8circles Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 :lol: But do you wear a denim jumper? That is the real question. :001_smile: No. And my hair was pink last week. I think that's automatic grounds for expulsion from the denim-jumper crowd. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LucyStoner Posted January 26, 2014 Share Posted January 26, 2014 redsquirrel- what do you mean by "Leah folks"? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redsquirrel Posted January 26, 2014 Share Posted January 26, 2014 redsquirrel- what do you mean by "Leah folks"? LEAH= Loving Education At Home It is a national (I think) organization for people who homeschool for religious reasons. The require a statement of faith to become a member (or even get on their email list in these parts). So, there are friends I have that would like to join but cannot because the statement conflicts or they cannot take vows etc. I have also talked to people who felt ok about signing the statement of faith but found themselves unwelcome because they did not attend the correct church or use the correct curriculum. I am sure there are local differences among chapters. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zuzu822 Posted January 26, 2014 Share Posted January 26, 2014 LEAH= Loving Education At Home It is a national (I think) organization for people who homeschool for religious reasons. The require a statement of faith to become a member (or even get on their email list in these parts). So, there are friends I have that would like to join but cannot because the statement conflicts or they cannot take vows etc. I have also talked to people who felt ok about signing the statement of faith but found themselves unwelcome because they did not attend the correct church or use the correct curriculum. I am sure there are local differences among chapters. LEAH is a NYS organization. Some chapters might be more willing to accept those outside the SOF, but in general very homogenized. I see the LEAH/non-LEAH divide in my area too. They also hold a pseudo-convention that's primarily parenting and worldview topics rather than academics. http://www.leah.org We are not members. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redsquirrel Posted January 26, 2014 Share Posted January 26, 2014 Ah, I didn't know it was NY only. I want to say that I support the rights of a private intentional group to limit membership to the 'target audience' so to speak. I have no problem with SOF or whatever. As long as they are up front about what their requirements are (and LEAH is) then go for it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stripe Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 This! I don't know ANYONE who had ever been called for any sort of poll except dh one year got asked on the phone for a poll only if he was a Dem/Repub. I'm highly suspicious of how they get these results. I was called a couple months ago to give my opinion of President Obama, but I ended up finding the guy creepy and hung up on him. He kept calling back! It was awful. Finally he went away. A few years before I spent quite a long time on the phone with some pollster answering tons of questions about politics, mostly my opinion about the president, and mostly state issues. As to the types of homeschoolers I see, I live in a rather "crunchy" (I hate that term) town but the surrounding areas are not. I have met a religious homeschooler who refused to talk to me (including to say hello!) but whose husband talked to my husband extensively (!) while at a swimming pool, and lots of the crunchy types who have a social co-op, a very conservative religious woman who uses Calvert, and a crunchy religious woman who appears to be an unschooler, and a HSing relative who also avoids any particular mention of HSing. (I am deliberately not naming the religions because I actually don't think they're particularly relevant, but suffice it so say that many well known faiths are represented.) My husband used to hope I would find people to discuss curriculum with. Well, no. That doesn't happen. Homeschoolers seem to clam up when they see me coming. Now, I was reading the comments on the article and this one struck me. What do you ladies think? ceilidth Boulder, CO Yesterday It really was a lot easier when I was growing up--at least in the way that middle class adults conceived of childrearing. Choose a school district with good schools. Enroll your child. Occasionally answer a homework question. Do some modest driving to lessons. Trust the teachers. Treat your child as a person capable of handling many issues on their own. Only intervene when the problem is a big one. Send them out to play in the morning and tell them you will see them at lunch--or dinner. Expect chores to be performed before they go out to play. Was it perfect? No, it was not. We did dangerous stuff often and survived. But here's what it did teach: a level of self reliance and the recognition that what we accomplished, we accomplished ourselves. We learned to negotiate school and we learned to negotiate friendships and we came out stronger for it. And mom and dad never called their childrens' college professors to request an exemption from a requirement. It's not the idea of home schooling that bothers me as much as the overheated, constant involvement of parents. It really strikes me as the inevitable conclusion of a world where mothers are expected to not only have careers but arrange them in a way that allows them to also multitask fulltime involvement with their children. No more mah jong at the beach club for mom while the kids are practicing their dangerous tricks on the diving board without an adult in sight. Everything is mom's responsibility. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wapiti Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 "It's not the idea of home schooling that bothers me as much as the overheated, constant involvement of parents. It really strikes me as the inevitable conclusion of a world where mothers are expected to not only have careers but arrange them in a way that allows them to also multitask fulltime involvement with their children. No more mah jong at the beach club for mom while the kids are practicing their dangerous tricks on the diving board without an adult in sight. Everything is mom's responsibility." This does strike me as an interesting perspective but I think there's more than one issue going on for this mom and the issues are getting conflated. On the one hand, she's saying homeschooling is a facet of helicopter parenting, which I don't believe is true - there are as many helicopter parents and non-helicopter parents among homeschoolers as among the general population, or so it would seem from reading these boards. However, the main thing I see in her quote is mommy-guilt, pressure. There can be a lot of that in Boulder. This fits right in with what my friend up in Boulder has described to me, so much stress over parenting and doing it right ("right" having a "crunchy" angle), including education. Not that there isn't such stress in other places, but I can definitely imagine this being the case there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeaConquest Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 I guess it's time for me to sheepishly admit that I have been a member and reading here for many years and have never posted. But, now that Jennifer has "outed" me…... The NYT piece was written by my sister. Aside from a couple of PhDs, our situations are quite different. I have been homeschooling for many years. I have three children, the oldest is 13 and none of them have ever been to school. I am not a "working" homeschooler. I left my academic job one year prior to getting tenure in order to stay home with my oldest child. So I have been out of the workforce for more than a decade. My spouse is a teacher and we live very modestly on one income. I am homeschooling full time and honestly it's all I can do to school three children. I can't image keeping up a job at the same time. Jennifer, on the other hand, is quite new to homeschooling. She is homeschooling her oldest child only, and continuing her professional career. So, I think the identity of "homeschooler" is something she is still getting used to. Hepatica, I appreciated what your sister wrote and admire what she is doing -- both in homeschooling and in coming clean about it. I left large firm legal practice for motherhood and couldn't imagine homeschooling on top of the demands of client service and billable hours. Please thank her for sharing her voice. Coming from Southern California (and being Jewish), I don't know any "denim jumper" homeschoolers, though I don't doubt that this varies widely by region. Like Crimson Wife, most of the homeschoolers I know are pretty crunchy and tend to unschool or are very inspired by Waldorf. I honestly get more pushback about having a classically-inspired homeschool philosophy than anything else. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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