This. Amen is a Hebrew word so technically speaking the correct way to say it is the long O-main way, from what I was taught. However, people at church look at me funny if I say it that way so I go with the short A-men (short e). What drives me batty is that people in my church have been taught to say it another way (can't remember right now, try and wipe it form my mind).

The Amish and Mennonite communities don't generally go beyond an eighth grade education for religious reasons. This applies to all genders.

Yes. I know one family that "unschools". For them that consists of lots of Netflix and outside events/activities. The kids all have speech problems to such a severity that no one outside the family understands them. Here in Minnesota we use to have more regulation that this family fell under, but it did nothing to address the problems. Many of those laws have been repealed, but it makes no difference. However, I have a friend in Pennsylvania who unschooled her son. She killed the TV and all electronic anything. Her son ended up being profoundly gifted. She covered basic subjects with him like the three r's, and read to him high quality books. The rest was interest based. He was done with high school work by the time he was eleven and is now in a public school. He's not there for the education, but to make friends. The majority of his education was done before the PA laws would have been applicable to him. These two cases are basically the same. Really, the only difference is the electronics issue. You could figure in major city vs rural area and economics but to me the biggest difference was attitude. The first family has a very laissez faire attitude towards education. Anything will do, quality doesn't matter. The second family weeded out between "good" and "great". The mother saw it as her job to educate her son and worked at it. Regulations wouldn't have changed either outcome IMO.

Uh, the father can step in and help IMO.

I like this book the best out of everything I've looked at - http://www.amazon.com/Just-Case-Self-Sufficient-Unexpected-Happens/dp/1603420355/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1353911544&sr=1-1&keywords=just+in+case I'm linking challenged.

From what I have read curiosity is actively discouraged in FLDS culture.

Two things to point out before the quoting begins - one the national government has little to do with public education. Most education laws are at the state level. Second, yes we do need to worry that because a fringe group is not doing it's job that there could be repercussions for all homeschoolers. IMO and experience the media will use anything to sensationalize a story. This will rile up the viewers and policy makers, and laws will be passed. For example, Charles Linburgh Jr. was kidnapped and because his father was famous it was a national media event. The local police didn't do a great job, and the media played that up. Hoover jumped on the issue and whambamthankyouma'am all kidnapping cases are now handled by the FBI. How I see people breaking down in this thread are - pro-government and anti-big government. These are very basic differences and they won't be resolved in one thread IMO. See, that wouldn't work well up here in Minnesota. I live way down in the southern part of the state and we have significantly less snow than the way northern part (I'm looking at YOU, International Falls). We're all closed at different times due to weather. Heck, we don't even open at the same time. Most of the state starts school on the first weekday after Labor Day, but my local school got an exemption and they open in mid-August. That has created it's own weather related issues as most of the local schools have no air conditioning. Once out robot overlords show themselves I'm sure it'll happen. AS it is kids are going to be aimed at having teachers on tv/online with textbooks on iPads. See, robots. We need to start checking for pod marks.

I made two lists since I haven't heard about the lotto and if we won it yet or not ; ) Lotto Christmas Wish List A divorce, with sole custody of my dd and her passport (can't go to freakin' CANADA to attend family reunions because of the blasted passport law) A years worth of food storage All the disaster prepping stuff I'd need A new wardrobe, from Old Navy A new house, maybe in Utah, and no matter where it would be an Earthship we had professionally built. Also, totally off grid. A cure for CFS. It's been kicking my butt for almost a year now. (this falls under the Miracle Wish List) To be able to tithe DNA testing to see what my genetic heritage actually breaks down to Everything on my Amazon wishlist OH OH OH! A big party. This is crazy, but I'd LOVE to fly all my friends and family to my new home (though they get to stay at a very fancy hotel) and have a big party. We're talking many international flights. Oh gosh, I'm tearing up at the idea! Actual Wishlist Money for iTunes Money for Nook books Black leather slide-on shoes for winter weather sans snow (my mom found a great pair and we almost fight to wear them) Father Ted complete set of DVDs (may need to move this to the lotto wish list)

Ah yes, math. Well, you'd be right and I'd be wrong. So it is possible that he was home schooled his whole life. I have no excuse as I had a huge Coke today.

I've been reading up about the education system in the FLDS church. It's changed radically in the last few years. Before Warren Jeffs the children largely went to public schools, though there was a private and residential school in Salt Lake City. Women could learn to be midwives and even get advanced degrees, so they weren't all restricted to "just" being mothers. There are FLDS communities across the US and into Canada. Warren Jeffs has said that children in the FLDS church should be homeschooled. However, he made that statement only in 2000. So yes, the eighteen year old boy who couldn't read was likely part of the public school system before being brought home to school. Since I last did research it does look like more FLDS kids are homeschooled with Warren Jeffs-approved materials. When the state of Texas came in an took most of the children from the YFZ compound in 2008 they did lots of testing. Texas found the kids to generally be at grade level. This is a good overview of the homeschooling laws in Utah - http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/laws/blUT.htm#.ULKI3oc0WSo There are requirements for homeschooling that is tied to educational benchmarks - http://www.uen.org/core/ . The state formerly require testing, attendance records and the like but repealed those laws a few years ago. So with all that information under our belts we can look more closely at what regulations work and which don't.

The FLDS schools operate under the private schools laws, not the home schooling laws. Though the kids are are educated at home and by the parents they are doing so through an school.

It doesn't flip, but we got ours from William-Sonoma. Ah, the days of disposable income...

Neither - hope and fear are equal. Both are emotions that can control you and lead you to a place of poor judgement.

Argh. Just lost a whole fat post. It was a good one, too. What would more regulation look like? It'd look like a lot more work for us. We'd have more record keeping to do such as attendance. We might have to get lunches approved by a nutritionist. There would be lots of expensive testing. Parents would have to have a specific education in order to be allowed to homeschool their children. We would be told what to teach, how to teach, and to what extent to teach. There would be no flexibility to follow rabbit trails or take summer vacation in January. There would be committees that approved or denied our curriculum choices. Unannounced home visits/examinations. We might loose our abilities to selectively vaccinate. If our children weren't performing at grade level we might loose them to foster care. In short, we'd loose a lot of freedom. What can we as homeschoolers do to regulate others? The same thing we do to regulate our neighbors. If something bad or illegal is going on, we report it. We get to know people in our communities. We help where we can, and lobby when needed.

Oddly enough, I'd have been more upset about being left to do Thanksgiving food all by myself. In family lore it would have become "The Thanksgiving Mama Let All The Adults Have It". No, you're not overreacting - his behavior was not that of a dependable husband. What's worse is he dismissed your hurt.

Thrift stores should have bed sheets for forts. Get nature guides like for birds and trees and the stars. Get them involved in helping with making meals. My twelve year old is in charge of making sweets. Her desire for cookies wars with her need to be lazy. Computer games that don't go online are good. Crafts are a great thing, but keep it to one a day or the mess will drive you crazy. Take up knitting or crochet. Audio books are a G-d send.Exercise DVDs are good, too. We use our Wii more in the winter than any other time. Get involved either with the local home schooling community or with a local group like Girl Scouts.

One thing to keep in mind is that DirecTV goes UP in price after a year. It's the only company that I know of that charges you for loyalty. I would drop it if I could, but my Mom would go into shock. I'd also love to drop us down a level, but she refuses and I would have to find BBC America somewhere else.

I've only seen a review on "Religion and Ethics News Weekly". To me it looks like a great film and my mom and I can't wait to see it. We'll be bringing along my twelve year old dd. She is currently on an anti-religion kick, but I keep talking to her about it. The film itself looks spiritually rich and wonderful. With Ang Lee directing it shold be a visually stunning film. Some of the actors in Pi were also in "The Namesake", which was also wonderful.

Sean Connery, hands down. Daniel Craig is pretty and all, but he just doesn't have that kilt wearing swagger that Connery has.

Well, I've only done fast food in the US. Hands down it's In N Out Burger, but they are far away from me. The fast food place I eat at the most often is McDonald's because I have the least allergies to their food.

Yes, because the OP is suppose to do the thinking and research.

A few years ago my daughter had a horrible case of tummy flu. It was so bad that the *scent* of food made her vomit. By the time she was well enough to eat again the left overs were gone : (

I agree, it's unethical to be asking us what we think of the lyrics. The OP is the one who is suppose to do the thinking and research. She could have easily read the article on Wikipedia about Mr Mathers. The Wikipedia article clearly states that "Kill You" is about his mother. I'm sure that You Tube has a lot of interviews with him from when the album came out, in which I'm sure he explains why he wrote the song. Donuts to dollars the lyrics "till the vocal cords don't work in her throat no more" refer to Ed Kemper. Kemper killed his other, cut out her vocal cord, and put them in the garbage disposal because he couldn't deal with her anymore. There is actually a full study of the whole album that addresses the issues that will be presented in the paper the OP is writing.

My Mom has a very different take on this whole issue. When Webkinz first came out, we got kinda caught up in it as a family. It was late winter/early spring and we need OUT of the house. Everyone loaded up in the car and we drove to Iowa to do a day trip of genealogy and to look at new Webkinz at a store down there. On the way back we stopped at a fancy restaurant in a retirement community. While we were sitting there we overheard a group of seniors gossiping their heads off about who was cheating on who, someone and their hip replacement surgery and so on. Mom turned to me with a smile on her face and said "Thank you so much for saving me from that" and nodded her head at the table. I did a question face and she replied "If you two hadn't come along when you did I'd be like that. My life would be empty and I'd only have other people to talk about. Instead I had a great time driving around where my great-great-great granmother was born and I can go home and play Bathtub Battles with my grandbaby online. Let's go!" We did just that! She has said repeatedly that she still has her filter, she just doesn't give a hoot. That was at the age of fity and just this week she turned sixty-eight.

It sounds like he is noticing there is a difference between bodies and wondering about it. Does he bathe with his sister, or has he seen her naked? He may be noticing the difference between grown-up bodies and child bodies, too. Sounds like a good time to get some books from the library and take about the differences. He may not be ready for The Talk, but basic anatomy might be good to go over.