[HSList] Why I homeschool

[Faye Ball Edwards]

TIM BANDY wrote:
>
> A major reason to homeschool, in my humble opinion, is that most public
> schools today have a peer environment that is unfit for children.
>
> Tim B.

I have not followed this thread like I should, but this message caught
my eye.

Thank you, Tim. I homeschool my two children, 11 and 12, here in the
heart of North Carolina for that exact reason. This is our first year
and we love it! I shudder to think that they would have to spend one
more day "under the influence". The stories they used to come home with
were horrendous.

Faye Edwards

[TIM BANDY]

In a message dated 4/17/98 2:43:45 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
luvi...@gloryroad.net writes:

<< I shudder to think that they would have to spend one
more day "under the influence". The stories they used to come home with
were horrendous. >>

Hello Faye,
I have devoted several years of thought and study of what is going on with our
culture. A few years ago, I discovered that no society in history has managed
to survive success. Basically, what happens is that the very unique aspects
about a people that elevates them to success are changed by success itself.
This is why American families rise and fall. We have only a few families who
have learned how to pass on success. Examples are the Rockefellers, the Fords
and the Forbes families. Most families begin falling soon after the original
successful one passes on. Some manage to pass on a lower level of success to
their children. Most highly successful people are self-made people such as
Trump, Gates, Edison, Franklin, Carnegie, Sears, Kresge, and Penny. We do not
hear about their decendents because none of them were successful at anything
except spending money.
Franklin did have a successful grandson to whom Franklin willed his printing
company and his fortune. The grandson died in jail at a young age. He was
jailed by President Madison for printing things (true things) about Washington
and Madison, which Madison did not like. The last Sears and Roebuck members
were imprisoned for torturing and murdering their four year old cousin. They
wanted to see what it would be like to control someone's life.
I have made a study of biographies. What I have learned is that poor
children have a better shot at success than do the children of the successful.
The so-called privileged and advantaged that the PC and socialist crowd are
fond of speaking of are usually so spoiled and without any goals that they
rarely amount to much. The way I put it, their parents usually cut them off
at the knees, they literally cripple them in their rush to see that they want
not.
America has produced what I call Youth Culture and this Youth Culture is
spread by TV by Hollywood and by public school peer group culture. Youth
Culture should not exist. It is counter productive. Youth Culture only
exists among the wealthy democracies. Two things emerge among the wealthy
democracies, Youth Culture and Left - Wing academic and intellectual culture.
America is the crown prince of both, Youth Culture and Left-wing university
and intellectual culture. Youth culture has a philosophy. It is the
philosophy that the very young gravitate toward naturally, hedonism. Hedonism
promotes pleasure as the purpose of life. The proper goal of life, according
to the hedonist, is the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. The
hedonist wants to watch TV, spend money--preferably someone else's money,
play, hang out, play video games, avoid work and above all avoid any school
work that requires any prolonged thought or prolonged development of skills.
The hedonist holds good students and young people who work for their money in
contempt, calling them four letter words such as geek, spazz, and nerd. Above
all, the hedonist pursues sex for the mere sake of sexual pleasure. Some
hedonists appear to pursue positive goals but upon closer examination the
hedonist pursues a goal, when he bothers to pursue any goal other than that of
immediate pleasure, only because he perceives that he can better pursue
pleasure by achieving some level of success. Often, this hedonist is the
underachiever, the one who does just enough to get by. The C+ Computer
Science major, whom everyone knows could easily have been an A student. The
student who could have gone to med school but chooses nursing school instead.
Many church denominations are seeing their youth and young adult
population decline sharply. On close examination one may find that this is
because Youth Culture is a national phenomenon, infecting anyone who watches a
lot of TV, listens to pop music, and \or attends public school.
Socialists (and socialists who deny they are socialists, claiming
instead that they are liberals). Support Youth Culture. Socialists seek to
break up family life and spiritual life. They see both as formidable enemies,
as powerful barriers to the realization of their political agenda. There has
been, to date, no communist or socialist state whose party members have not
been hostile to religion, except for new age religion which appears to be very
receptive to socialist and communist ideology. Communism and Socialism
(communism light) require that the individual give supreme loyalty to the
state. Religion and family are powerful agencies which prevent the state from
obtaining the direct loyalty which communism and socialism require in order to
operate.
Who else will exchange individual freedom for a political party which
teaches that all business is theft, that success is achieved only at some
unfortunate person's expense and that the haves owe something to the have
nots? Who else but the young hedonist can be counted on to support a
socialist agenda? The hedonist expects something for nothing and will often
accept a low standard of living, so long as they are able to party and live a
life of leisure and work just sometimes.
This can be fought but only if we stop listening to the socialist
dominated professions of sociology, psychology, social work, criminology, and
the teachers unions. Generation gap, the notion of the domineering parent, the
demand that parents give even young children "choses," the advice that only
very happy parents should remain together, spoon fed education, and so forth
-- all this and more comes from "experts" who harbor a left wing political
bias and who make extravagant claims for their professions, calling political
opinion "political science," third rate philosophy is called "Psychology,"
poorly done statistical research is called "sociology," and left wing politics
is called "criminology."
The most natural thing a family can do is to seek to pass on to the young
the religious and political and economic beliefs of the parent generation.
When the Founding Fathers spoke of individual freedom, they understood freedom
to mean freedom to pursue freedom as your family taught it. They mean
community freedom, which is why they were concerned and discussed at great
length the dangers and pitfalls of a strong central government. The concern
was that Federal government not undermine local government as they recognized
local government as the supreme good, as the path to freedom. When they
discussed freedom of religion, they did not have in mind that government
should provide freedom from religion.
The common citizen needs to stop being afraid of teaching their children
as they see fit. Respectable people need to be morally courageous and stop
being afraid to teach their children right and wrong as they know it to be.
Good people must stop being afraid to take action to keep their family
together. Family loyalty and unity is the necessary anchor of a free people.
To a major extent, public school attendance has become a serious threat to the
American family and to freedom itself. A young people with poor reading
skills, poor thinking skills, young people who embrace hedonism to the point
that they have no chance for ever standing proud on their own two feet, people
who are taught that students are divided into the few who have it and can
learn basic academic skills and the many who simply do not have it, students
who learn that their history consists of villains and victims, and students
who Cannot express themselves in writing cannot long remain free. They will
tire of a life of squalor and will be attracted to demagogues who teach them
that they desire better and better will be taken from the successful and given
to them, if they merely vote for the right candidate.... At least, this is
the way is seems to me...

Tim B.

[Bonita Sheffield]

That decline and fall of the successful is illustrated fully in why our
government has such a huge inheritence tax. They've actually calculated
that by the third generation, the children of the privileged are so inept
and soft that they couldn't or wouldn't run the business effectively anyway,
so the tax burden forces them to sell the family concern to others who will
run it better.

Bonita