Homestead mailing list

[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

On Jun 13, 2008, at 12:21 PM, Lynda wrote:

> How did your child(ren) learn to walk and talk?  Did you help by being
> available or did you do it all for them?

Walking is a physical skill. Most any primate learns on its own.  
Talking may well be learned without instruction but the result may be  
unnaccepatable. To talk with acceptable grammar we need to either hear  
it or read it or be taught it.
> For starters, you stop *giving* people things and start making them  
> *earn*
> them.

To what does this relate?
> Give them the tools instead of simply doing things for them.

Great. What if the parents don't have or can't afford the tools?
> As to homeschooling.  LOTS of folks work and homeschool!  Lots!

All levels of society? Seems to me that parents who make the choice to  
homeschool are above average.
> "incapable of understanding or guiding the process"  That's right  
> back to
> the thinking that got us in this mess to begin with.  If public  
> school is
> working so well and the government is working so well, then why  
> would you
> think that the products of that system wouldn't be capable of  
> understanding
> or replicating the "process."  Not, mind you, that I think the  
> process needs
> to be either understood or used!

So, just turn them free and believe and hope for the best.
> Gene, and others, why is that when you need to do something or learn
> something you seem to have no problem finding what you need to teach
> yourself what you need to know or find someone to help you do it

AFTER we have become mature.

> and yet you
> find it incomprehensible that children, who are a whole lot smarter  
> than the
> tired old brains of older folks, are capable of doing the same?

I don't find it incomprehensible. I find it questionable that all  
parents can do it successfully.

>  Or that
> parents, once all the nanny state crap is removed, won't just stand  
> up and
> do what needs to be done?

How many examples do you need? Walk through any housing project for  
starters. Then walk through the barrios. Then observe the home lives  
of children whose parents are working minimum-wage jobs. All children  
deserve the opportunity to rise above their beginnings.