, as we were walking home with grumbling stomachs, we had this bright idea.
We could trick-or-treat!
We knocked on the door of an apartment near our school, and an elderly woman opened the door. Very surprised to see us, she asked, "Isn't it a little early, girls?" She gave us some candy anyway.
As an adult looking back, not just on that isolated incident but on the idea of knocking on a stranger's door and asking for candy, isn't this a contradiction?
We teach our kids not to speak to strangers and NEVER to take candy from a stranger, yet once a year, it is permissible. We teach them that it's not polite to ask for things, yet once a year, it is permitted.
But here's the crux of the matter: Halloween is a creepy holiday; it has gotten even creepier since the corporate world has taken it more seriously.
In my old neighborhood, a neighbor had gravestones on his front lawn and skeletons that moved and looked like they were coming out of graves. When we drove up the hill at night, my kids used to get scared because the scene looked so real.
So did I!
And that was a mild scene. My friend's neighbor in the town next to us would spend a fortune decorating his lawn until it looked like the scene out of a horror movie. I used to wonder what on earth that man was thinking.
Halloween is supposed to be for kids, not psychopaths.
I like the idea of carving pumpkins, but should we be wasting food like that? With so much starvation and deprivation in the world, it seems insensitive to waste pumpkins for a night of amusement.
For Halloween, about 22.2 million pumpkins go to waste! At your average price of $5.00 per pumpkin, that's 111,000,000 dollars of food that we waste. The average cost to feed one person per day in the US is supposed to be about $11.00 (seems very low); divided by 111, 000,000, we could feed 10 million people, roughly.
My god, that's shameful.
On second thought, we should ban Halloween.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
When you join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course for parents of school-age children, we guide you in homeschooling with the classics to raise more intelligent children of a better character.
Enroll using the link below and feel confident knowing you have the guidance and support you need to homeschool successfully.
For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20+ years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents to get it right.
She is available for one-on-one consultations as needed.
“Elizabeth has given us counseling and guidance to help us succeed with our home school planning. When I feel overwhelmed, scared, or lose my confidence, she offers words of wisdom and support.”
— Sherry B., Pittsburg, PA
A child growing up in a home where family meals are infrequent can lack a vital ingredient: a sense of well-being.
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What creature is that you are probably wondering?
It is the whale.
We studied dinosaurs in the second grade, yet, dinosaurs pale in comparison to whales. While reading Moby Dick, I discovered a fascination for them because whales are truly sublime.
I’m now convinced that no child should complete childhood without learning about their amazing lives.
Did you know that whales are the largest animal on Earth, even bigger than the T-Rex Dinosaur? The nine heaviest creatures in the world belong to the whale family. A blue whale weighs 200 tons, and when they give birth, their babies weigh three tons and gain 200 pounds per day!
Compare this to the largest elephant ever to exist (as far as we know), who weighed only 4 tons, and you begin to realize the magnitude of of whales.
The sperm whales have the largest brains of any animal, including man. Not only do they have the largest brains, but their brains contain a neocortex, like the human brain. The neocortex governs higher cognitive functions such as planning, memory, empathy, and language.
The sperm whale has a highly sophisticated language that is based on sound. They emit coded clicks at the speed of milliseconds and can emit these sounds at vast distances.
Scientists today are trying to decode their language using artificial intelligence. Someone even wrote a book about real conversations with whales and how the lessons we learn from them can help us live more joyful lives.
“As for his true brain, the whale, like all things that are mighty, wears a false brow to the common world. ”
Because most of the whale’s life is spent at the bottom of the ocean, they must rely on sound to see. Whales use click sounds to communicate which is called echolocation. Echolocation is when their sounds bounce off of an object and send back an echo to the whale that tells them where the object is.
They rely on click sounds to see, but these sounds can be as loud as 230 decibels making them the loudest animals on earth. In comparison, if you stood next to a jet engine, the engine's sound is about 150 decibels.
Whales are so loud that their clicking sounds can kill a man!
Whales can live underwater for about 90 minutes because their bodies can store massive amounts of oxygen in their muscles. When whales surface to breathe, they breathe for about seven minutes before they go underwater again.
Female whales live in multi-generational families. In contrast, the male whales live solitary lives and return to the females only during the mating season.
Whales will mourn the death of a loved one, and they will celebrate the birth of a calf, according to Shane Gero, a behavioral ecologist and founder of the Dominica Sperm Whale Project.
They have different dialects for each whale pod.
Yes, it’s true. Whales eat large squid, and the indigestible parts of the squid are eventually excreted. These excretions float in the water for seven years, going through various changes, and can be washed up on shores in the form of what is known as ambergris.
“It’s beyond comprehension how beautiful it is, It’s transformative. There’s a shimmering quality to it. It reflects light with its smell. It’s like an olfactory gemstone,” is how Mandy Aftel, a perfumer describes ambergris.
It can sell for anywhere from 10K to 100K, depending upon the size.
In 2021, a group of Yemeni fishermen found 1.5 million dollars worth of ambergris in the floating carcass of a sperm whale!
Sperm whales are the citizens of the ocean, and they are dying.
"Why are they dying?" asks Shane Gero.
And then he answers his own question: "It's us," he says. "All of us."
The deluge of gargantuan shipping fleets bringing us our goods from all over the world are killing the greatest creature on earth. Calves are born, but they are dying from accidents caused by large freighter ships.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, sperm whales were hunted for oil and spermiceti, but now they are killed because of our ignorance. It’s ironic that arguably the most intelligent animal on Earth is going extinct because of man’s stupidity, or greed.
Today, six out of 13 great whale species are considered endangered, including the sperm whale who was the subject of Melville’s masterpiece, Moby Dick.
Teach your children about the greatest creature on Earth when they are young, and you will have no problem getting them to read Moby Dick when they are older.
Moby Dick is the story of an obsessive pursuit for one albino sperm whale named Moby Dick by a man with a wretched heart called Ahab.
While it's not easy to read, it's a powerful and often humorous book with themes of human nature and human folly gracing the pages.
“God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates. ”
John Taylor Gatto used to have his sixth-grade students read Moby Dick.
Though I never asked him why out of all the great Western classics, he chose Moby Dick; my guess is because once you read it, you can successfully tackle any other work of great fiction.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
When you join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course for parents of school-age children, we guide you in homeschooling with the classics to raise more intelligent children of a better character.
Enroll using the link below and feel confident knowing you have the guidance and support you need to homeschool successfully.
For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20+ years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.
She is available for one-on-one consultations as needed.
“Elizabeth has given us counseling and guidance to help us succeed with our home school planning. When I feel overwhelmed, scared, or lose my confidence, she offers words of wisdom and support.”
— Sherry B., Pittsburg, PA
Defenders of language are opposed to the idea of gender-neutralizing language, as are those of us working in the field of traditional education.
And many, many others.
So I was not a little taken aback the other day when a friend told me that I should replace the pronoun "he" with "they" in my writing.
His concern was that people would think I was literally writing about boys rather than understanding "he" is a centuries-old pronoun that stands in place of an antecedent noun that could be of either sex.
Let’s take this sentence as an example: “If we teach a child to read too early, he may struggle to read well later.”
“He” stands in the place of “child,” who could be either a boy or a girl.
Surprised by my friend’s reasoning, I asked a couple of my grammarian friends if they had encountered this same concern. Maybe their being British had some bearing on my findings, but each emphatically said, "No!"
If you read Mr. Gwynne's Grammar, a best seller in England, you will find a section on the use of the pronoun "he." Mr. Gwynne makes a point of differentiating between “sex” and “gender,” the word “sex being a purely biological term and the word “gender” being a purely grammatical term.
“The word to indicate whether someone is male or female is ‘sex,’ not ‘gender,’ which is purely a grammatical term.”
Assigning gender to a noun is woven into the structure of many languages, including the Romance languages. The gender of a noun will determine which form of an adjective or pronoun should accompany it.
For example, in Latin, “mensa” is a feminine noun that means "table.” To say " the beautiful table," we use the adjective’s feminine form of “beautiful” to agree with the feminine gender of “table,” hence, “mensa pulchra.”
French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian follow a similar structure.
As you can see, gender in language has nothing to do with an individual's biological or wishful sex regardless of claims to the contrary, although there is of course some overlap when human beings and animals of the female sex are being referred to.
As reason would have it, therefore, the correct use of the pronoun "he," to stand in place of a noun that could be of either sex, is not sexist but is grammatically correct.
“I’ve studied authoritarianism for a very long time - for 40 years - and they’re started by people’s attempts to control the ideological and linguistic territory”
Using language correctly does matter.
Our language is the means through which we understand ourselves and the world in which we live. When we start meddling with one of its basic units, we do so with potentially disastrous results, such as being confused about the biological difference of a man or a woman.
There's a sort of madness at play here.
My point is that if you are a homeschooling parent teaching your child English grammar, please teach him that "he" is a centuries-old pronoun and cannot be replaced with “they".
Instead, teach your child that “he” replaces the antecedent noun when the noun could be of either sex, and we cannot afford to lose him!
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
When you join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course for parents of school-age children, we guide you in homeschooling with the classics to raise more intelligent children of a better character.
Enroll using the link below and feel confident knowing you have the guidance and support you need to homeschool successfully.
For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20+ years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents to get it right.
She is available for one-on-one consultations as needed.
“Elizabeth has given us counseling and guidance to help us succeed with our home school planning. When I feel overwhelmed, scared, or lose my confidence, she offers words of wisdom and support.”
— Sherry B., Pittsburg, PA
Noise has become omnipresent in Western culture, and it's not only affecting our well-being, but it's affecting our children's well-being and their hearing too.
Read MoreWhat is the first thing we teach boys when they go to school?
Read More
How do we raise a highly intelligent child, and how do we influence a child to strive for excellence?
“Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.”
Homeschool him instead.
Before we continue, we should qualify the term homeschooling. I'm not referring to virtual schools or public-schools-at-home, but to a state-free education with a challenging curriculum.
I’m referring to the Smart Homeschooler way of homeschooling with real books you can hold in your hands, few to no textbooks and definitely no computers. Children who are taught learning from real books, in wholesome environments, with their curiosity nurtured, are going to stretch their minds further, and, therefore, develop their minds to a greater degree.
Hence, they’ll be more intelligent.
(The Smart Homeschooler way is much easier than homeschooling online, too.)
“Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.”
There is no quicker way to raise a less intelligent child than by indulging him in hand-held devices or any other kind of electronics, including educational software and television programs.
Allowing your child to watch Sesame Street or play video games is an absolute no, no!
You want to find people who have excelled in their fields and let them be role models for your child. Your child will see what is possible by the example these people set and go on to follow in their footsteps - this is not an uncommon path to excellence in a skill or field.
You have a better chance of raising a child to excel if you expose your child to many experiences and subjects and talented people during his elementary years.
When he discovers the thing that ignites his heart; whether it be an academic subject, a fine art, or a sport, he’ll be driven by a passionate love to become excellent at what it is he loves.
Motivation is the deciding factor. When we love something enough, we do it for its own sake. The motivation is inherent in the thing we love. It’s out of this that greatness is born.
“Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.”
People who excel tend to fall in love with their object of interest first, and later, when they are older—around the teenage years—they begin to train for excellence.
The desire for training from comes from the heart of the student, so we want to let it unfold in its own time and at its own pace.
Lastly, what do we mean by genius? My understanding is that genius is the state of acquiring a level of mastery combined with originality.
Genius is the sum total of many years of discipline and practice and hard work.
Genius is rooted in creativity; that's why getting the early years right is so vital to all that follows.
“I’ve concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress genius because we haven’t yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. ”
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
When you join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course for parents, I guide you in homeschooling with the classics to raise intelligent children without computers. You can enroll using the link below and be confident knowing you can and will homeschool successfully.
For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child Well to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20+ years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.
She is available for one-on-one consultations as needed.
“Elizabeth has given us counseling and guidance to help us succeed with our home school planning. When I feel overwhelmed, scared, or lose my confidence, she offers words of wisdom and support.”
— Sherry B., Pittsburg, PA
An inspiring look into a homeschooler’s journey about successfully teaching a subject she had never learned properly during her own school days.
Read MoreMy kids are behind!” Tell me honestly, as a homeschooler, have you not had the same thought at least once?!
Read More
It is physically, emotionally, and intellectually superior to teach your kids without computers.
Yet, there are times when we can justify online learning for our kids, but these times should be the exception, not the rule.
Sitting in front of a computer for long periods during the day is unhealthy, regardless of age. Yet, it is even worse for children because they are still developing the habits which will become their way of life.
Their brain is also developing and needs exposure to environments that don’t hinder its development.
We want our children to be physically active, socially competent, and intellectually sharp.
To accomplish these goals, we need to put our children in environments where they learn to enjoy physical activity, engage socially with people of all ages, and develop their minds, including their memory, which is a vital component of intelligence.
Yet, a child who develops the habit of sitting in front of a computer for long periods during the day is not getting physical activity, social stimulation, or developing his memory.
He is developing the habit of using the computer, which requires almost no moment on the user's part. It is an anti-social activity requiring no social skills and virtually no use of our memory.
As one young person said, "Who needs a memory when we have all the information we need at a push of the key?"
“Neurologist and Oxford professor Baroness Susan Greenfield believes that video game addiction can cause a form of what she describes as “dementia” in children.”
Given that our memories are a part of our brains and that a good memory is always present in highly intelligent people, it would be prudent to develop and protect our memories by using them.
We don't want to waste our or our children's minds sitting in front of screens tapping keys.
Another parent noted that "online pupils tend to abandon manners that most would adhere to in the classroom."
One of the concerns, when a family is considering homeschooling, is the social factor. "Will my child develop good social skills?" Yet, we put our kids in front of computers and call that homeschooling without connecting the dots.
Online learning is not homeschooling; it is anti-social schooling.
Kids growing up in anti-social environments will most likely become anti-social adults. Online homeschooling, with kids sitting in front of computers for too many hours per day, will produce anti-social kids.
Developing social skills and learning to enjoy other people's company is a result of
We also learn to enjoy the company of other people, and we discover much about ourselves by interacting with others.
We are social creatures; living these technology-consuming, anti-social lives is unnatural!
An in-person teacher provides a socially-active environment for children where they engage and develop their social skills. A teacher also creates an intellectually-stimulating environment for children where they can ask questions and search for answers. They hold books and learn to read well so they can tackle subjects independently.
If we aren't raising kids who know how to ask the right questions, who know how to find the answers, who know how to teach themselves, then, as Dorothy Sayers said in her essay on education, "...whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain."
Online learning is effort spent in vain.
“Steve Jobs was not a proponent of tech in the classroom. His kids read real books. ”
Even Steve Jobs was on to the problem with technology and children. Have you read his interview about it in the New York Times?
Lastly, let me briefly mention the ill effects of screen use on our physical, emotional, and intellectual health, according to the Mayo Clinic:
Obesity
Inadequate sleep schedules and insufficient sleep
Behavior problems
Delays in language and social skills development
Violence
Attention problems
Less time learning
With attention problems also comes learning problems. Who’s fooling who?
“In a 2010 Iowa State University study published in the journal Pediatrics, viewing television and playing video games each are associated with increased subsequent attention problems in childhood.”
We know kids have died from blood clots after gaming for too long. We want to protect our kids from the habit of computer use until they are older when they can no longer avoid it. Hopefully, they'll be able to exercise sound judgment and self-control by then.
We can let our kids learn online when we have exhausted all other options.
Below the age of nine, I would not let my child near a computer. The brain is still in a crucial stage of development until a child reaches adolescence, when the brain does a self-pruning of any weak pathways.
At nine, I would make an exception and let my child study Latin for half an hour online, one day a week. The rest of the week, I would do my best to help my child study, using the lessons for instruction and inspiration.
Around the age of thirteen, if there were any subjects my child needed, such as more advanced mathematics, and I could not teach them, I would hunt high and low for a teacher.
I would try to find other homeschooling parents who might understand the subject and could teach my child. I might ask qualified neighbors or put an ad up in a local bookstore for a tutor. I would do everything I could to find a natural teacher.
“In a 2015 University of Utah School of Medicine brain imaging study published in the journal Addiction Biology, brain changes were measured in video gamers that are correlated with increased distractability, impulsivity (hallmarks of addiction and ADHD), schizophrenia and autism”
Once I had exercised all options, I might look online if I still could not find a teacher. But my goal would be to keep my child off the computer if I could help it, and if I could not help it, to restrict online learning as much as possible.
If my child were older, say 16, according to my state's law, I might consider graduating him from high school and moving on to college or dual-enrollment in our local community college.
College is our best option for an older child when in-person teachers are unavailable.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
When you join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course for parents, I guide you in homeschooling with the classics to raise intelligent children without computers. You can enroll using the link below and be confident knowing you can and will homeschool successfully.
For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child Well to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20+ years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.
She is available for one-on-one consultations as needed.
There are several advantages, which are vital to your family’s well-being, when you keep your child at home, rather than school, and which serve you better too.
Read MoreThe morning can swallow your time if you don't have a ritual in place especially when you’re homeschooling.
Read More
Not just any kind of reading will help develop and strengthen your child's mind.
You want to provide your kids with literature that will challenge their minds and get them into the habit of applying effort when reading.
Because the more your child actively uses his mind when he's young, and the more he continues to use his mind as he matures, the brighter he'll become.
We know that the brain is an ever-changing organ. It can weaken from misuse or neglect, and it can also become stronger from the right kind of use.
“John Taylor Gatto had his sixth-grade class read and discuss Moby Dick by Herman Melville. ”
Parents say things like, "Well, he only reads comic books, but at least he's reading!"
As John Taylor Gatto put it, "Teach your children to grow up to be readers of more than the daily newspaper."
Comic books are fine for comic relief on occasion. Maybe you're on a road trip or flying cross-country; this might be a time to let your child read a comic book or two or three.
☞ It’s probably prudent not to let comic books work their way into your home though.
Comic books will make his mind lazy because they require almost no effort to read. The pictures tell the story, and the dialogues are simple. When it becomes time to read challenging literature, he won't be able to tackle the vocabulary or follow the longer and more complicated sentence patterns.
He'll complain to you that the book is "boring."
It's not boring; he just hasn't learned to read well. Do not let him blame the book!
Great books expand the mind and help us to understand the complexities of life and ourselves. If we replaced the department of psychology with a department of Shakespeare, we'd be off to a good start in improving our colleges and universities.
The inner workings of the mind and heart are there in his plays.
Once you get used to the language, Shakespeare is no more difficult to read than authors such as Tolstoy or Dostoevsky.
The ability to read great literature is what you want for your children. You want them to be exposed to the great ideas of Western thought that take us all the way back to Ancient Greece.
John Taylor Gatto was very in support of reading great books. It's where he got the seeds for many of his ideas. Had he not been a good reader himself, he would not have been able to plow through all of the material he read to uncover the real history of modern education.
☞ It took a competent reader and thinker to accomplish such a great feat.
I said there was one thing you need to do to increase your child's intelligence, but as I was writing this, another occurred to me, so there are now two things.
The second thing is to homeschool your children, so you expose them to great literature. I say homeschool because, sadly, your children won't get the kind of education they need in public school.
☞ And with a lousy education system comes a dumbed-down people.
Here’s a poem by Emily Dickinson to inspire your kids:
There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
Have your children memorize Emily Dickinson's poem, and supply them with the kind of books to travel lands away!
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course for parents and let me guide you in homeschooling to raise intelligent children of good character. You can enroll using the link below and be confident knowing you can and will homeschool successfully.
For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child Well to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20+ years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.
She is available for one-on-one consultations as needed.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
What follows is an edited transcription of key selections from John’s talk, The Underground History of American Education. As fantastic as it may seem, his findings are based on verified fact, not crazy conspiracy theories.
Read More
Are you impressed with adults who read 100 books or more per year? I was once, too, until one day, someone mentioned it was audiobooks that they were reading.
What?! Since when does listening to a book qualify for reading a book? There can be dangerous consequences to misusing language like this.
Let's examine the problem. We'll start by defining what we mean by "reading a book."
Reading, as in what we teach children when they first go to school, is a skill that involves the eyes and both sides of the brain. Using our eyes, we look at the printed words on a page and decipher their meaning to understand what the writer is communicating.
"I read" is an action verb that says I am in the active state of reading a book using my sense of sight.
We have other grammatical uses for the word, such as in the gerund "a poetry reading." We also have the infinitive: "I went home to read." We can use the word metphorically as in “I read the writing on the wall.”
But to say that you read a book, as in the verb, “I read,” when you listened to the book is to use the word ambiguously. Using words ambiguously confuses the meaning, so we understand something to be what it is not or something to not be what it is.
Manipulating the use of language is the art and science of propaganda. Propagandists get people to believe things that are untrue by twisting and reframing language in a way that deceives us.
Not that there is an intent to deceive people about how many books someone read last year, but it is deceptive. Why do we have a separate term for blind people who read with their hands if it weren't?
When blind people read with their hands, we call it Braille, so we don't confuse it with reading using our eyes.
If people want to "read" with their ears, it needs its own term to avoid confusion.
It would mislead people to say that our three-year-old read Peter Rabbit when we read the book to our child. When we watch a film based on a novel, we don't say we read the book. Before television, when people listened to books read over the radio, they didn't say they read the book. We would never listen to a podcast and say we read the podcast.
None of this would make sense if we did.
Why then is it suddenly okay to say something like, "I read The Power of Regret," when the truth is that I listened to Daniel Pink read it on Audible books? (It was a good listen!)
And then there’s the argument that some people are auditory learners and some people are visual learners. Yet, the Multiple Learning Styles has never been proven, and educated people have always read books. Skills are something we develop. Listening is a skill and so is reading.
“Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.”
Here's the problem with replacing listening with reading: when half of the country's adult population cannot read at a sixth-grade level, stretching the concept of reading to include audiobooks will not help things.
When we believe listening to an audiobook is reading, we can deny having a literacy problem. You might ask, "What does it matter if we read with our eyes or listen with our ears? We are getting the same information."
It matters for a few reasons.
We have words with precise definitions to facilitate our communication with one another. If you use a word one way, and I am using it another, neither of us understands the other.
While you might argue that language naturally changes over time, it does, but not in ways that don't make sense.
I'd also love to boast reading 100 books a year, but it takes time to read a serious book. I could listen to 150 books in a year while cooking, cleaning, and driving, but reading Tacitus, that's another story.
Some words come into vogue and go out of vogue, but the altering of reality concerns me. Saying we are reading when in fact, we are listening has its repercussions.
Regardless of how many people listen to audiobooks, Americans read less than the global average.
Our children need to learn how to read challenging books, and so do we. Competent reading is a skill we develop to gain access to the world of literature, both ancient and modern.
Skilled reading allows us to read original sources and conduct research, so we can think for ourselves rather than let others think for us. Reading fires up our brains much more than listening, so reading helps to keep our minds strong. Reading is a pleasant way to spend one’s leisure time. Reading makes us smarter by improving our minds. And what about the smell of a book, the feel of a book, the look of a book?
We have a lot of debate about language these days, but when we examine the cause for the disputes, it's because we ignore common sense.
If reading involves the eyes and listening involves the ears, then when we listen to a book being read by someone else, it is safe to say we are not reading it.
If listening is listening, then it can't be reading. If our Americans (and Brits) read below the global average, correcting the problem by listening to audiobooks will not fix it.
Free Download: Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
When you join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course for parents, I guide you in homeschooling with the classics to raise intelligent children of good character. You can enroll using the link below and be confident knowing you can and will homeschool successfully.
For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child Well to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20+ years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.
She is available for one-on-one consultations as needed.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
Summer is a great time for entertaining, exploration, and play, which all kids need plenty of (and so do we!).
I put together a list of ten inexpensive things (some are free) and easy for you to help your kids do, or at least help them get set up to do. If your kids are old enough, you can leave them to the "doing" part for some of these activities while you enjoy a good book, a short snooze, or catch up on folding laundry.
One thing we used to do and that our neighbors loved was to put on a piano recital. My kids and I would make high tea goodies such as little sandwiches and cakes, and we'd invite some of our neighbors for high tea and a concert.
They loved it! If your kids don't play a musical instrument, then a poetry recital is fun too. For the recital, you want them to memorize the piece, practice introducing them, teach them how to stand before the audience and make eye contact before they sit down to play or begin reciting, and then stand before the audience at the end before they leave the stage.
If you do a poetry recital, each child can recite a poem of their choice, and then you can invite the audience to share a poem. If you decide to open the stage for everyone, let your neighbors know ahead that they should come prepared to recite one of their favorite poems.
I used to buy somewhat expensive kites at our annual kite festival for my kids, but the best kites were the ones we had when I was young. They were simple to assemble and oh so easy to fly. You can help your kids make one from scratch (plenty of Youtube videos on this subject), or you can buy a kit from Amazon.
Assuming you have the kite parts, assemble the kite, use old sheets to make the tails, and head for a tall hill, without trees, on a windy day. Bring a picnic lunch as kite flying will keep your kids occupied for hours. In my town, we had a kite festival every year, and we used to have so much fun, which lasted the entire day.
Water balloon fights are the way to go during the summer. We used to have plenty of these too! All you have to do is buy the balloons, show your kids how to fill them, and let the fun begin.
Buy big colored chalk from your local art store, and let your kids draw a map of your country, the States, or the world, depending upon their age. You can also get a head start on their geography lessons for the next year!
Even if you live in an apartment with only a tiny deck, get used to planting vegetables with your kids each year. If you have a little section of the yard, you can spare, that's even better. It's an incredible thrill for kids to grow their food and eat it; plus, it tastes so much better.
Advertise car washes at a discount price in your neighborhood. Before you let your kids do this, teach them the etiquette of handling other people's cars. I once let a friend's older kids detail my car, only to find later that they had jumped on it and dented the hood.
One last thing, whatever supplies your kids will need, buy them new, give your kids the receipt, and make sure your kids pay you back from the money they earn. Having them pay for their supplies is a good lesson in business that you don't want them to miss.
Have your kids practice and stage a play for family, friends, or neighbors on a warm summer night, outside if possible. They can make their costumes and any back drops they need for the staging part. Getting ready to stage and perform a play should keep them busy for weeks.
Rock painting is another great activity for kids. Take them on a hike in nature, and let them collect rocks. Buy paints specific for rock painting, and let your kids get to it. Painted rocks are great to use for paper weights or holding doors open, so let your kids devise creative ways to use them. Sometimes they just want to admire their work, and that's fine too.
Take your kids in the backyard or out in nature and help them identify trees on one day and birds on another. They can take leaves home and do an art/science project where they draw the leaves with colored pencils and title them according to the tree they belong to.
For the birds, they can do the same thing and learn to imitate the bird's song as well.
We used to love this activity. We spent hours rolling down hills when we were young or even down my grandfather's lawn (he had a huge lawn on a downward slope). Rolling down hills is something all kids should be doing and that kids naturally love to do. If you can't model it for them, set it up like a competition where they see who can get to the bottom first.
Now, these hills should not be too high as you only want it to take about 30 seconds if I remember correctly.
But, it has been a long, long time since I rolled down hills!
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
When you join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course for parents, I guide you in homeschooling with the classics to raise intelligent children of good character. You can enroll using the link below and be confident knowing you can and will homeschool successfully.
For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child Well to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20+ years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.
She is available for one-on-one consultations as needed.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
Are you getting the most our of your homeschooling day? If not, here are three strategies you can adopt to feel satisfied that you accomplished your goals.
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Are four-year-old children developmentally ready to learn about sex? Are children of any age ready for this kind of education?
No, they are NOT!
Ironically, we teach children to believe in Santa Claus, but, in the same vein, we have sex education classes for preschoolers. Freud would have fun untangling this web of inconsistencies.
One of the problems is that rather than deter children from an interest in sex, sex-education classes have the opposite effect.
According to Dr. Melvin Anchell, who wrote the book What's Wrong With Sex Education, teaching sex education in the classroom has led to significant increases in teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, promiscuity, teenage abortions, and, not surprisingly, depression and suicide.
While the reasons for this are more than we can tackle here, let's look at a few of them to get a sense of what is taking place in the classroom.
For starters, when we introduce children to the concept of sex at an early age and do it in mixed classrooms, we remove that natural barrier of modesty which children have, especially the modesty between girls and boys.
We then reduce sex education to the mechanics of a physical act and ignore its purpose, which is procreation and a physical expression of an emotional state called love.
The earlier children begin to think about the mechanics of sex; however, the more desensitized they become to a physical act that was once held sacred.
Having removed the barrier of modesty, the more curious young people become about sex and the less forbidden it begins to seem.
Dr. Anchell's findings make perfect sense in a world where elementary sex education has been normalized for the masses of children attending public schools.
If things weren't bad enough, in the 21st century, we have begun to teach children that sex between two women and two men is a "lifestyle" choice.
A lifestyle choice according to whom?
The idea of teaching four-year-olds that two fathers make a family and two mothers make a family is bizarre. Children do not think in these constructs until they are older.
Children do not judge the various types of "families" in the world. Children take life as it comes without preconceived notions. Whatever world they grow up in will seem normal to them until they are old enough to evaluate it objectively.
Furthermore, what happened to schools teaching subjects such as grammar, Latin, poetry, and Ancient history? Why do we no longer teach these subjects, subjects that children do need to learn if we want them to acquire an education?
After all, isn't that why they are in school?
And, if teaching sex education to children leads to significant increases in teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, promiscuity, teenage abortions, depression, and suicide, as Dr. Anchell reports, then doesn't this tell us that sex education in the classroom is potentially harmful to our children?
If this is true, it would be prudent to understand what your children are being taught in the name of education.
“If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilized morality to savage morality.”
Planned Parenthood has many videos on Youtube produced for children ranging from learning to name their genitalia to knowing about gender identity. As you watch the videos, pay close attention to the language that is being used and the assumptions being made.
This is the same language and the same assumptions your children are being exposed to in public school.
The videos would be laughable if they weren’t so disturbing.
You can easily check out the National Sexuality Education Standards to learn about the K-12 sexual education objectives as taught in public school today. The information is online and available to anyone who chooses to investigate the matter further.
To give you an idea of what you'll find in the Standards, for example, kindergartners are now taught anatomy. There is nothing wrong with teaching anatomy, but, curiously, no other body parts are mentioned except for the proper names of the male and female genitalia.
Have you ever heard a child refer to their private parts by their proper names? On the contrary, as already stated, children have a natural modesty about these things. Why take that away from them?
Furthermore, most adults cannot identify the location of their liver or pancreas, but somehow, a kindergartner should know the proper names of their genitalia?
It would be more fitting to teach students where their organs were located, but maybe not when they are five-years-old.
Consider this standard: "Identify healthy ways for friends to express feelings to each other." Take note that this need to "express feelings to each" is a part of sex-education courses, not a course in communication.
What do they mean by healthy ways that young children express their feelings to one another? Can you imagine an eight-year-old boy going up to his eight-year-old friend, also a boy, and saying, "I'd like to express my feelings to you by telling you that I really like you."
This is not the kind of conversation boys and girls engage in. Maybe they will say something such as, "I like you" or "let's be best friends," as I remember saying to my childhood best friend, but that is the extent of it.
Children are not thinking about their "feelings" for one another because they don't understand the abstract concept of "feelings."
Attempting to teach children about their feelings within the context of sex education, and then teaching them sexual practices, some of which have always been considered deviant, will naturally get them wondering, which may explain why another sexual practice is also on the rise…
Yes, these are things our schooled children are thinking about today whether we like it or not.
“How can one be well...when one suffers morally”
Here's another of the Standard's objectives: "Provide examples of how friends, family, media, society and culture influence ways in which boys and girls think they should act."
Shouldn't a healthy society teach girls to behave like girls and boys to behave like boys? Evidently not. Instead, we teach them that they can choose their pronouns as easily as they can choose the color of their water bottle.
Which begs only one question, have we gone totally insane?
In public school, children are expected to ponder the societal influences on their behavior, based on their gender type, yet, Western psychology understands that children are too young to ruminate over these concepts. So...who is fooling whom?
“The goal of a boy should be to become a man, and that of a girl to become a woman.”
Between the third and the fifth grade, a child should: "Define sexual orientation as the romantic attraction of an individual to someone of the same gender or a different gender."
No comment.
Between sixth and eighth grades, your child should be able to: "Differentiate between gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation."
No comment.
There are many reasons to keep your children out of public school, but protecting them from inappropriate exposure to sexual material and subsequent non-sensical value judgments should be at the top of any diligent parent's list.
The environment your children grow up in will help to shape who they become. Research shows that 75% of children will adopt the beliefs they are taught in school.
Children cannot have a wholesome childhood without keeping their innocence intact. Part of their "coming of age" includes being introduced to matters reserved for the adult world when it is appropriate to be introduced to them.
WHEN IT IS APPROPRIATE TO BE INTRODUCED TO THEM.
There are developmental stages in which this happens. But when the stages are interrupted and sped up to meet a perverse agenda largely pushed by taxpayer-funded Planned Parenthood, one has to wonder what is going on?
Did you know that between 2013 and 2015, taxpayers funded Planned Parenthood to the tune of 1.5 billion dollars? This is an organization that earns a lot of money itself, not only by performing abortions but by selling the aborted fetal cells and body parts to research companies including the vaccine industry which uses fetal cells to grow its viruses.
“Planned Parenthood lied to the public and to Congress, but now there is no longer any reasonable doubt that Planned Parenthood sold fetal body parts, commodifying living children in the womb and treating pregnant women like a cash crop. The U.S. Department of Justice must escalate the enforcement of laws against fetal trafficking to the highest level of priority.”
Thanks to Planned Parenthood, since the 1960s, we have children who are being deprived of a normal childhood in the name of "social change" and the sundry societal ramifications that come with it.
Therefore, each parent should do everything in their power to oppose Planned Parenthood’s influence on our children by providing a wholesome childhood for the precious being they brought into this world.
Protecting your children has to begin with keeping them out of any school, public or private, that does not protect their innocence.
Sex education is something children should learn about in the home, from their parents (In modest cultures, it isn’t even a topic that’s discussed between parent and child). It is a parent's right to decide if and when to approach the subject; it should never be a decision for public or private schools to make.
As we raise our children, we must remember that we are our children's guardians, and we must guard our children well.
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
When you join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course for parents, I train you to homeschool your kids with a focus on critical thinking, good character, and the classics. You can enroll using the link below and be confident knowing you can and will homeschool successfully.
For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child Well to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20+ years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
Now that the homeschool year is winding down, are you worried your children didn't finish everything you had mapped out for them? Are you feeling a little despair?
Read MoreSmart Homeschool Planning with Elizabeth Y. Hanson, Homeschooling Expert and Certified Parenting Coach
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