Anna Kelly (order #3483) 60.241.123.4 - Typepad
iwcenglish1.typepad.com/Documents/Gatto_Dumbing_Us_Down.pdf
Jan 31, 1990 - Praise for. Dumbing Us Down. You've articulated in a most profound way the problems we are all observing in our students and children.
IN this book it outlines the real objective of public schools which is not really to educate our children.
The problem with public schools is that instead of taking children and making them love to learn the rest of their lives, it doesn't do that. Instead it either bores them to death and then at recess it scares them to death as their are intimidated or beat up or abused by their peers, or even worse they become the intimidators and abusers themselves.
The goal must be to create children with a love of learning. Learning takes place ALL ones life. So, in order to be prepared for what life brings one must have a love of learning just out of basic self preservation. Otherwise, people often don't survive until 30.
So, how do you create a love of learning? Don't send your kids to public school. Instead design a curriculum for your kids and find ways to educate them yourselves either through independent study like through
Oak meadow School.
Oak Meadow: Homeschooling Curriculum, Resources, and Support
www.oakmeadow.com/
Creative homeschooling curriculum and fully accredited K-12 school. Project-
which my wife and I used from 1980 to 1985 to educate our three kids from kindergarten (the youngest) until the oldest was 12 and we returned to the SF Bay area to buy a business and to put our kids back in a good suburban public school and eventually at the best High School in the County.
So, if you can get your kids at least through grade school as self starters with a permanent love of education, they have a good start at loving to educate themselves in college and throughout their lives.
Here are other articles I have compiled from my blog site regarding home schooling and independent study over the years:
More than 2 million children in the United States are now homeschooled, up from only 15,000 40 years ago, but little research has been done on the academic and social outcomes of this student population. In a first-of-its-kind analysis, Vanderbilt University researcher Joseph Murphy examined home schooling from its inception in the 1970s to today in order to better understand this growing social movement and what it means for education.
Home schooling is greatly understudied because it is difficult to capture data, Murphy says. Because homeschoolers are not included in typical school district data or federally required exams and are also scattered around the country in nearly as many households as there are students, it is challenging to evaluate the impact of this education alternative.
Murphy’s research focuses on the history of the homeschooling movement in America, its exponential growth, the people who comprise the homeschool population and the impact of this educational path on the student and society.
The findings of his three-year study are culminated in the newly released book, Homeschooling in America.
A common worry is that children who are home-schooled will not be socialized, but Murphy found that most of these students have very rich social networks. Academically, he says, it is more difficult to get answers, although statistically, as many home-schooled students attend college as their traditional public school peers.
“Homeschool students are successful and they don’t perform worse than other students or seem to be disadvantaged in any way,” Murphy said. “If you have one teacher dedicated to one or two children, it’s a success equation, and so it doesn’t surprise me [homeschooling] works.”
Murphy has long researched the notion of opening the education system
to market and customer forces through avenues that make education more
client and customer sensitive such as charter schools and school
vouchers. Homeschooling, he says, is the most radical example of
privatization of schooling because it takes the entire cost off the
public payroll and places it solely on the parent.
Murphy says homeschooling has become a competitor in the school choice marketplace, but he does not think the trajectory will continue to rise.
“One of the things that will cap homeschooling is that some 90 percent of these families take a parent out of the wage earning sector,” Murphy said, noting that up to 95 percent of homeschool teachers are full-time mothers. “There can only be so many people who give up their jobs to stay home, so that is a natural capper to growth.”
The wild card, he says, is technology, which could enable more students to “school at home,” but this option is actually a threat to homeschooling because online schooling is currently dominated by public schools. Although there is not much data on this, Murphy predicts that in the future, more homeschooling parents will elect an online option funded by local school systems that allows them to keep their kids at home while offsetting cost to local schools.
Meanwhile, Murphy says parents are increasingly willing to invest the kind of time and energy it takes to homeschool, even though research that examines the outcomes of home schooling is in very short supply.
Contact:
Jennifer Wetzel, (615) 322-4747
jennifer.b.wetzel@vanderbilt.edu
end quote from:
A German family that fled to the United States in 2008 to be free to
homeschool their children is fighting deportation after a decision
granting them asylum was overturned.
Uwe and Hannelore Romeike, devout Christians from the southwest of Germany who now have six children, initially took their three oldest children out of school in their native country in 2006. Shortly after, the German government started fining the family and threatening them with legal action.
Home schooling has been illegal in Germany since 1918, when school attendance was made compulsory, and parents who choose to homeschool anyway face financial penalties and legal consequences, including the potential loss of custody of their children.
To escape such legal action, the family fled to the United States in 2008 and was granted political asylum in 2010, eventually making their home in Tennessee. U.S. law states that individuals can qualify for asylum if they can prove they are being persecuted because of their religion or because they are members of a particular "social group."
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement challenged the decision to grant the Romeikes asylum to the Board of Immigration Appeals in 2012, claiming that Germany's stringent policy against homeschooling did not constitute persecution.
The board overturned the initial asylum decision, arguing that homeschoolers are not a particular social group because they don't meet certain legal standards, The board said that the home-schooled population is too vague and amorphous to constitute a social group.
Now the family is fighting that decision in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear the case on April 23.
"We think we have a pretty strong case," Romeike family attorney Michael Donnelly told ABC News. "We feel that what Germany is doing by preventing this family and a lot of other families from exercising their rights in the education of their children violates a fundamental human right," he said.
Donnelly says the right of parents to decide the direction of their child's education has been established in Article 26, section 3 of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights which reads: "Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children."
"Our Supreme Court has said that the state cannot unduly burden, restrict, or direct childrens' education privately," said Donnelly, referring to a precedent established in a 1925 case, Pierce v. Society of Sisters.
Karla McKanders, an asylum and refugee law specialist at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, told ABC News the family faces an uphill battle.
"They are trying to establish that they are eligible for asylum under the social group category, which is a difficult group to prove in the first place," McKanders said.
McKanders also says that public policy implications as far as the United States' relationship with Germany could also be in play in this case, and that immigration officials may be wary of setting a precedent that establishes homeschooling as a means for asylum.
"They don't want to open up the floodgates for similar asylum claims based on these grounds," she said.
Recent changes in immigration enforcement policy are also at issue.
In 2011 the Obama administration initiated a new policy called "prosecutorial discretion" that gives the government broad power to pursue only high-priority cases. The policy was designed to give Department of Homeland Security the power to decide which deportation proceedings it wishes to pursue.
Here are other articles I have compiled from my blog site regarding home schooling and independent study over the years:
Sunday, February 19, 2012
The Advantages and Disadvantages of Home Schooling
I went to public school from kindergarten through my Junior Year in High
School. Though I always loved to learn and to write I basically hated
public school always. So, any reason I could find not to go into the
insanity and torture of public school I used not to go, especially
through Junior High School. So, during the 1950s through 1965 when I
completed my Junior year I considered Public School to be Evil, a
necessary evil but still an evil thing perpetrated on me and my
compatriots. I have not changed my view about public school in the last
50 years time. However, I loved my last year in a church private school
in Santa Fe, New Mexico because I was treated like a gentleman and
because I was the biggest and strongest person in the school so there
was no one who I had to fight. This was wonderful. Also, I got to live
in snow all that winter which for a Los Angeles boy that was really fun!
So, I loved private school and college but always hated public school.
So, when an opportunity arose in 1980 when the 4th through 6th grades were sent to the Junior High because of overcrowding in the Mt. Shasta area in the grade school an 8th grader broke a 4th graders' jaw within 2 weeks of the change and my wife and I pulled all our kids (aged 9, 8 and 5) out of public school for about 5 years. Instead we put them on Independent study through Oak Meadow School (you can find it online today). It is one of the best things I ever did in my life for my kids for a variety of reasons. First, it allowed us to live on our remote property at 4000 feet where I had decided to build a house. Second, it made all our kids self starters and they stayed being "nice kids" instead of getting into all kinds of trouble like most kids do in public schools all over the country. My Logic professor at College of the Siskiyous later in fall 1990 said, "Public schools across the U.S. have ceased to be learning institutions and are now mostly reformatories and babysitting services." I agree with this for the most part as well. So, never have I been sad in any way that I home schooled my three children at that time until 1985. At that point the oldest said he wanted to return to school as living so remotely while home schooling wasn't working for him. So, we moved back to the California coast and bought a business. So, even though my wife and I were not happy about this, our kids could have a better future and education long term than if we had stayed living so remotely.
For the older two kids who were extroverts being home schooled just made them more focused and able to make decisions and to take care of themselves in all ways. However, my youngest son was more shy like I had been until I was about 15 myself. And it turned out that he was also an undiagnosed dyslexic like my mother and grandmother were. So, home schooling actually helped him in many ways because he also had an IQ of about 150 which is very high. If he had been in a public school he would have been constantly shamed like all undiagnosed dyslexics are nationwide in public schools. This often turns them into criminals from all the abuse of the public school systems. Shaming is a normal part of the public school system to make kids excel. However, that doesn't help dyslexics at all and only makes them feel bad, get angry and sometimes commit suicide as result. So, home schooling because of my dyslexic sons natural genius allowed him to teach himself to read because he liked Dungeons and Dragons games. Even now at 37 he still likes going to things like Comicon and other conventions where people play all sorts of games. But now he is a male nurse. So, home schooling allowed him to teach himself to read by wanting to know what it said below all the pictures in all his Dungeon and Dragons books. And when we all went to India and Nepal for 4 months in 1985 and 1986 he bought a full collection of Tin Tin stories starting in New Delhi, India with a ratty copy of "Tin Tin in Tibet" which he read over and over until he bought a full new set of Tin Tin books in Kathmandu, Nepal just before we left for San Francisco in April 1986. It was a pretty good deal for under 50 dollars there in Kathmandu. He still has that set and still reveres it and all the Tin Tin Stories as a collector.
So, by home schooling we helped all our kids who eventually became a lawyer, a Fire Captain and a nurse respectively. So, we were very successful at least in regard to Home schooling and careers for our kids.
However, the disadvantages of home schooling mostly come if you keep your kids home schooling after about age 12 or 13. This can be problematic unless they already have a pretty wide social circle of kids their own ages. However, if you can have enough friends and associates around your age between 13 an 18 it is possible for home schooling to still be useful and effective during these times. Also,you have to consider whether you are creating a child that will always have to live at home with you or are you allowing this child to eventually create his or her life anywhere on earth? As the parent you must be very aware of what you are doing and the potential effects on the child's life. Otherwise things can get very quickly out of control with a long term situation you don't want in your life or your child's life.
Another caveat. I personally don't think it is a great idea to home school one child by himself or herself. There needs to be some sort of social interaction going on like all the kids in one family or a group of brothers, sisters, or cousins, so it is more interesting than one parent and one child. I think it is much less effective to home school one child than to have a whole group of kids multiple ages. However, to each his or her own.
So, when an opportunity arose in 1980 when the 4th through 6th grades were sent to the Junior High because of overcrowding in the Mt. Shasta area in the grade school an 8th grader broke a 4th graders' jaw within 2 weeks of the change and my wife and I pulled all our kids (aged 9, 8 and 5) out of public school for about 5 years. Instead we put them on Independent study through Oak Meadow School (you can find it online today). It is one of the best things I ever did in my life for my kids for a variety of reasons. First, it allowed us to live on our remote property at 4000 feet where I had decided to build a house. Second, it made all our kids self starters and they stayed being "nice kids" instead of getting into all kinds of trouble like most kids do in public schools all over the country. My Logic professor at College of the Siskiyous later in fall 1990 said, "Public schools across the U.S. have ceased to be learning institutions and are now mostly reformatories and babysitting services." I agree with this for the most part as well. So, never have I been sad in any way that I home schooled my three children at that time until 1985. At that point the oldest said he wanted to return to school as living so remotely while home schooling wasn't working for him. So, we moved back to the California coast and bought a business. So, even though my wife and I were not happy about this, our kids could have a better future and education long term than if we had stayed living so remotely.
For the older two kids who were extroverts being home schooled just made them more focused and able to make decisions and to take care of themselves in all ways. However, my youngest son was more shy like I had been until I was about 15 myself. And it turned out that he was also an undiagnosed dyslexic like my mother and grandmother were. So, home schooling actually helped him in many ways because he also had an IQ of about 150 which is very high. If he had been in a public school he would have been constantly shamed like all undiagnosed dyslexics are nationwide in public schools. This often turns them into criminals from all the abuse of the public school systems. Shaming is a normal part of the public school system to make kids excel. However, that doesn't help dyslexics at all and only makes them feel bad, get angry and sometimes commit suicide as result. So, home schooling because of my dyslexic sons natural genius allowed him to teach himself to read because he liked Dungeons and Dragons games. Even now at 37 he still likes going to things like Comicon and other conventions where people play all sorts of games. But now he is a male nurse. So, home schooling allowed him to teach himself to read by wanting to know what it said below all the pictures in all his Dungeon and Dragons books. And when we all went to India and Nepal for 4 months in 1985 and 1986 he bought a full collection of Tin Tin stories starting in New Delhi, India with a ratty copy of "Tin Tin in Tibet" which he read over and over until he bought a full new set of Tin Tin books in Kathmandu, Nepal just before we left for San Francisco in April 1986. It was a pretty good deal for under 50 dollars there in Kathmandu. He still has that set and still reveres it and all the Tin Tin Stories as a collector.
So, by home schooling we helped all our kids who eventually became a lawyer, a Fire Captain and a nurse respectively. So, we were very successful at least in regard to Home schooling and careers for our kids.
However, the disadvantages of home schooling mostly come if you keep your kids home schooling after about age 12 or 13. This can be problematic unless they already have a pretty wide social circle of kids their own ages. However, if you can have enough friends and associates around your age between 13 an 18 it is possible for home schooling to still be useful and effective during these times. Also,you have to consider whether you are creating a child that will always have to live at home with you or are you allowing this child to eventually create his or her life anywhere on earth? As the parent you must be very aware of what you are doing and the potential effects on the child's life. Otherwise things can get very quickly out of control with a long term situation you don't want in your life or your child's life.
Another caveat. I personally don't think it is a great idea to home school one child by himself or herself. There needs to be some sort of social interaction going on like all the kids in one family or a group of brothers, sisters, or cousins, so it is more interesting than one parent and one child. I think it is much less effective to home school one child than to have a whole group of kids multiple ages. However, to each his or her own.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Homeschooling goes under the microscope in new Peabody research
Homeschooling goes under the microscope in new Peabody research
news.vanderbilt.edu/2012/11/homeschooling/
Nov 12, 2012 – Homeschooling goes under the microscope in new Peabody research. In a first-Homeschooling goes under the microscope in new Peabody research
by Jennifer Wetzel | Posted on Monday, Nov. 12, 2012 — 4:36 PM
More than 2 million children in the United States are now homeschooled, up from only 15,000 40 years ago, but little research has been done on the academic and social outcomes of this student population. In a first-of-its-kind analysis, Vanderbilt University researcher Joseph Murphy examined home schooling from its inception in the 1970s to today in order to better understand this growing social movement and what it means for education.
Home schooling is greatly understudied because it is difficult to capture data, Murphy says. Because homeschoolers are not included in typical school district data or federally required exams and are also scattered around the country in nearly as many households as there are students, it is challenging to evaluate the impact of this education alternative.
Murphy’s research focuses on the history of the homeschooling movement in America, its exponential growth, the people who comprise the homeschool population and the impact of this educational path on the student and society.
The findings of his three-year study are culminated in the newly released book, Homeschooling in America.
These
movements tend to be highly ideological and everyone has a belief and
ideology. The book strives to move beyond that to actually understand
what is happening and why it’s happening.”“The purpose of the
book is to offer an informed understanding of the movement,” said
Murphy, the Frank W. Mayborn Professor and Chair in the Department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of education and human development. “These
movements tend to be highly ideological and everyone has a belief and
ideology. The book strives to move beyond that to actually understand
what is happening and why it’s happening.”
While Murphy found that religion and values are the No. 1 reasons
parents choose to homeschool their children, these are not the only
motivations. Disgruntlement with schools and personal family needs are
also common reasons, followed by parents who feel they can better
educate their kids than the public school system.A common worry is that children who are home-schooled will not be socialized, but Murphy found that most of these students have very rich social networks. Academically, he says, it is more difficult to get answers, although statistically, as many home-schooled students attend college as their traditional public school peers.
“Homeschool students are successful and they don’t perform worse than other students or seem to be disadvantaged in any way,” Murphy said. “If you have one teacher dedicated to one or two children, it’s a success equation, and so it doesn’t surprise me [homeschooling] works.”
Joseph Murphy (Vanderbilt)
Murphy says homeschooling has become a competitor in the school choice marketplace, but he does not think the trajectory will continue to rise.
“One of the things that will cap homeschooling is that some 90 percent of these families take a parent out of the wage earning sector,” Murphy said, noting that up to 95 percent of homeschool teachers are full-time mothers. “There can only be so many people who give up their jobs to stay home, so that is a natural capper to growth.”
The wild card, he says, is technology, which could enable more students to “school at home,” but this option is actually a threat to homeschooling because online schooling is currently dominated by public schools. Although there is not much data on this, Murphy predicts that in the future, more homeschooling parents will elect an online option funded by local school systems that allows them to keep their kids at home while offsetting cost to local schools.
Meanwhile, Murphy says parents are increasingly willing to invest the kind of time and energy it takes to homeschool, even though research that examines the outcomes of home schooling is in very short supply.
Contact:
Jennifer Wetzel, (615) 322-4747
jennifer.b.wetzel@vanderbilt.edu
end quote from:
Homeschooling goes under the microscope in new Peabody research
My own experience of homeschooling my 3 oldest children from 1980 to 1985 was a positive one. We went with Oak Meadow School because even in Mt. Shasta, California where we lived then Home Schooling was an iffy legal decision at that time. By putting our kids on Independent Study we legally started out on the right footing to begin with. Then what we noticed with the kids then 5, 6 and 8 years of age was they went from the public school mentality of "parents as the enemy" to a Home schooling mentality which is usually "We are all on the same team learning and having fun together learning new things."
So, because my wife and I were then 32 years of age and building our own home on remote land where 7 feet of snow at one time was the norm during parts of the year then, it became a lot of fun teaching our kids about nature and skiing and sledding and mountain climbing, swimming in mountain lakes and traveling with them.
Our oldest son got into the Audabon Society through his Grandmother. At one point we went to Lava Beds National Monument and on the way there he said, "Oh. There's an Immature White Pelican!" At the time he was 9 and we just laughed at him until we got back to our home and looked up the bird at on the bird book with pictures and it actually was "an immature white pelican" that we as adults couldn't believe lived several hundred miles inland in On Tule Lake, California.
Flash Forward 32 years since then my present wife and I drove by their in the summer and noticed that there were many White pelicans there. I looked it up on my Iphone through the phone internet and realized that there is a special breed of White Pelican that actually lives in the Tule Lake area year around because they like it there even though it can get very cold there.
But mostly in regard to home schooling it was a great deal of fun bonding with the kids through wilderness outward bound types of adventures from skiing to river rafting to swimming in pristine mountain lakes in the summers, to getting caught in freak snow storms on the mountain in August and September to all the amazing things that make childhood (and adulthood) memorable.
At this point all three children have one or more college degrees each.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Home schooling family fights deportation
Home Schooling German Family Fights Deportation
Uwe and Hannelore Romeike, devout Christians from the southwest of Germany who now have six children, initially took their three oldest children out of school in their native country in 2006. Shortly after, the German government started fining the family and threatening them with legal action.
Home schooling has been illegal in Germany since 1918, when school attendance was made compulsory, and parents who choose to homeschool anyway face financial penalties and legal consequences, including the potential loss of custody of their children.
To escape such legal action, the family fled to the United States in 2008 and was granted political asylum in 2010, eventually making their home in Tennessee. U.S. law states that individuals can qualify for asylum if they can prove they are being persecuted because of their religion or because they are members of a particular "social group."
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement challenged the decision to grant the Romeikes asylum to the Board of Immigration Appeals in 2012, claiming that Germany's stringent policy against homeschooling did not constitute persecution.
The board overturned the initial asylum decision, arguing that homeschoolers are not a particular social group because they don't meet certain legal standards, The board said that the home-schooled population is too vague and amorphous to constitute a social group.
Now the family is fighting that decision in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear the case on April 23.
"We think we have a pretty strong case," Romeike family attorney Michael Donnelly told ABC News. "We feel that what Germany is doing by preventing this family and a lot of other families from exercising their rights in the education of their children violates a fundamental human right," he said.
Donnelly says the right of parents to decide the direction of their child's education has been established in Article 26, section 3 of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights which reads: "Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children."
"Our Supreme Court has said that the state cannot unduly burden, restrict, or direct childrens' education privately," said Donnelly, referring to a precedent established in a 1925 case, Pierce v. Society of Sisters.
Karla McKanders, an asylum and refugee law specialist at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, told ABC News the family faces an uphill battle.
"They are trying to establish that they are eligible for asylum under the social group category, which is a difficult group to prove in the first place," McKanders said.
McKanders also says that public policy implications as far as the United States' relationship with Germany could also be in play in this case, and that immigration officials may be wary of setting a precedent that establishes homeschooling as a means for asylum.
"They don't want to open up the floodgates for similar asylum claims based on these grounds," she said.
Recent changes in immigration enforcement policy are also at issue.
In 2011 the Obama administration initiated a new policy called "prosecutorial discretion" that gives the government broad power to pursue only high-priority cases. The policy was designed to give Department of Homeland Security the power to decide which deportation proceedings it wishes to pursue.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Educational Schools of Thought
The two schools of thought I would categorize as Tiger Mom on the one
hand and infinitely Creative on the other. And then there are infinite
variations among people on how all this is applied in real life.
If we analyze how education began we can see that public schools arose out of early Catholic Schools in Europe in regard to western civilization. Home schooling came from living on a farm in the country when transportation wasn't available to go 50 or 100 miles to school everyday.
As time went on public schools were created by nations to have an educated electorate but also to create factory workers and soldiers. Public schools create regimentation or unflinching obedience among most. But the do not necessarily foster creativity or innovation. The other problem with Public schools is that when children rebel against regimentation for one reason or another, they create criminals.
Then we move to the Creative School of Thought that mostly came originally from living on a farm too far away to go to a school of regimentation to create factory workers and soldiers. From living on a farm one must learn (to follow in a parents footsteps) to become a "jack of all trades including a farmer". One must be ready literally for any weather situation, any medical situation. In other words to be able to think for yourself no matter what happens from a very early age. This creates a "Responsible survivor". In other words a child who thinks on their feet and tends to survive anything.
So, these days parents who live in cities because both have to work or parents who don't care about teaching their children at all send their kids to public schools. Governments tend to institutionalize public schooling in cities now have made public schools a sort of required "reformatory" where children often are bullied, beat up, emotionally traumatized etc. It is my premise that all this trauma is basically unnecessary in life and not particularly useful except to scare most kids into blind obedience that doesn't serve them at all in their adult lives.
The other alternative to public schools is private schools and especially prep schools or (college preparatory schools) I now have a child in one of these. However, then the child usually has about twice or more the homework of a public school and unless you want your child to be head of a corporation and an A student at one of the best universities in the land and an elitist you may or may not want your child going to such a school.
I, myself since 1980 have advocated a "Creative" form of education in the form of home schooling. My oldest son was home schooled using "Oak Meadow School" independent study from Kindergarten through 5th grade. Then he went to 6th grade through high school and then through college and now got his Bachelor's of Science in Nursing last December. His step brother became a Fire Captain and his step sister became a lawyer. His step brother also was home schooled from ages 8 to 12 and his step sister from 6 to 11.
Home schooling came for our family at that time in 1980 when the grade school and Junior high combined in our country town and within the first month an 8th grader broke a 4th grader's jaw. In outrage we simply withdrew all our kids from school and moved further outside of our country town onto our 2 1/2 acres of land and began home schooling our kids on "Oak Meadow School" independent study. And this worked quite well from 1980 until about 1985 when we moved back to the California Coast and bought another business because our oldest, my stepson asked to return to public school. The other two weren't as happy about it but realized it was time to go back to school.
However, because our kids weren't in public school or a private institution at one location, it allowed us to travel a lot all over the western United States and to incorporate our interests and our children's interests into their overall education process. Also, all our kids became self starters. They could all cook, wash dishes, make their beds, deal with the trash by the time they were all 8 or 9. So we made all these jobs on a rotational basis as their jobs depending upon the week. So they each had one or more chores every day.
My son who became a nurse now at that time was dyslexic but we didn't know it because testing wasn't as available then as now. So, because he was having trouble learning to read we let him have books he wanted on Dungeons and Dragons and he taught himself to read because he wanted to know what the pictures were. So because he kept coming and asking his mother, me, his sister and brother questions he began to be a really good reader. However, because of dyslexia English composition still was a problem, so when he went to college English composition still was a problem for him. However, he always got A's in science and computer programming and anything to do with computers so in his 20s he became a computer tech and software expert. At about age 29 he said, "I want to help fix people rather than computers and went back to school. His wife then made him take an IQ test and he came out at about 150 IQ. So he realized how smart he was at 29. (We had been telling him this for years but he hadn't believed me up until then). So in December he won an award for perseverance over all the graduating nurses in his class and had so many honors that he was one of the top 5 students in his whole class of nurses.
So, if one of the parents has the time, think about home schooling if you live out in the country or are traveling the world or just want your kids to become entrepreneurs and become rich and help create a whole new and better society and world.
So, for me it is "Do you want your kids to think like slaves or do you want your kids to be able to create a better world for everyone by thinking for themselves?"
If we analyze how education began we can see that public schools arose out of early Catholic Schools in Europe in regard to western civilization. Home schooling came from living on a farm in the country when transportation wasn't available to go 50 or 100 miles to school everyday.
As time went on public schools were created by nations to have an educated electorate but also to create factory workers and soldiers. Public schools create regimentation or unflinching obedience among most. But the do not necessarily foster creativity or innovation. The other problem with Public schools is that when children rebel against regimentation for one reason or another, they create criminals.
Then we move to the Creative School of Thought that mostly came originally from living on a farm too far away to go to a school of regimentation to create factory workers and soldiers. From living on a farm one must learn (to follow in a parents footsteps) to become a "jack of all trades including a farmer". One must be ready literally for any weather situation, any medical situation. In other words to be able to think for yourself no matter what happens from a very early age. This creates a "Responsible survivor". In other words a child who thinks on their feet and tends to survive anything.
So, these days parents who live in cities because both have to work or parents who don't care about teaching their children at all send their kids to public schools. Governments tend to institutionalize public schooling in cities now have made public schools a sort of required "reformatory" where children often are bullied, beat up, emotionally traumatized etc. It is my premise that all this trauma is basically unnecessary in life and not particularly useful except to scare most kids into blind obedience that doesn't serve them at all in their adult lives.
The other alternative to public schools is private schools and especially prep schools or (college preparatory schools) I now have a child in one of these. However, then the child usually has about twice or more the homework of a public school and unless you want your child to be head of a corporation and an A student at one of the best universities in the land and an elitist you may or may not want your child going to such a school.
I, myself since 1980 have advocated a "Creative" form of education in the form of home schooling. My oldest son was home schooled using "Oak Meadow School" independent study from Kindergarten through 5th grade. Then he went to 6th grade through high school and then through college and now got his Bachelor's of Science in Nursing last December. His step brother became a Fire Captain and his step sister became a lawyer. His step brother also was home schooled from ages 8 to 12 and his step sister from 6 to 11.
Home schooling came for our family at that time in 1980 when the grade school and Junior high combined in our country town and within the first month an 8th grader broke a 4th grader's jaw. In outrage we simply withdrew all our kids from school and moved further outside of our country town onto our 2 1/2 acres of land and began home schooling our kids on "Oak Meadow School" independent study. And this worked quite well from 1980 until about 1985 when we moved back to the California Coast and bought another business because our oldest, my stepson asked to return to public school. The other two weren't as happy about it but realized it was time to go back to school.
However, because our kids weren't in public school or a private institution at one location, it allowed us to travel a lot all over the western United States and to incorporate our interests and our children's interests into their overall education process. Also, all our kids became self starters. They could all cook, wash dishes, make their beds, deal with the trash by the time they were all 8 or 9. So we made all these jobs on a rotational basis as their jobs depending upon the week. So they each had one or more chores every day.
My son who became a nurse now at that time was dyslexic but we didn't know it because testing wasn't as available then as now. So, because he was having trouble learning to read we let him have books he wanted on Dungeons and Dragons and he taught himself to read because he wanted to know what the pictures were. So because he kept coming and asking his mother, me, his sister and brother questions he began to be a really good reader. However, because of dyslexia English composition still was a problem, so when he went to college English composition still was a problem for him. However, he always got A's in science and computer programming and anything to do with computers so in his 20s he became a computer tech and software expert. At about age 29 he said, "I want to help fix people rather than computers and went back to school. His wife then made him take an IQ test and he came out at about 150 IQ. So he realized how smart he was at 29. (We had been telling him this for years but he hadn't believed me up until then). So in December he won an award for perseverance over all the graduating nurses in his class and had so many honors that he was one of the top 5 students in his whole class of nurses.
So, if one of the parents has the time, think about home schooling if you live out in the country or are traveling the world or just want your kids to become entrepreneurs and become rich and help create a whole new and better society and world.
So, for me it is "Do you want your kids to think like slaves or do you want your kids to be able to create a better world for everyone by thinking for themselves?"
Monday, September 27, 2010
Friday, December 14, 2012
Home Schooling as a way to protect Children from Harm
Are your children safe in Public Schools? Probably not.
Though the likelihood of them being murdered like the ones in Connecticut is about like the chances of being struck by lightning, the chances of them being bullied, psychologically damaged, or killed or wounded by other children or students is about 100% because that is just the environment within all public schools. I was lucky because I was always big for my age and so I only had worry about kids bigger and older than I and not really kids my own age while I was in public school from Kindergarten to my Junior Year in High School. In my senior Year I went to a religious college prep school for my last year.
However, I never forgot just how bad it was in public school growing up in the 1950s from age 2 to 12 years of age and living through the "Grease" era of the early 1960s and the "Surfer" era in the mid 1960s in High School in Glendale in the Los Angeles Area. But, I must also say that Glendale at that time had scholastically the best public schools in that area at that time.
So, I know first hand how difficult it can be and because I was big I had to rescue a lot of my friends from being bloodied by bullies because I was always one of the tallest in my class.
So, viewing the Connecticut story today which is horrific for everyone worldwide makes me think that when my 2nd wife and I pulled our 3 children out of school after an 8th grader broke a 4th graders jaw where we lived is still a very good idea even today. In 1980 when this happened we pulled all three kids out of school, kindergarten, 2nd grade and 3rd grade and home school them all until the oldest was 12 using an independent study course for our kids from "Oak Meadow School". I have never regretted doing this. Home Schooling really changed all our kids lives for the better. However, I'm not sure I would have done this if I had only one child unless one had a group of parents that were on independent study or in a home schooling environment together. Children need socialization in order to make it through junior High and High School and into college to be successful adults.
However, I don't think it is necessary to expose your children to everything that I had to experience that happened to me and my friends in the 1950s, where you come out of that ready for the Viet Nam War or something like that, where every child is ready to pick up a gun and kill if they have to if they are boys.
No. That was really terrible. So, I think allowing your children to grow up as gentlemen and ladies ready to go to college with people who actually want to be there likely is the best way to go. Here is Oak Meadow School today if you are interested.
Though the likelihood of them being murdered like the ones in Connecticut is about like the chances of being struck by lightning, the chances of them being bullied, psychologically damaged, or killed or wounded by other children or students is about 100% because that is just the environment within all public schools. I was lucky because I was always big for my age and so I only had worry about kids bigger and older than I and not really kids my own age while I was in public school from Kindergarten to my Junior Year in High School. In my senior Year I went to a religious college prep school for my last year.
However, I never forgot just how bad it was in public school growing up in the 1950s from age 2 to 12 years of age and living through the "Grease" era of the early 1960s and the "Surfer" era in the mid 1960s in High School in Glendale in the Los Angeles Area. But, I must also say that Glendale at that time had scholastically the best public schools in that area at that time.
So, I know first hand how difficult it can be and because I was big I had to rescue a lot of my friends from being bloodied by bullies because I was always one of the tallest in my class.
So, viewing the Connecticut story today which is horrific for everyone worldwide makes me think that when my 2nd wife and I pulled our 3 children out of school after an 8th grader broke a 4th graders jaw where we lived is still a very good idea even today. In 1980 when this happened we pulled all three kids out of school, kindergarten, 2nd grade and 3rd grade and home school them all until the oldest was 12 using an independent study course for our kids from "Oak Meadow School". I have never regretted doing this. Home Schooling really changed all our kids lives for the better. However, I'm not sure I would have done this if I had only one child unless one had a group of parents that were on independent study or in a home schooling environment together. Children need socialization in order to make it through junior High and High School and into college to be successful adults.
However, I don't think it is necessary to expose your children to everything that I had to experience that happened to me and my friends in the 1950s, where you come out of that ready for the Viet Nam War or something like that, where every child is ready to pick up a gun and kill if they have to if they are boys.
No. That was really terrible. So, I think allowing your children to grow up as gentlemen and ladies ready to go to college with people who actually want to be there likely is the best way to go. Here is Oak Meadow School today if you are interested.
Oak Meadow: Homeschooling Curriculum, Resources, and Support
www.oakmeadow.com/
Creative homeschooling curriculum and fully accredited K-12 school. Project-Tuesday, May 6, 2008
An Alternative Approach to Owning a Home
Watching people go down in flames with subprime loans and having to go
bankrupt I thought today that I would give an alternative approach to
the situation out of the 1970s.
I guess it all started when my father and the father of a good friend each independently on their own decided to buy land and to build their own houses on weekends. My friends father built a beautiful house on property he bought in Palos Verdes, a very nice place to live near the ocean between Long Beach and Redondo Beach in southern California.
My father decided to buy land and to build his retirement home himself on weekends in Yucca Valley, California even though he worked during the week near San Diego.
So, in 1968 my father bought land up on Yucca Mesa near Yucca Valley. He bought 2 1/2 acres of land. At the time it was high desert land with only cholla cactus and ancient mesquite bushes and creosote bushes and the like and of course the very visible Joshua trees everywhere. Soon, he had power to the land and he hired someone to dig a hole with a tractor for the septic tank. Later after my father and I and a several good friends had dug out the land for a cement foundation for the house and put in place all the plumbing for a bathroom and kitchen we called up a cement company and had them deliver enough yards of cement to pour the cement slab for our house.
At that time I think the land was only $3500 and I know my father didn't pay more than 20,000 dollars for the material to build our house and only bought it as he needed it. He bought the whole house as he built it out of pocket and only bought the land on credit, nothing else and built it himself with me and Mom and friends when they wanted to help over 12 years. All that time we had an old 1946 Spartan Aluminum 28 foot trailer that we stayed in on weekends when we were there. We also built a storage shed that could be drug by truck to a new location as needed to store building material, my off road motorcycles etc. And on top of this flat roofed well built storage shed we put a 1200 gallon water tank so we could have water and bought it from a water company that would deliver potable water at that time for about ten dollars or so a load of water(1200 gallons) by truck.
By 1980, after working on it almost every weekend since 1968, the house was finally finished and built much better than you could likely buy a house at the time. My father overbuilt everything because we live in California and earthquakes are always likely big or small. Though my Dad passed on in 1985 after being retired only 5 years the house has sustained no damage from any of the big quakes that hit there since 1980 because of being so well built.
Because my buddy's father and my father built their own houses, my buddy and I both decided one day we would each buy land and build our own houses too. So after my Buddy got his master's degree from UCLA, he went to the Southern Cascade Mountains and bought land (2 1/2 acres). At the time the land was about $5000 for land at about 3700 feet in elevation where it might snow 3 feet deep or more some winters. I helped him build this house and clear the land for the house before that. Though initially there were trials and tribulations because he was not initially a builder, he didn't give up and learned how to do everything right, got his house passed by the county inspectors, put a well on his land, got electricity and now even cable run to his land and even though his initial investment was 5000 dollars on time for the land and then 20,000 in material for his house and another 20,000 for a music studio and then another 40,000 recently for another music studio, his entire investment in his home and property material wise has been only 85,000 over the last 30 years and his home is worth about 1,000,000 dollars now. But here is the really beautiful part.
HE HAS NOT PAID RENT OR A MORTGAGE PAYMENT SINCE 1976. So, he lived at the house he built that he paid for as he built it and never had a mortgage ever. By 1980 the land was paid for and he has been free and clear ever since. Since my friend is also a musician and successful now, he can travel all over the world and do concerts and write all his expenses in traveling for concerts off as a business expense.
So, would you rather have a subprime or do something like this and completely own your own home on 2 1/2 acres of land outright?
By the way I thought I should tell you of my experience. First of all I sold the land I built an A-Frame on in 1989 while I was living in Hawaii on Maui with my wife and 3 of my kids.
Beginning in 1980 I got married and so my 6 year old son from my first marriage and my wife's 2 kids from her first marriage and I all got together and bought 2 1/2 acres on the side of tall mountain in a remote area at 4000 feet. In this location 7 feet of snow at one time was not unusual between January and March. So, between these months I had to watch the skies very carefully to see when to get my cars or trucks out of there as the roads were not plowed by the county. I found it practical to be there home schooling my kids about 6 to 9 months a year. So in the end it was more like a remote mountain cabin that we loved with a water spring and incredibly beautiful view of the mountain. However, from my present vantage point of age 60, it was pretty remote to consider being there more than about 6 months a year at most.
The land was reasonable in 1980. It was only about $8000. However, since there is still no electricity available there (except solar) now in 2008 the land by itself if undeveloped might only be $10,000 in value now 26 years later.
Since my father and I had built several houses together and since he had trained me as an electrician's helper summers between my ages 12 and 17 he offered to help me set the foundations and build my a-frame house. I had decided upon and A-frame because of the location. It was the only shape I knew for sure that could shed 7 feet of snow or more and wouldn't collapse the roof if no one was there that winter. So we decided upon an A-Frame. Next, they had torn down a sawmill nearby so I went to the dump and found 9 3 foot by 3 foot cement pyramids with the tops cut off for pier block construction. Since they weighed about 300 pounds each, 4 strong male adults could lift these things and put them in the back of a pickup truck.
Next, we sold one of our vehicles, a 1971 VW Camper van and with the money bought enough building materials to build our house. We put a loft in the A-Frame for sleeping and it worked well because all the heat from the wood stove rises so even when it is cold downstairs it was warm up in the loft. We put a lot of windows on the two vertical ends of the A-Frame and faced one toward a breathtaking view of the mountain and placed my wife's and my bed with the head toward the beautiful view. So, every morning I could look at it and be grateful to be there out in the wild.
So, since we paid cash for the land, after we built our A-Frame all we had to pay were the land taxes because everything was paid for. We chose to live off the grid so there were no electrical bills. Water we hauled from our spring. So there was no rent to pay, no mortgage to pay and plenty of time to home school the kids. With the exception of the last ten years of my life, building that house in the wilderness and home schooling my older kids was the happiest time of my life for about 5 years.
Once again, living this way is not for everyone. But for me, my friend, my father and his father it was and is the American Dream!
Why not live the American dream and forget about the subprime loans? Then you will own your home and land outright! Then if you homestead it no one will be able to take it away from you!
Note: The following url tells something about homestead laws in California if you are homesteading land in another state look information up on the internet in regard to homesteading land in your state.
http://www.wwlaw.com/homestd.htm
I guess it all started when my father and the father of a good friend each independently on their own decided to buy land and to build their own houses on weekends. My friends father built a beautiful house on property he bought in Palos Verdes, a very nice place to live near the ocean between Long Beach and Redondo Beach in southern California.
My father decided to buy land and to build his retirement home himself on weekends in Yucca Valley, California even though he worked during the week near San Diego.
So, in 1968 my father bought land up on Yucca Mesa near Yucca Valley. He bought 2 1/2 acres of land. At the time it was high desert land with only cholla cactus and ancient mesquite bushes and creosote bushes and the like and of course the very visible Joshua trees everywhere. Soon, he had power to the land and he hired someone to dig a hole with a tractor for the septic tank. Later after my father and I and a several good friends had dug out the land for a cement foundation for the house and put in place all the plumbing for a bathroom and kitchen we called up a cement company and had them deliver enough yards of cement to pour the cement slab for our house.
At that time I think the land was only $3500 and I know my father didn't pay more than 20,000 dollars for the material to build our house and only bought it as he needed it. He bought the whole house as he built it out of pocket and only bought the land on credit, nothing else and built it himself with me and Mom and friends when they wanted to help over 12 years. All that time we had an old 1946 Spartan Aluminum 28 foot trailer that we stayed in on weekends when we were there. We also built a storage shed that could be drug by truck to a new location as needed to store building material, my off road motorcycles etc. And on top of this flat roofed well built storage shed we put a 1200 gallon water tank so we could have water and bought it from a water company that would deliver potable water at that time for about ten dollars or so a load of water(1200 gallons) by truck.
By 1980, after working on it almost every weekend since 1968, the house was finally finished and built much better than you could likely buy a house at the time. My father overbuilt everything because we live in California and earthquakes are always likely big or small. Though my Dad passed on in 1985 after being retired only 5 years the house has sustained no damage from any of the big quakes that hit there since 1980 because of being so well built.
Because my buddy's father and my father built their own houses, my buddy and I both decided one day we would each buy land and build our own houses too. So after my Buddy got his master's degree from UCLA, he went to the Southern Cascade Mountains and bought land (2 1/2 acres). At the time the land was about $5000 for land at about 3700 feet in elevation where it might snow 3 feet deep or more some winters. I helped him build this house and clear the land for the house before that. Though initially there were trials and tribulations because he was not initially a builder, he didn't give up and learned how to do everything right, got his house passed by the county inspectors, put a well on his land, got electricity and now even cable run to his land and even though his initial investment was 5000 dollars on time for the land and then 20,000 in material for his house and another 20,000 for a music studio and then another 40,000 recently for another music studio, his entire investment in his home and property material wise has been only 85,000 over the last 30 years and his home is worth about 1,000,000 dollars now. But here is the really beautiful part.
HE HAS NOT PAID RENT OR A MORTGAGE PAYMENT SINCE 1976. So, he lived at the house he built that he paid for as he built it and never had a mortgage ever. By 1980 the land was paid for and he has been free and clear ever since. Since my friend is also a musician and successful now, he can travel all over the world and do concerts and write all his expenses in traveling for concerts off as a business expense.
So, would you rather have a subprime or do something like this and completely own your own home on 2 1/2 acres of land outright?
By the way I thought I should tell you of my experience. First of all I sold the land I built an A-Frame on in 1989 while I was living in Hawaii on Maui with my wife and 3 of my kids.
Beginning in 1980 I got married and so my 6 year old son from my first marriage and my wife's 2 kids from her first marriage and I all got together and bought 2 1/2 acres on the side of tall mountain in a remote area at 4000 feet. In this location 7 feet of snow at one time was not unusual between January and March. So, between these months I had to watch the skies very carefully to see when to get my cars or trucks out of there as the roads were not plowed by the county. I found it practical to be there home schooling my kids about 6 to 9 months a year. So in the end it was more like a remote mountain cabin that we loved with a water spring and incredibly beautiful view of the mountain. However, from my present vantage point of age 60, it was pretty remote to consider being there more than about 6 months a year at most.
The land was reasonable in 1980. It was only about $8000. However, since there is still no electricity available there (except solar) now in 2008 the land by itself if undeveloped might only be $10,000 in value now 26 years later.
Since my father and I had built several houses together and since he had trained me as an electrician's helper summers between my ages 12 and 17 he offered to help me set the foundations and build my a-frame house. I had decided upon and A-frame because of the location. It was the only shape I knew for sure that could shed 7 feet of snow or more and wouldn't collapse the roof if no one was there that winter. So we decided upon an A-Frame. Next, they had torn down a sawmill nearby so I went to the dump and found 9 3 foot by 3 foot cement pyramids with the tops cut off for pier block construction. Since they weighed about 300 pounds each, 4 strong male adults could lift these things and put them in the back of a pickup truck.
Next, we sold one of our vehicles, a 1971 VW Camper van and with the money bought enough building materials to build our house. We put a loft in the A-Frame for sleeping and it worked well because all the heat from the wood stove rises so even when it is cold downstairs it was warm up in the loft. We put a lot of windows on the two vertical ends of the A-Frame and faced one toward a breathtaking view of the mountain and placed my wife's and my bed with the head toward the beautiful view. So, every morning I could look at it and be grateful to be there out in the wild.
So, since we paid cash for the land, after we built our A-Frame all we had to pay were the land taxes because everything was paid for. We chose to live off the grid so there were no electrical bills. Water we hauled from our spring. So there was no rent to pay, no mortgage to pay and plenty of time to home school the kids. With the exception of the last ten years of my life, building that house in the wilderness and home schooling my older kids was the happiest time of my life for about 5 years.
Once again, living this way is not for everyone. But for me, my friend, my father and his father it was and is the American Dream!
Why not live the American dream and forget about the subprime loans? Then you will own your home and land outright! Then if you homestead it no one will be able to take it away from you!
Note: The following url tells something about homestead laws in California if you are homesteading land in another state look information up on the internet in regard to homesteading land in your state.
http://www.wwlaw.com/homestd.htm
Friday, December 5, 2008
Money Doesn't Buy Happiness
I can speak to this not only as a truism but also as a life experience.
Money might buy you security but it doesn't buy happiness or real friends. I have been rich and I have been poor but mostly I would say I have been somewhere in between. My favorite parts of my life were when I was probably the poorest but had the most friends when I was under 40 years old. I liked being about 30 to age 37 the best where you know what's going on but your body doesn't hurt that much yet and you still have a lot of energy to do things.
No. Money only buys security. It doesn't buy happiness or friends or true love or anything that really matters that you absolutely can't do without (unless it is a life saving medical operation or something like that).
When I was happiest in my life I just got married for the second time and bought 2 1/2 acres of land 10 miles from the nearest small town and built an A-frame house at 4000 feet on the side of Mt. Shasta. I had a son from my first marriage who was about 5 years old and she had 2 kids from her first marriage that were 6 and 8 years old. The next 4 years we home schooled those kids and cross country skied in the winter and hiked and swam in the mountain lakes and streams in the summer. We had lots of friends that had similar interests within 20 miles of our land and gas was very cheap so we were happy. But we didn't have a lot of money, we bought organic food in bulk with 25 to 50 gallon drums of organic peanut butter, 25 pounds of organic rice and about 20 pounds of organic potatoes and ten pounds of Carob powder for making chocolate(carob milk) by mixing the carob powder and milk. We bought 25 pounds of organic powdered milk and another 25 pounds of various kinds of pasta. These were our staples. Since we were lacto ovo vegetarians we also ate cheese and bread and olives and all kinds of canned goods as well.
We owned our land outright and so we didn't have to work that hard then to get by. (Sounds like a good idea for this recession too, huh?) Only now I'm old and rich and think back fondly of being a contractor and raising and home schooling 5 to 12 year olds and hiking, skiing and teaching them about life and nature whenever I wasn't working.
Yes. Eventually, we couldn't make enough money easily to live like that so remote and had to move back to the northern California coast and buy a new business to put our kids through public school and high school in an affluent area. But I and my wife lived a mutual life long dream of living remotely in the country off the grid with a water spring on our land that we used for baths and for washing dishes and the like. We had an incredible view of Mt. Shasta and watched the sun set on it every day winter and summer, a wood cook stove and Aladdin kerosene lamps to read and study with at night ( no electricity). It was a very good life, with no phones to bother with either(cellphones hadn't been perfected yet) 1980.
So what then causes happiness? I would say being free to follow your dreams and your bliss in life causes happiness.
I my case being able to for those 5 years to live my dreams has enabled me to put up with the rest of my life no matter how good or bad it got. Totally being allowed by life to live my dreams culminated in my whole family going to India and Nepal for 4 months. Though eventually, we divorced after being married 15 years those years made the rest of my life worth living.
When I remarried in 1995 and had another daughter my life has been very secure and contented. But always I think back to those 5 years where I actually lived my dreams and no one got in my way and I home school my kids they way I would have like to have been treated rather than the abuse I received in public school. I loved college just not public grade school through high school. I think most of all I didn't like watching kids beat up and bloody for getting A's. No one beat me up because I was always very big for my age and people knew if they got me mad enough I would put them in the hospital, so people left me alone mostly. I protected as many kids as I could but you can't be everywhere all the time. Many A students were beat up every day when I grew up. Many A students just got C's because they couldn't deal with the beatings. Public School sucked and still does most places. Happiness is home schooling if you have brothers and sisters and friends.
For me, growing up, happiness would be be home schooled in the mountains or on a beautiful beach somewhere with friends and dreams. If I was a kid that would be my ideal dream. But then again, happiness might be different for every person if they really asked themselves. If they ever really allowed themselves to think about what would make them happy. What would really make you happy. Just realize money doesn't make anyone happy, only safe and secure. That's all.
Money might buy you security but it doesn't buy happiness or real friends. I have been rich and I have been poor but mostly I would say I have been somewhere in between. My favorite parts of my life were when I was probably the poorest but had the most friends when I was under 40 years old. I liked being about 30 to age 37 the best where you know what's going on but your body doesn't hurt that much yet and you still have a lot of energy to do things.
No. Money only buys security. It doesn't buy happiness or friends or true love or anything that really matters that you absolutely can't do without (unless it is a life saving medical operation or something like that).
When I was happiest in my life I just got married for the second time and bought 2 1/2 acres of land 10 miles from the nearest small town and built an A-frame house at 4000 feet on the side of Mt. Shasta. I had a son from my first marriage who was about 5 years old and she had 2 kids from her first marriage that were 6 and 8 years old. The next 4 years we home schooled those kids and cross country skied in the winter and hiked and swam in the mountain lakes and streams in the summer. We had lots of friends that had similar interests within 20 miles of our land and gas was very cheap so we were happy. But we didn't have a lot of money, we bought organic food in bulk with 25 to 50 gallon drums of organic peanut butter, 25 pounds of organic rice and about 20 pounds of organic potatoes and ten pounds of Carob powder for making chocolate(carob milk) by mixing the carob powder and milk. We bought 25 pounds of organic powdered milk and another 25 pounds of various kinds of pasta. These were our staples. Since we were lacto ovo vegetarians we also ate cheese and bread and olives and all kinds of canned goods as well.
We owned our land outright and so we didn't have to work that hard then to get by. (Sounds like a good idea for this recession too, huh?) Only now I'm old and rich and think back fondly of being a contractor and raising and home schooling 5 to 12 year olds and hiking, skiing and teaching them about life and nature whenever I wasn't working.
Yes. Eventually, we couldn't make enough money easily to live like that so remote and had to move back to the northern California coast and buy a new business to put our kids through public school and high school in an affluent area. But I and my wife lived a mutual life long dream of living remotely in the country off the grid with a water spring on our land that we used for baths and for washing dishes and the like. We had an incredible view of Mt. Shasta and watched the sun set on it every day winter and summer, a wood cook stove and Aladdin kerosene lamps to read and study with at night ( no electricity). It was a very good life, with no phones to bother with either(cellphones hadn't been perfected yet) 1980.
So what then causes happiness? I would say being free to follow your dreams and your bliss in life causes happiness.
I my case being able to for those 5 years to live my dreams has enabled me to put up with the rest of my life no matter how good or bad it got. Totally being allowed by life to live my dreams culminated in my whole family going to India and Nepal for 4 months. Though eventually, we divorced after being married 15 years those years made the rest of my life worth living.
When I remarried in 1995 and had another daughter my life has been very secure and contented. But always I think back to those 5 years where I actually lived my dreams and no one got in my way and I home school my kids they way I would have like to have been treated rather than the abuse I received in public school. I loved college just not public grade school through high school. I think most of all I didn't like watching kids beat up and bloody for getting A's. No one beat me up because I was always very big for my age and people knew if they got me mad enough I would put them in the hospital, so people left me alone mostly. I protected as many kids as I could but you can't be everywhere all the time. Many A students were beat up every day when I grew up. Many A students just got C's because they couldn't deal with the beatings. Public School sucked and still does most places. Happiness is home schooling if you have brothers and sisters and friends.
For me, growing up, happiness would be be home schooled in the mountains or on a beautiful beach somewhere with friends and dreams. If I was a kid that would be my ideal dream. But then again, happiness might be different for every person if they really asked themselves. If they ever really allowed themselves to think about what would make them happy. What would really make you happy. Just realize money doesn't make anyone happy, only safe and secure. That's all.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Charter Schools and Home Schooling to Increase
Unless all parents get more involved in educating their children things now will get worse and worse.
I live in California where 200,000 State workers were furloughed for the first time yesterday. This will be done on the 1st and 3rd fridays of every month for the next 2 years or more. Since funding for primary, secondary, and college is also losing funding now statewide and since this sort of thing is happening or will happen in 37 states soon, unless you get more involved in your children's education they will fall behind in what they actually need to know.
This takes me back to 1980 when my son then 6 and my stepchildren ages 7 and 9 faced similar shortfalls in public schools where they lived. The solution at that time in Mt. Shasta City, California was to move the 4th 5th and 6 graders in with the 7th, 8th and possibly 9th graders. Within one month an 8th grader broke a 4th graders jaw at school.
My wife and I were so incensed we took all our children out of public school and put them on Oak Meadow School independent study. We did this for 4 years. This curriculum allowed us to home school our children for 4 years. Though it was very stressful at first, we realized we had made the right decision for our children. Now, the oldest boy is a Fire Captain, his sister is a lawyer, and my son is in university almost an RN along with his wife. Our pulling our kids out of school and home schooling them on independent study allowed them to travel with us and to live within that year 20 miles from the nearest small town. We also took them to Canada, Idaho, and learned many new things together. My oldest stepson was very interested in birds and so we sometimes followed bird migrations so he could study them better. Eventually he won a scholarship to a 2 week audabon camp in Wyoming when he was 18. He was involved in many ecological victories in the State of California. My step daughter was an artist and eventually became a lawyer. My son, I didn't realize at the time had dyslexia. I had no knowledge of this sort of thing at the time. Even though, I realize now he was always very bright, at the time he was very quiet and seldom spoke but was very sweet as a person. He became interested in dungeons and dragons and I used his interest in dungeons and dragons and role playing to allow him to teach himself to read. We would buy him books and he was so interested in the pictures and what was said that he taught himself to read so he could read what he loved. Eventually, (a few years ago) I learned he had a 150 IQ which explained why he always got A's in computer programming languages and science all the time. However, he always struggled with spelling and writing because of dyslexia. So, he was very Einsteinian in his demeanor. He was a genius but only able to manifest his genius in certain specific areas. For example, he was always a computer prodigy.
What I'm saying here is that if you home school your children directly or go through independent study during these lean times for public schools you might be doing your children a big favor long term. I have noticed that recessions come and go but they dramatically influence the quality of public education. So during these times we must take into our own hands our children's educations or they won't become all that they are capable of.
I live in California where 200,000 State workers were furloughed for the first time yesterday. This will be done on the 1st and 3rd fridays of every month for the next 2 years or more. Since funding for primary, secondary, and college is also losing funding now statewide and since this sort of thing is happening or will happen in 37 states soon, unless you get more involved in your children's education they will fall behind in what they actually need to know.
This takes me back to 1980 when my son then 6 and my stepchildren ages 7 and 9 faced similar shortfalls in public schools where they lived. The solution at that time in Mt. Shasta City, California was to move the 4th 5th and 6 graders in with the 7th, 8th and possibly 9th graders. Within one month an 8th grader broke a 4th graders jaw at school.
My wife and I were so incensed we took all our children out of public school and put them on Oak Meadow School independent study. We did this for 4 years. This curriculum allowed us to home school our children for 4 years. Though it was very stressful at first, we realized we had made the right decision for our children. Now, the oldest boy is a Fire Captain, his sister is a lawyer, and my son is in university almost an RN along with his wife. Our pulling our kids out of school and home schooling them on independent study allowed them to travel with us and to live within that year 20 miles from the nearest small town. We also took them to Canada, Idaho, and learned many new things together. My oldest stepson was very interested in birds and so we sometimes followed bird migrations so he could study them better. Eventually he won a scholarship to a 2 week audabon camp in Wyoming when he was 18. He was involved in many ecological victories in the State of California. My step daughter was an artist and eventually became a lawyer. My son, I didn't realize at the time had dyslexia. I had no knowledge of this sort of thing at the time. Even though, I realize now he was always very bright, at the time he was very quiet and seldom spoke but was very sweet as a person. He became interested in dungeons and dragons and I used his interest in dungeons and dragons and role playing to allow him to teach himself to read. We would buy him books and he was so interested in the pictures and what was said that he taught himself to read so he could read what he loved. Eventually, (a few years ago) I learned he had a 150 IQ which explained why he always got A's in computer programming languages and science all the time. However, he always struggled with spelling and writing because of dyslexia. So, he was very Einsteinian in his demeanor. He was a genius but only able to manifest his genius in certain specific areas. For example, he was always a computer prodigy.
What I'm saying here is that if you home school your children directly or go through independent study during these lean times for public schools you might be doing your children a big favor long term. I have noticed that recessions come and go but they dramatically influence the quality of public education. So during these times we must take into our own hands our children's educations or they won't become all that they are capable of.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Of Kids, Dogs and Plants
I think this way of thinking comes from being a parent since 1974(1973
if you include wife's pregnancy). So now my kids are 35, 20, and 13,
with two stepkids 36 and 38 and two god daughters that we helped or are
helping through college 24 and 29.
So, I guess the basic premise is that you don't give up on anyone or anything that is in your sphere of influence. It sort of starts with your girlfriend(if you are like me) and then your wife and child, and then their friends, and then all your pets, and then if you have a house and yard the pets, the trees, the plants etc. Until as you age all of life in the world is your concern. You do what you can to help everyone that it is practical to help. A person like this we call a real human being.
The dynamic that I didn't really fully understand much in my early 20s was that everyone and everything takes care of each other. I finally got this fully in my 30s and started experiencing fully "What goes around comes around". I felt like I was giving without getting very much in my 20s but by my 30s I started to realize all my sacrifices were beginning to pay off. However, my sacrifices were not financial to my point of view. It simply meant that I took care of living beings around me, family, friends, strangers in distress that were safe enough to help etc.
But doing this I started to notice began paying off for me starting around my early 30s. From 32 to 37 is one of my favorite period of my life. I had health, a family, new wife, son from first wife, and two step kids. And then we bought 2 1/2 acres on Mt. Shasta and sort of lived a Wilderness family experience for a few years while home schooling our kids and living in an A-Frame I build that could shed the up to 7 feet of snow that fell at one time in that area of the mountain. I think living that wilderness family experience for 5 years gave me the strength to put up with the rest of my life afterwards and before. Don't underestimate the life giving and health giving aspects of actually "Living your Dreams" even if those dreams only last 5 years. So at the end of all this when we spent 4 months in India and Nepal and two weeks in Thailand I had lived all my dreams and didn't know what to do with myself then other than just knuckle down and raise my kids which were either teenagers or almost by then in 1986. So we moved to the California Coast and bought a business and taught all our kids the business so they would know how the business world works too. In these days of "no jobs" including your kids in your business might be the best thing you ever do for them. If they can have their own business when there are no jobs they have a livelihood. Think about it.
So, today I went out to mow down the wild grasses in the back yard. I sort of like the wilderness back yard that harkens to the original lay of the land. And so in the winter I can watch at least my backyard look more like the surrounding forests and meadows near the ocean. We had some really bad storms this year and lost power for around a week total so far this year. However, I have a small motor home that has a built in Onan generator that I can plug my refrigerator into. I find it can run the refrigerator, my 52 inch wide screen tv, my cable DVR, my computers and modem and router and printer and a few electric lights even if there is no power coming into the house from the street. It saves us around 400 to 500 dollars in perished food every time this happens. just remember you have to completely separate all the things coming from the generator from household current because if you don't it could kill not only your generator but all your appliances. The way I accomplish this is to simply run a 100 foot electrical extension cord through my garage up into my kitchen. Then I unplug my refrigerator and plug it into a surge protector strip attached to the 100 foot cord that is attached to my motor home Onan generator. Then I plug in other shorter cords to my TV, DVR, Cable modem and router, lights etc. Since my Onan runs off the large gas tank in my motor home that also runs the engine I could theoretically run the generator for many days without running out of gas if I have a full tank in my motor home to begin with. So, I keep my gas tank filled in my motor home especially during the winter because of this and because there is less moisture condensation in a large gas tank during the winter if you keep it full to the brim.
So, even though I have digressed, taking care of people you find in order to do that you have to take care of yourself too. This has always been good for me for I have always have had a tendency not to care about whether I lived or died all my life. So this also has kept me alive as well. I think the genetic predisposition to perceive oneself as a soldier and as expendable has been bred in most men. Men that aren't that way mostly have been genetically eliminated from the gene pool over thousands of years one way or the other. So, I think that quality of being willing to die for a good cause protects civilization in every way even though as an intelligent person I consider being this way as just crazy and "terminal macho" as in "Being so full of it you wind up dying".
So, it is important to give oneself reasons to stay alive like getting married and having kids just so you don't just accidentally off yourself during your world adventures. This can help a lot.
What actually got me to write this article was that I began thinking this morning as I used the weed eater to clear the path through my backyard to the other side of my house. Since my house is L shaped (excluding the garage) there are actually two backyards one on either side of the top of the L, a large one to the right of the L and a smaller one to the left. To the right of the L we have a Hot tub (Spa) and a 17 foot in diameter trampoline for my 13 year old daughter(even though I use it too). However, she likes to run in circles on the trampoline as low impact excercise while listening to her Ipod. Sometimes she will run for 40 minutes or more and be totally blissed out by this experience. She has a cast iron stomach like her Mom who was a heavy weather sailor with her parents growing up in Southern California. She liked nothing better than to sail in a storm.
However, since I started to get seasick while sailing in Southern California when I was around 34 I prefer not to sail anymore because I almost always get sick and have to throw up at least once. However, often after I do an Elvis throw up(going to the leeward side of the boat so I don't hit anyone with it). Sometimes I'm so good at it that no one even notices I just threw up.
So, anyway the last time I had this experience it was to put my mother's ashes next to where John Denver's plane crashed into the ocean(she loved John Denver) when we rented a large sailboat for this purpose and most of the family joined us for this event.
(As you can see I'm having a terrible time staying on track and task this morning. Maybe it's because it is Valentine's day and the energy is sort of spaced out from that all over). Anyway, Maybe I'll try later. Have a good day! Happy Valentine's Day!
So, I guess the basic premise is that you don't give up on anyone or anything that is in your sphere of influence. It sort of starts with your girlfriend(if you are like me) and then your wife and child, and then their friends, and then all your pets, and then if you have a house and yard the pets, the trees, the plants etc. Until as you age all of life in the world is your concern. You do what you can to help everyone that it is practical to help. A person like this we call a real human being.
The dynamic that I didn't really fully understand much in my early 20s was that everyone and everything takes care of each other. I finally got this fully in my 30s and started experiencing fully "What goes around comes around". I felt like I was giving without getting very much in my 20s but by my 30s I started to realize all my sacrifices were beginning to pay off. However, my sacrifices were not financial to my point of view. It simply meant that I took care of living beings around me, family, friends, strangers in distress that were safe enough to help etc.
But doing this I started to notice began paying off for me starting around my early 30s. From 32 to 37 is one of my favorite period of my life. I had health, a family, new wife, son from first wife, and two step kids. And then we bought 2 1/2 acres on Mt. Shasta and sort of lived a Wilderness family experience for a few years while home schooling our kids and living in an A-Frame I build that could shed the up to 7 feet of snow that fell at one time in that area of the mountain. I think living that wilderness family experience for 5 years gave me the strength to put up with the rest of my life afterwards and before. Don't underestimate the life giving and health giving aspects of actually "Living your Dreams" even if those dreams only last 5 years. So at the end of all this when we spent 4 months in India and Nepal and two weeks in Thailand I had lived all my dreams and didn't know what to do with myself then other than just knuckle down and raise my kids which were either teenagers or almost by then in 1986. So we moved to the California Coast and bought a business and taught all our kids the business so they would know how the business world works too. In these days of "no jobs" including your kids in your business might be the best thing you ever do for them. If they can have their own business when there are no jobs they have a livelihood. Think about it.
So, today I went out to mow down the wild grasses in the back yard. I sort of like the wilderness back yard that harkens to the original lay of the land. And so in the winter I can watch at least my backyard look more like the surrounding forests and meadows near the ocean. We had some really bad storms this year and lost power for around a week total so far this year. However, I have a small motor home that has a built in Onan generator that I can plug my refrigerator into. I find it can run the refrigerator, my 52 inch wide screen tv, my cable DVR, my computers and modem and router and printer and a few electric lights even if there is no power coming into the house from the street. It saves us around 400 to 500 dollars in perished food every time this happens. just remember you have to completely separate all the things coming from the generator from household current because if you don't it could kill not only your generator but all your appliances. The way I accomplish this is to simply run a 100 foot electrical extension cord through my garage up into my kitchen. Then I unplug my refrigerator and plug it into a surge protector strip attached to the 100 foot cord that is attached to my motor home Onan generator. Then I plug in other shorter cords to my TV, DVR, Cable modem and router, lights etc. Since my Onan runs off the large gas tank in my motor home that also runs the engine I could theoretically run the generator for many days without running out of gas if I have a full tank in my motor home to begin with. So, I keep my gas tank filled in my motor home especially during the winter because of this and because there is less moisture condensation in a large gas tank during the winter if you keep it full to the brim.
So, even though I have digressed, taking care of people you find in order to do that you have to take care of yourself too. This has always been good for me for I have always have had a tendency not to care about whether I lived or died all my life. So this also has kept me alive as well. I think the genetic predisposition to perceive oneself as a soldier and as expendable has been bred in most men. Men that aren't that way mostly have been genetically eliminated from the gene pool over thousands of years one way or the other. So, I think that quality of being willing to die for a good cause protects civilization in every way even though as an intelligent person I consider being this way as just crazy and "terminal macho" as in "Being so full of it you wind up dying".
So, it is important to give oneself reasons to stay alive like getting married and having kids just so you don't just accidentally off yourself during your world adventures. This can help a lot.
What actually got me to write this article was that I began thinking this morning as I used the weed eater to clear the path through my backyard to the other side of my house. Since my house is L shaped (excluding the garage) there are actually two backyards one on either side of the top of the L, a large one to the right of the L and a smaller one to the left. To the right of the L we have a Hot tub (Spa) and a 17 foot in diameter trampoline for my 13 year old daughter(even though I use it too). However, she likes to run in circles on the trampoline as low impact excercise while listening to her Ipod. Sometimes she will run for 40 minutes or more and be totally blissed out by this experience. She has a cast iron stomach like her Mom who was a heavy weather sailor with her parents growing up in Southern California. She liked nothing better than to sail in a storm.
However, since I started to get seasick while sailing in Southern California when I was around 34 I prefer not to sail anymore because I almost always get sick and have to throw up at least once. However, often after I do an Elvis throw up(going to the leeward side of the boat so I don't hit anyone with it). Sometimes I'm so good at it that no one even notices I just threw up.
So, anyway the last time I had this experience it was to put my mother's ashes next to where John Denver's plane crashed into the ocean(she loved John Denver) when we rented a large sailboat for this purpose and most of the family joined us for this event.
(As you can see I'm having a terrible time staying on track and task this morning. Maybe it's because it is Valentine's day and the energy is sort of spaced out from that all over). Anyway, Maybe I'll try later. Have a good day! Happy Valentine's Day!
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
School Security
I was listening to the news regarding armed guards (police, security
personnel or teachers with concealed weapons) in public Schools in the
U.S.
As I thought about it to make it more effective it might be useful to have computerized video cameras running face recognition software that also note unusual behavior. If this was mass produced for all public schools it could be made much more cost effective for all schools nationwide to be using. So, by having at least one public or undercover officer (police, security or teachers with concealed weapons) combined with face recognition software and unusual behavior software looking at different locations in schools, this could prevent other bad things happening in all schools.
However, it would not prevent necessarily someone with a sniper scope on a rifle at a distance like a sniper uses, or someone planting a bomb and blowing a school up with children in it. It would only prevent someone coming on campus and being successful in killing many children at once.
So, in the end there is no effective way to prevent all the different potential types of mayhem possible only certain kinds.
This is why I believe in Home Schooling as a way to keep your kids alive and safe. I have written about my experience with home schooling my oldest three children through Oak Meadow School in other articles.
As I thought about it to make it more effective it might be useful to have computerized video cameras running face recognition software that also note unusual behavior. If this was mass produced for all public schools it could be made much more cost effective for all schools nationwide to be using. So, by having at least one public or undercover officer (police, security or teachers with concealed weapons) combined with face recognition software and unusual behavior software looking at different locations in schools, this could prevent other bad things happening in all schools.
However, it would not prevent necessarily someone with a sniper scope on a rifle at a distance like a sniper uses, or someone planting a bomb and blowing a school up with children in it. It would only prevent someone coming on campus and being successful in killing many children at once.
So, in the end there is no effective way to prevent all the different potential types of mayhem possible only certain kinds.
This is why I believe in Home Schooling as a way to keep your kids alive and safe. I have written about my experience with home schooling my oldest three children through Oak Meadow School in other articles.
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www.oakmeadow.com/Creative homeschooling curriculum and fully accredited K-12 school. Project-based, innovative materials for your home-based educational journey. High School Enrollment at Oak Meadow: Homeschooling ...
www.oakmeadow.com/school/courses.phpFor graduation requirements, please download our high school catalog. Welcome to Oak Meadow High School, where inspired learning and inspired teaching ...Affiliated Schools that use Oak Meadow Curriculum, Homeschooling ...
www.oakmeadow.com/affiliated-schools.phpOak Meadow School was founded in 1975, by Dr. and Mrs. Lawrence Williams, in Ojai, California. Oak Meadow School's national offices are now located in ...
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Deep Truth
There are many things even today that have been suppressed by both
religion and by science in children's textbooks worldwide. There are
modern day Galileo situations, in fact they are the norm in regard to
new found knowledge, even science. Things are changing so fast in the
realm of what we know about our past as well as what we have learned in
the last 50 to 100 years that a majority is not taught in High School or
even in college and definitely not in Grade School and Junior High. Why
is this?
The best reason that I can give is that things are now changing so fast that most people don't want to make kids insecure. Also, all these new facts and scientific advances might challenge religions even more than they did in Galileo's time. When you have school districts debating things like Creationism, Darwinism and Intelligent design, how can the literally millions and more discoveries find a place in modern day schools anywhere?
Here is a perfect example of one fact that was readily known in places like Moscow and likely Beijing during the 1970s. When a probe was sent there by the Soviet Union it was discovered that the asteroid belt had once been a planet blown up by a thermonuclear bomb or bombs. The intelligentsia of the Soviet Union understood this. However, it was completely repressed by religions in the west to the point where it never saw the light of day. Why was this? Because understanding that we humans might have come from other planets and might also migrate to other planets in the future was unacceptable to world religions because it disagreed with long written teachings.
There are thousands of similar examples of facts that are indisputable that are inconvenient truths. Besides, history (His Story) is always written by the winners of any conflict physical, religious or verbal.
So, where are all these deep truths that have been hidden or suppressed from the average person worldwide. They are everywhere. They are inconvenient truths. And so they disappear, they are suppressed many times along with the people who discovered them. This is the way things have always been and to some degree still are a little still like the times of Galileo worldwide.
So, if you want your children educated what do you do?
Because of this some people home school their kids. But if the home schooling is too religious based it is likely to suppress many of the new discoveries because of the regimentation of most religions. So, home schooling along religious lines will suppress your children's open minds and resourcefulness if you aren't careful. But then you want to give your kids a scientific education. Here again, different branches of science have become just like religions, people's careers are often more important than pure scientific truths. And so truths get lost in people saving or salvaging their reputations or careers and the same things happens now in science often as has always happened in relation to only religions in the past.
But then there is the other side of all this. What if you are a person who gathers together all these various kinds of new advances in one web site and then points other people to as many advances as you can find that might be helpful? What can happen to someone bright enough to organize even some of these new advances in all directions? So, everyone must find ways to protect themselves while researching out the most important advances that can help mankind survive the coming times. So, if you can bring to people's attention worldwide ways that humanity can survive this century better, then I think you need to do it. This is what my site is mostly about. I'm trying to relay all the wisest things that I can find so hopefully, humanity can find ways to survive this century and the next and the next and the next. And so on.
Also, my daughter gave me a book called "Deep Truth" by Gregg Braden for Christmas, and after talking to her maybe I'll have to read it. But I'm glad I at least got all this off my chest.
The best reason that I can give is that things are now changing so fast that most people don't want to make kids insecure. Also, all these new facts and scientific advances might challenge religions even more than they did in Galileo's time. When you have school districts debating things like Creationism, Darwinism and Intelligent design, how can the literally millions and more discoveries find a place in modern day schools anywhere?
Here is a perfect example of one fact that was readily known in places like Moscow and likely Beijing during the 1970s. When a probe was sent there by the Soviet Union it was discovered that the asteroid belt had once been a planet blown up by a thermonuclear bomb or bombs. The intelligentsia of the Soviet Union understood this. However, it was completely repressed by religions in the west to the point where it never saw the light of day. Why was this? Because understanding that we humans might have come from other planets and might also migrate to other planets in the future was unacceptable to world religions because it disagreed with long written teachings.
There are thousands of similar examples of facts that are indisputable that are inconvenient truths. Besides, history (His Story) is always written by the winners of any conflict physical, religious or verbal.
So, where are all these deep truths that have been hidden or suppressed from the average person worldwide. They are everywhere. They are inconvenient truths. And so they disappear, they are suppressed many times along with the people who discovered them. This is the way things have always been and to some degree still are a little still like the times of Galileo worldwide.
So, if you want your children educated what do you do?
Because of this some people home school their kids. But if the home schooling is too religious based it is likely to suppress many of the new discoveries because of the regimentation of most religions. So, home schooling along religious lines will suppress your children's open minds and resourcefulness if you aren't careful. But then you want to give your kids a scientific education. Here again, different branches of science have become just like religions, people's careers are often more important than pure scientific truths. And so truths get lost in people saving or salvaging their reputations or careers and the same things happens now in science often as has always happened in relation to only religions in the past.
But then there is the other side of all this. What if you are a person who gathers together all these various kinds of new advances in one web site and then points other people to as many advances as you can find that might be helpful? What can happen to someone bright enough to organize even some of these new advances in all directions? So, everyone must find ways to protect themselves while researching out the most important advances that can help mankind survive the coming times. So, if you can bring to people's attention worldwide ways that humanity can survive this century better, then I think you need to do it. This is what my site is mostly about. I'm trying to relay all the wisest things that I can find so hopefully, humanity can find ways to survive this century and the next and the next and the next. And so on.
Also, my daughter gave me a book called "Deep Truth" by Gregg Braden for Christmas, and after talking to her maybe I'll have to read it. But I'm glad I at least got all this off my chest.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Soul Traveling on the Currents of Time
When I was 17 I wanted to become enlightened because I thought it was
the thing to do. I really couldn't get that excited about anything else
in life except a beautiful girlfriend and girlfriends were expensive. So
I studied Computer Programming in College so I would have enough money
to marry someone really amazing and beautiful and intelligent and
spiritual and gifted like me.
However, life has a way of going ways completely unexpected. So, I remember being 20 years old and sleeping in my sleeping bag on top of my father's workshop in the desert between two skylights about 15 feet off the ground up on the roof. I looked up into the crystal clear summer night sky and realized that when I looked forward through the next 10 years of my life I would rather be dead or do anything else than what I saw coming for me. So in desperation I decided that I was advanced enough to project my soul out of my body and just not come back. (At the time I didn't think "partly because I was only 20" about what this would do to my parents, relatives and friends"). So anyway out of desperation I projected myself out of my body intending never to come back. However, I was intercepted somewhere between earth and the stars by Angels (likely my Archangel friends from childhood and beyond). And they said to me, "This simply will not be allowed. You must go back into your body. However, we will give you a gift. You will experience your body like it is a car you drive and you will no longer feel imprisoned by it like you did before. This will lessen the impact of what you sense is coming. And by doing this we think you will choose to stay alive and do what we sent you to do here on earth."
So, as I was forced back into my body I noticed my body felt different. It was a reference point much like a car that you drive to get somewhere but that I didn't have to be just in my body I could be multiple places at once. So even though I was really upset to be back on earth and having to face a daunting 20s I knew that there was at least a good chance that I would now survive my 20s despite what I would have to face that I could see coming and feel coming in my future. I also thought that whatever was so important to stuff me back in my body by Archangels must be important enough for me to try to endure my life on earth through my 20s. And I did. Barely.
So, by 30 I had been excommunicated from my church one year later at age 21 for being too 1960s and a part of the social revolution of our times. My girlfriend broke up with me that I had intended to marry that had gone with me for 2 years and could not speak to me because she wasn't allowed to by my religion.There were about 25 girlfriends who kept me alive so I didn't commit suicide by their love, friendship and kindness towards me and about 4 years later my live in girlfriend got pregnant.
And then my son came along and before he was born I married. Because of my son I had good reason to stay alive a long long time now to make sure he was raised right. My first wife and I married at age 26 (she 21) and stayed together for 4 years (married 3). And at 30 I was a single Dad raising my son. But then my life changed from age 32 to 37. I married a lady my own age with 2 kids from her first marriage and the 5 of us had a really amazing 5 years home schooling our kids in the Wilderness on 2 1/2 acres at 4000 feet with a beautiful view of Mt. Shasta. This time of spiritual growth and home schooling our kids and of travels to Idaho and Canada and India and Nepal and Thailand was a dream come true and washed away all the difficulties of my 20s. And this five years was topped off with my father dying (if you haven't experienced this it was really awful) and a 4 month journey to India and Nepal and the Kalachakra Initiation with the Dalai Lama and 500,000 others in native dress from all Tibetan Buddhist countries in Bodhgaya. Then going to Dharmsala, India (where the Dalai lama lives in the Himalayas) with a Tibetan Lama friend we met in Santa Cruz, California by train from Patna, through Benares, Agra(the Taj Mahal) and even more amazing experiences. And then being sent to Rewalsar (Tsopema) a Padmasambhava holy place near Mendi in Himchal Pradesh State of India. This was 1985 and 1986. This amazing time of studying with Tibetan Lamas and Native American Medicine men which I found in attitude to be very similar in some ways was the most amazing time of my life. I had my health. I had a good family. The kids were young enough to travel and we intuitively lived our lives until the oldest was 12 and then we bought a business on the Northern California Coast because the California Coast is very expensive to live on and because the kids wanted to be in a regular school again through junior High and High School and into college.
So, I guess what I'm saying is that even if you look at your life and wish you could just leave it you might just need to stay to do what you came here for. And maybe the best is yet to come!
Note: When my father passed away I was completely unprepared for it affecting my life so completely. I realized I wasn't mature enough to keep my marriage together with my father gone and I was really horrified at this. I had thought (wrongly so) that my father's passing would only make my wife and I closer. Instead the opposite thing occurred. I think now that middle aged crazy(the fear of nearing death) triggered by my Dad's death (I'm next!) took me to a very difficult place. And it wasn't until I almost died of a heart virus at age 50 that I learned to be grateful for every day of life as if it were your last. Because it just might be!
Without this experience I would have never started writing online. Because in the "Heart Room" where 30 to 50 people on gurneys (stretchers with wheels) waiting for angiograms (like me) or electrical heart stimulation (like me) or open heart surgery (not me) waiting and we all wondered if that day was our last. After that every day was a good day if I was alive and with my wife and family. Five or Six months after this doctors told me one day that I wasn't going to die. Whoopee!
Unfortunately, my wife's mother had passed away a month before and her stepmother had passed away the month before that and her mother passing away and me almost dying had cost my wife a miscarriage. So I came out of almost dying into another problem. My wife no longer wanted to live for herself at all. However, since she was a trooper she stayed alive for her 3 year old daughter and me even though she was pretty angry at life (and at times I was the scapegoat) for a couple of years.
But all in all my forced retirement at age 50 has created the most pleasant 12 years in my life since I was 18 years old. It's true I don't have the health that I had in my 30s but life has been so much more amazing than I ever could have believed at this age until I actually experienced it. Life can be completely unexpected in a really good way. Be open to it!
However, life has a way of going ways completely unexpected. So, I remember being 20 years old and sleeping in my sleeping bag on top of my father's workshop in the desert between two skylights about 15 feet off the ground up on the roof. I looked up into the crystal clear summer night sky and realized that when I looked forward through the next 10 years of my life I would rather be dead or do anything else than what I saw coming for me. So in desperation I decided that I was advanced enough to project my soul out of my body and just not come back. (At the time I didn't think "partly because I was only 20" about what this would do to my parents, relatives and friends"). So anyway out of desperation I projected myself out of my body intending never to come back. However, I was intercepted somewhere between earth and the stars by Angels (likely my Archangel friends from childhood and beyond). And they said to me, "This simply will not be allowed. You must go back into your body. However, we will give you a gift. You will experience your body like it is a car you drive and you will no longer feel imprisoned by it like you did before. This will lessen the impact of what you sense is coming. And by doing this we think you will choose to stay alive and do what we sent you to do here on earth."
So, as I was forced back into my body I noticed my body felt different. It was a reference point much like a car that you drive to get somewhere but that I didn't have to be just in my body I could be multiple places at once. So even though I was really upset to be back on earth and having to face a daunting 20s I knew that there was at least a good chance that I would now survive my 20s despite what I would have to face that I could see coming and feel coming in my future. I also thought that whatever was so important to stuff me back in my body by Archangels must be important enough for me to try to endure my life on earth through my 20s. And I did. Barely.
So, by 30 I had been excommunicated from my church one year later at age 21 for being too 1960s and a part of the social revolution of our times. My girlfriend broke up with me that I had intended to marry that had gone with me for 2 years and could not speak to me because she wasn't allowed to by my religion.There were about 25 girlfriends who kept me alive so I didn't commit suicide by their love, friendship and kindness towards me and about 4 years later my live in girlfriend got pregnant.
And then my son came along and before he was born I married. Because of my son I had good reason to stay alive a long long time now to make sure he was raised right. My first wife and I married at age 26 (she 21) and stayed together for 4 years (married 3). And at 30 I was a single Dad raising my son. But then my life changed from age 32 to 37. I married a lady my own age with 2 kids from her first marriage and the 5 of us had a really amazing 5 years home schooling our kids in the Wilderness on 2 1/2 acres at 4000 feet with a beautiful view of Mt. Shasta. This time of spiritual growth and home schooling our kids and of travels to Idaho and Canada and India and Nepal and Thailand was a dream come true and washed away all the difficulties of my 20s. And this five years was topped off with my father dying (if you haven't experienced this it was really awful) and a 4 month journey to India and Nepal and the Kalachakra Initiation with the Dalai Lama and 500,000 others in native dress from all Tibetan Buddhist countries in Bodhgaya. Then going to Dharmsala, India (where the Dalai lama lives in the Himalayas) with a Tibetan Lama friend we met in Santa Cruz, California by train from Patna, through Benares, Agra(the Taj Mahal) and even more amazing experiences. And then being sent to Rewalsar (Tsopema) a Padmasambhava holy place near Mendi in Himchal Pradesh State of India. This was 1985 and 1986. This amazing time of studying with Tibetan Lamas and Native American Medicine men which I found in attitude to be very similar in some ways was the most amazing time of my life. I had my health. I had a good family. The kids were young enough to travel and we intuitively lived our lives until the oldest was 12 and then we bought a business on the Northern California Coast because the California Coast is very expensive to live on and because the kids wanted to be in a regular school again through junior High and High School and into college.
So, I guess what I'm saying is that even if you look at your life and wish you could just leave it you might just need to stay to do what you came here for. And maybe the best is yet to come!
Note: When my father passed away I was completely unprepared for it affecting my life so completely. I realized I wasn't mature enough to keep my marriage together with my father gone and I was really horrified at this. I had thought (wrongly so) that my father's passing would only make my wife and I closer. Instead the opposite thing occurred. I think now that middle aged crazy(the fear of nearing death) triggered by my Dad's death (I'm next!) took me to a very difficult place. And it wasn't until I almost died of a heart virus at age 50 that I learned to be grateful for every day of life as if it were your last. Because it just might be!
Without this experience I would have never started writing online. Because in the "Heart Room" where 30 to 50 people on gurneys (stretchers with wheels) waiting for angiograms (like me) or electrical heart stimulation (like me) or open heart surgery (not me) waiting and we all wondered if that day was our last. After that every day was a good day if I was alive and with my wife and family. Five or Six months after this doctors told me one day that I wasn't going to die. Whoopee!
Unfortunately, my wife's mother had passed away a month before and her stepmother had passed away the month before that and her mother passing away and me almost dying had cost my wife a miscarriage. So I came out of almost dying into another problem. My wife no longer wanted to live for herself at all. However, since she was a trooper she stayed alive for her 3 year old daughter and me even though she was pretty angry at life (and at times I was the scapegoat) for a couple of years.
But all in all my forced retirement at age 50 has created the most pleasant 12 years in my life since I was 18 years old. It's true I don't have the health that I had in my 30s but life has been so much more amazing than I ever could have believed at this age until I actually experienced it. Life can be completely unexpected in a really good way. Be open to it!
Apr 01, 2013
Apr 01, 2013
Apr 01, 2013