We decided last year that we wouldn’t do the Santa Claus thing with our kids. That doesn’t mean that we just say “santa isn’t real”. No, we just decided to handle it a little bit differently. We tell our kids the true history of St. Nicholas and that he used to be a real person and we commemorate his kind acts of Christian charity today as a Christmas tradition. We are very careful to tell them that some people like to have fun with the idea of Santa Claus and act like the presents come from him, so they shouldn’t spoil it for other kids. But what’s our motivation for this in the first place? Well, there are several.

First, it’s the truth. I’ve heard all the arguments for and against pretending that Santa Claus is real. I’m just not compelled by them enough to trick my kids. I want them to have total faith in what I tell them; that it’s the truth, as fully and complete as I know it to be. When kids finally do find out that Santa isn’t real, it is usually from other kids. I remember when I found out that Santa wasn’t real in the lunchroom at school back in the 3rd grade. I was so embarrassed. I remember a couple of bullies, Anthony and Brian making fun of me for “still believing in Santa Claus” and the other kids at the table laughing at me. A child’s self-esteem is so fragile and I don’t want them to feel like I tricked them, and that’s what got them embarrassed in front of their friends.

Second, I want them to know that their presents came from us. Maybe it’s a little selfish, but I want them to know right now that we care about the things they like and that it’s we who love them and know just what to get for them. I don’t want that love and care to be laid at the feet of some made up character who doesn’t exist. Kids get lots of gifts during the holidays and if you’re not careful, Christmas will be over and they have gotten lots of gifts from lots of people, but the gifts they should be getting from their parents are instead coming from Santa Claus.

Thirdly and most importantly, to a child, Santa Claus and other fictional holiday characters are just too similar to the secular view of God for my taste. On one hand you have Santa Claus whom you never see but he evidently knows everything about you and keeps up with whether you are being good or bad. He gives you good presents if you’re good and bad presents if you’re bad. He loves you and brings you toys (which God doesn’t even do). And Mommy and Daddy tell you all these stories about him and how he is real even though you never see him. My question is what in a child’s mind makes that any different than God? If Mommy and Daddy lied to me about this person who I can’t see but who loves me nonetheless, why should I believe them when they tell me that we can’t see God but he sure does love me?

If you think that’s far fetched then just read this article about some teachers in the UK who told their students that Santa Claus was not real, and then read the very first reader comment in the feedback section:

“I think next they should start going to funeral homes and telling the loved ones of the recently deceased that there is no Heaven or afterlife and that their loved one will just rot in the ground and they’ll never see them again. This would be especially good to do to any small children who lose a parent.”

- Peter, Houston TX

The fact that Peter from Houston associates Santa Claus as being the same as Heaven and Hell proves my point. The secular world today lumps Christ in right alongside Santa, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. I see no reason to give them extra ammo with my kids.

Now for the disclaimers: I Dave Jones, being of semi-sound mind and unsound body do willingly acknowledge the following:

• Millions of people believed in Santa Claus as kids and were not made fun of when they found out.
• Millions of people believed in Santa Claus as kids and did not lose their belief in God.
• Millions of people believed in Santa Claus as kids and still knew their parents loved them.

That is why we don’t get all preachy about it with other parents. As far as I’m concerned, issues like this should be decided by each parent based on what they think is best for their children. It doesn’t bother me one bit when a parent tells their kid that Santa Claus does exist. But my conscience won’t let me tell that to my own kids, because my mind tells me they might not handle it as well as other kids. If you want to say that I’m an insane, overprotective, right-wing, puritan worshipper as a dad, then you would probably be right. As a dad, it’s my job to be overprotective and to worry. That’s what dads do. But I also think my points make good sense, and reason should always accompany concern as a parent’s guide.

On July 25, 2011, the Miami-Dade grand jury released several sweeping recommendations in a detailed report on the Nubia Barahona case. The murder of 10-year-old Nubia, apparently at the hands of her adoptive parents earlier this year in Florida, was a heinous crime for which the perpetrators should be severely punished, if convicted. Her death was all the more tragic because, as the grand jury report makes clear, if governmental officials had properly followed existing procedures, it likely could have been prevented.

While it is right to conduct a thorough review in the aftermath of tragic events in an effort to prevent similar tragedies, it is also important not to overreact. Unfortunately, the grand jury report overreacts in its recommendations to amend Florida’s homeschool laws because of Nubia’s adoptive parents’ claim that they were homeschooling her for the seven months leading up to her death.

The grand jury recommends that the law be amended to require every notice of intent for a home education program to “be forwarded to DCF to determine if any reports have been made to the DCF Hotline.” The grand jury went on to recommend that if parents had ever been the subject of a Department of Children and Families (DCF) investigation, they were to be immediately subject to a new investigation by DCF and required to submit to a period of monitoring, even if the previous investigation completely cleared them.

These overreaching recommendations are of great concern to Home School Legal Defense Association, the local homeschool community in Florida, and the wider homeschool movement around the country. The recommendations are stunning because they assume that the lawful decision of parents to teach their children at home must be examined by DCF every single time. Even more concerning, is the grand jury’s declaration that if parents had been falsely reported up to seven years ago and completely exonerated, they would be subject to an investigation and undetermined period of monitoring by DCF.

While the purpose of such an investigation is “to make sure motives are pure and covert child abuse is not the true goal,” these recommendations go well beyond the realm of reason and what is warranted by this terrible situation. They would result in parents who choose a valid and legal educational option in Florida being treated as suspected criminals. Additionally, these recommendations would not have prevented the events in this case. While Nubia was a public school student, her adoptive parents had been investigated multiple times by the DCF for serious allegations of abuse and neglect. These investigations occurred while they were foster parents, during the adoption of the children, and afterward. In fact, they pulled the children out of the public school in the middle of yet another DCF investigation.

While many serious concerns about Nubia’s adoptive family were reported time and time again, state officials failed to properly follow up on them, resulting in the death of a young girl. The solution to this tragedy is not to treat everyone who chooses home education with suspicion or to investigate and supervise every family who had ever been the subject of an earlier report to DCF. The recommendation is not practical, is not legal, and would likely be held unconstitutional as well.

–HSLDA e-Lert

Looks like the grand jury is trying to cover up neglect on the part of the DCF. And what better way to do it than to treat every homeschool family like potential murderers.

This other section of the article floored me though:

According to Florida DCF statistics, in 2009 there were 204,202 reports of child abuse or neglect. Of those referrals, 153,733 were actually investigated. Over 50,000 of the reports made in 2009 were determined to not involve any type of abuse and neglect.

Of the 153,733 reports that were actually investigated, 123,486 were determined to be “unsubstantiated.” In other words, in over 80% of all reports investigated in Florida, there was “not sufficient evidence under State law to conclude or suspect that the child was maltreated or at-risk of being maltreated.” According to the recommendations by the Miami-Dade grand jury, innocent families like these would be subjected to another investigation if they ever decided to homeschool their children.

While these recommendations carry no legal authority and can only be acted upon by the Florida legislature, HSLDA is closely following this situation and will immediately notify our members and friends should the legislature decide to act on the recommendations. Until then, know that HSLDA is determined to vigorously fight for the right of parents, presumed innocent by the law, to teach their children at home.

–HSLDA e-Lert

Erik Demaine quit school at the age of 7.

If you had run into him a dozen years ago, it might have been in a bus station somewhere between Halifax, Nova Scotia and Miami Beach, on the road with his father, a silversmith and glassblower whose only degree was from Medford High School.

And yet, there he was on Friday, lecturing a roomful of scientists on his obscure specialty: computational origami. Demaine, at 20, arrived in the fall at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with the rank of assistant professor – one of the youngest the university has ever hired.

But the thing that is truly unusual about Demaine is the story of the path he took to get there – and of his father, Martin Demaine, who has devoted much of his adult life to educating Erik in a decidedly unorthodox way. Raised among hippies and jugglers and free thinkers, Erik Demaine has found himself at the center of a field where abstract math somehow intersects with street performance. That he is a prodigy is not even a question, say people who have worked with him; the question is what will amuse him.

”I think the sky is the limit,” said Anna Lubiw, a professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario who has coauthored papers with Erik since he was 15 years old. ”I don’t know anybody else like him, never mind young. To try to assume anything on the basis of what other people have done is nonsense.”

These days, it would be hard to pick out Erik and Martin Demaine at MIT’s computer science department, where they both took offices last September – Erik on the second floor as an assistant professor, his father on the third as an unpaid visiting scholar, which Erik said was an incentive, although not a condition, of his choice to come here.

But eight years ago, when the father and son walked into the computer science department of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, they seemed to have emerged from nowhere. ”His dad and he walked into our department and just said he wants to join the university,” said Sampalli Srinivas, an associate professor.

Administrators looked at them like they were crazy. Erik was 12 years old, he had no board scores, and no high school diploma. But they allowed Erik to take advanced courses in abstract algebra and programming languages. The result was clear by the end of the term: ”He aced every single course,” Srinivas said. ”I recognized him as one of the brightest students I had.”

Over the next few years, a growing number of Canadian academics heard the story of Erik’s migratory education. It was a project that kept father and son on the road for five years, eating $1 meals in rented rooms, and strolling into prestigious universities to talk to professors.

And it rested on a risky assumption about the academic world: That If you called up a professor and said your son had some questions about his work, that professor would invite you in, and start teaching.

”People always seemed curious to meet us,” said Martin Demaine, 58. ”Then I would tell his age. I think there certainly was some mystery about us that we allowed to exist.”

For the first years of Erik’s life, the Demaines lived more or less by the rules in Halifax, with Martin working long hours as a silversmith and Erik enrolled in Montessori school, Martin said. But after a painful divorce – neither father nor son was willing to talk about it on the record – Martin came to the realization, as he puts it, that ”I didn’t know how to bring up a child.”

So Martin threw himself into it the way he had thrown himself into glassblowing, silversmithing, puzzlemaking, and filmmaking, among various other pursuits. He fired the nanny and came up with a plan: They would live on $5,000 a year. They would travel by bus, support themselves with craft shows and the proceeds of the ”Erik & Dad Puzzle Co.,” and attempt to feed themselves on a budget of $1 per meal per person (a goal Martin admits sheepishly now they did not always achieve). Martin would work as little as possible.

The father’s educational theory went like this: Apart from one hour of home schooling a day, the child should pursue his own interests. They spent a few weeks at a commune in Tennessee, a year in Providence, six months in Chicago. During a three-year stint in Miami Beach, he sat Erik down with a neighbor to see if he was interested in learning Chinese; the language instruction went nowhere, but the neighbor had a computer.

They borrowed missionary textbooks from a group of Seventh-day Adventists. Martin Demaine can remember three bookstores where the staff became so accustomed to seeing the Demaines poring through their merchandise that they set up tables as a study area for the two.

”We would go to a museum,” Demaine said. ”Anything he pointed to or mentioned, I’d go to the library and find a book and leave it on the table. Sometimes after three days the books would disappear.”

The result, according to Erik Demaine, is that he pursued his own interests, circumventing years of cramming for tests and memorizing facts. ”Memorization is not such a big deal. You remember what you need to remember and look the rest up,” he said.

His father insisted that he try school regularly, ”To make sure,” Erik Demaine said.

”In Miami Beach, I went to school for a month because there was this cute girl,” he said. ”It was a fine experience, but it was a much, much slower pace than I was used to.”

Erik understands why people put such an emphasis on studying for tests: ”You need grades so you can do something you want to do afterward. You need to take the tests to get the grades to apply to graduate school.”

But none of that ever applied to him. At 9, Erik took over the home-schooling teacher’s manual and began teaching himself.

At Dalhousie, and then at the University of Waterloo, the Demaines made an unusual pair, the gangly teenager and his ponytailed father sitting together in class. ”The thing that really struck me was the way his dad motivated him,” said Srinivas. ”When Erik was sick and felt under the weather, his dad used to attend my lecture and make a tape.”

And Martin Demaine, who had made forays into physics and law graduate programs but had never finished a college degree, began to hear people describe his son as a prodigy. ”To be honest, I just thought he was above average,” he said.

They continued to work together, though, as Erik’s interests wandered from tectonic plates to liquid dynamics to parallel computing systems. It was Martin, with his background in the visual arts, who introduced his son and his professors to the ancient Japanese art of folding paper.

Long the exclusive terrain of a few researchers, origami math has woken up slowly in recent years as researchers began to apply it to a lengthening list of real-world applications: to the folding of proteins in human DNA, or the unfolding of enormous lenses in orbiting space telescopes, or the folding of air bags in automobiles.

Erik also became interested in the study of linkage, the dynamics of rigid-sided polygons in two dimensions. Last year, with the help of mathematicians Robert Connelly and Gunther Rote, he solved the infamous ”Carpenter’s Ruler” problem, which had stymied scientists since the 1960s, proving that any such polygon can be unraveled without breaking – work that would be relevant to the fields of robotics and genetics.

By last year, when he interviewed at Stanford, New York University, and Carnegie Mellon, Erik was a coveted hire. Leigh Deacon, from her desk in MIT’s computer science department, watched the hiring process with fascination. ”I said, unless this man has a third eye, everybody’s going to want him,” Deacon said.

The news that he had accepted and that she would be working as his administrative assistant made her more than a little anxious. She had already spent too much time around geniuses, enough to know that ”almost none of them know how to behave with other humans.”

”I thought to myself, what am I going to get? The most arrogant, egotistical person on the planet? Am I going to get someone just short of insane? There’s got to be something wrong with him to compensate for his brilliance,” said Deacon. ”I was just shocked … He has this sort of quiet humility. He’s got this nice expression on his face.”

Then there was the strange business of his father accompanying him. It’s an unusual arrangement, agreed one colleague, but it’s worked so far.

”Anyone who takes the time to know what Erik is about would know that separating him from his father would be a bad idea,” said Thomas Hull, an assistant professor at Merrimack College who has conducted research with the Demaines on origami.

Lubiw, who was one of Erik’s thesis advisers, said there is no question that the Demaines’ work is a function of synergy. ”Even me, I can’t tell what is his gift, what is his obsession, and what is his hard work,” said Lubiw. ”I do take moral lessons for the way Marty raised him.”

At 20, Erik is nearly out of prodigy age range, and his lanky 6-foot-3-inch frame makes his age barely detectable anyway. He will explain, with a sweet smile, that our society is far too age- segregated: ”It is my single passive political stance,” he said – and argues that a lot of other people could do what he does if they had the same encouragement.

In the Waterloo department that was home to this strange duo until last fall, there is a twinge of regret at their departure. But Ian Munro, Erik’s thesis adviser, said he is just glad they came in the first place.

”You don’t regret things like that happening to you,” said Munro. ”You think: It was great to have Erik as a student.”
–Ellen Barry, Globe Staff, 2/17/2002

I find there exactly the same evils that are rampant in the world — centralized education programs, the subservience of the church to the state, contempt for the rights of minorities, standardization of everything, suppression of intellectual adventure….I see more clearly than ever before that unless the gospel is true and there is another world, our souls are in prison. The gospel of Christ is a blessed relief from that sinful state of affairs commonly known as hundred per-cent Americanism.

 

–Stonehouse, Machen: A Biographical Memoir

The other quote is from his book The Christian Faith in the Modern World. Here he talks about the danger of losing our liberty and freedom in the name of national security. Anybody think that he would have subjected himself to a TSA naked body scanner? I don’t think so.

Everywhere there rises before our eyes the specter of a society where security, if it is attained at all, will be attained at the expense of freedom, where the security that is attained will be the security of fed beasts in a stable, and where all the high aspirations of humanity will have been crushed by an all-powerful state.

 

–Machen, The Christian Faith in the Modern World

Don’t hold your breath to hear those quotes in Sunday School class anytime soon.

Ron Paul – Mises Circle 2010:

I have come to the conclusion that this setup of paying for chores is sort of odd. Think about it for a minute. Who pays you when you do chores? Nobody. You do chores because they are the daily ploddings of life that all people must do. You don’t get rewarded, or reimbursed for it. You do, however, get reimbursed for the time and labour you spend at your job. The reason is that, in your job function, you are representing a capital labour investment for someone else who pays you for his use of your time and effort. To put it more simply, you don’t do somebody elses chores, you do your chores. But, at a job, you do someone else’s work(the capitalist’s or entrepenuer’s) for them. And they pay you for it.

Now, if the ultimate goal of raising our children is to prepare them properly for life as an adult, then we need to mirror as closely as possible the real world that they will be living in. Remember, that’s why we homeschool to begin with – because real life doesn’t resemble the fake world of government school classrooms. At your job, you don’t get segregated into age-peer groups, so you shouldn’t be grouped that way when your raised either. Now, import the concept of wages into this same scenario. It wouldn’t fit to pay your child for doing chores, but not for their job(school). When we do it that way, we are unwittingly teaching them a fallacious, labour theory of value. We are teaching them that you get paid based on how hard you work. That’s not true.

We get paid, not based on how hard we work, but on how productive we are. Let me demonstrate. Imagine you have five employees that all do the same job(just make up something, like data entry). Two of them are extremely fast typists, and it only takes them an hour to input 50 documents. The other three are slower and it takes them an hour and a half to input the same 50 documents. In this scenario, the second, slower, group works much harder than the faster group to achieve the same results. But, you would think it silly to say that the second group deserves higher wages than the first. In fact, the first group should be paid more, because they are more productive. This enhanced productivity brings a higher return to the capitalist(you), so you can pay them more.

If we pay our kids for their school work, it reinforces the correct idea that wages are a marginal product based on how productive they are. It’s not enough to just put a bunch of junk down on the paper. They have to get the answers right and do it in an ever-increasing efficient manner. If they don’t, they don’t get paid. What matters is output, not labour or even effort. Some kids are naturally gifted in a certain subject like math. That is a benefit to them. The fact that getting the right answers comes easily to them is irrelevant. As long as our kids get the answers right, and show a pattern of solving the same problems quicker over time, they get paid 10 cents per lesson, because that is evidence that they are learning what is being taught. And that’s their job right now.

First, why pay kids for doing school work? It seems like such an odd thing to do. After all, we didn’t get paid for going to school. We just had to grin and bear it. But, as we should all keep in mind, just because the majority of people do something a certain way doesn’t make it the best way to do said thing. We should always be on the lookout for ways to improve the things we take for granted. And, that’s one of the brilliant things about homeschooling. We get to experiment with all kinds of techniques to reach the kids with a greater level of educational realism. That’s what led us into thinking about all of this. A desire to make our children’s education have the most real, practical effect. We wanted the act of educating, itself to be instructive and realistic.

So, with that in mind we thought about how the modern educational process is treated so differently than every other real-world experience we have. Just think about it for a moment. What is primary education really saying to our kids? It’s saying, because you are young, you must go and work for 8 hours a day, plus nights and weekends(for homework) without pay for twelve years of your life. If you don’t do this, the state will do bad things to you and/or your parents. Now, can you think of any other institution that resembles this? I can. It’s called slavery.

Now, I know that your knee-jerk response to this claim is that I’m crazy, because “this is different.” Or, “they’re getting an education.” Or, “it’s for the child’s own benefit.” Or, “education has X number of external benefits, so it’s worth it.” I could probably think of a dozen other statements like this that people would probably think of when I claim that mandatory elementary education is just like slavery. But, I hope that you will stop and think about it for a moment and realize that all of those statements are true for slavery as well. You could say, “they’re learning a skill.” Or, “they’re getting three meals a day and shelter.” My basic premise is that no matter how you try and make mandatory education different than slavery, you can’t. It all ultimately boils down to forced labor.

This is the premise we came to the table with. We thought in this way: if we force our children to do work, the moral thing to do is pay them a wage for that work. Work without pay is slavery. Remember, though, not all pay comes in the form of money. When I talk of paying them a wage(10 cents per lesson in our case), that wage could come in another form also. It could come in the form of food, play time/free time, getting to stay up a bit later before bed, etc. In fact, that’s going to be the subject of the next post.

Now we have a new longitudinal study titled “Fifteen Years Later: Home-Educated Canadian Adults” from the Canadian Centre for Home Education. This study surveyed home-schooled students whose parents participated in a comprehensive study on home education in 1994. The study compared home-schoolers who are now adults with their peers. The results are astounding.

When measured against the average Canadians ages 15 to 34 years old, home-educated Canadian adults ages 15 to 34 were more socially engaged (69 percent participated in organized activities at least once per week, compared with 48 percent of the comparable population). Average income for home-schoolers also was higher, but perhaps more significantly, while 11 percent of Canadians ages 15 to 34 rely on welfare, there were no cases of government support as the primary source of income for home-schoolers. Home-schoolers also were happier; 67.3 percent described themselves as very happy, compared with 43.8 percent of the comparable population. Almost all of the home-schoolers — 96 percent — thought home-schooling had prepared them well for life.

–Michael Smith, Washington Times (Op-Ed)

Guess how many teachers ran to my aid? None. My friend David helped me up, and the kid was too big for me to retaliate against so I just did what most bullied kids do. Nothing. Think it’s hard to believe my story? Think it’s crazy to think I wouldn’t have told my parents? Well, here’s exhibit A:

Jake Arend doesn’t need survey results to convince him ball tapping is a serious problem.

Classmates began hitting him in the groin when he was in sixth grade and it continued for years.

“I was just the scrawny kid everybody picked on to make themselves look better,” Arend said. “If you get hit in that area, you just want to fall and cry, but I tried not to.”

By the time Jake got to Danville High School, he says he was being ball tapped every week – sometimes even three or four times a day.

“Sometimes it would be just the flick of a wrist, and there was one time I actually got hit in the area with a socket wrench,” he recalled. “When I got hit with that, I actually just hit the ground and just laid there in the fetal position for five to ten minutes for the pain to go away, then I got up and went to class.”

Jake never told his parents and he never told his teachers, fearing the bullies at school would hit him ever harder if they got in trouble.

“I just thought ‘It’s pain. I’ll deal with it,’” said Arend.

–Bob Segall, NBC Indiana

Please, parents. Realize that when you send your kid to state prison, school, that you give up any control over them and what happens to them. If joining the PTA or some such thing makes you feel better then you are kidding yourself. The state owns your kid for 8 hours a day, and they don’t give a rat’s a– what happens to them. And, please don’t give me the “boys will be boys” argument. You’re not allowed to use that argument unless you’ve been beat up by a bully at least a few times a year for your entire elementary school experience. If you haven’t then go blow that crap somewhere else. I don’t want to hear it.