by Glenda Lehman Ervin (Item numbers refer to the Lehman’s Catalog items.)

First in a three-part series

Tornado in the forecast? Snowstorm on its way? Or perhaps those nasty rumors of another terrorist attack got you worried? With a little planning and foresight you can weather (pun intended) any storm.
The first thing you need is a kit of emergency essentials. And let’s face it; most of us are embarrassingly unprepared for even a power outage. There are several books that can help you along the way. Two of the most popular are Making the Best of Basics: Family Preparedness Handbook (Item No. 723252, $22.95) and The Encyclopedia of Country Living (Item No. 365951, $29.95).
There are three steps to being ready for a disaster, man-made OR mother-nature made:

1) Prepare a kit
2) Make a plan
3) Stay informed

Number One: Prepare a Kit
You must have supplies on hand prior to the disaster. Food and water, both listed below, are essential, but there are other items that should be in your kit. The kit should be light and easy to carry so that you can take it with you.
· Water is essential for life (see below for details on amounts). Lehman’s recommends Katadyn emergency tablets, Item No.8013692, $16.95, to clean the water and the water storage bags, Item No. 6684112; $8.95, to store the water.
· Food, at least a three-day supply of non-perishable food. Canned food is best.
· Hand-cranked radio and flashlight (LED Wind-up Flashlight, Item No. 2071000, $19.95; Coleman Hand-cranked Radio, Item No. 35105, $49.95 )
· First Aid kit
· Whistle to signal for help
· Dust mask or cotton t-shirt, to help filter the air
· Moist towelettes or hand sanitizer
· Wrench or pliers to turn off utilities
· Can opener for food (Can Opener, Item No. H640471, $9.95)
· Plastic sheeting and duct tape to shelter-in-place
· Unique family needs, such as daily prescription medications, infant formula or diapers, and important family documents
· Garbage bags for personal sanitation
· Copies of essential paperwork, e.g. birth certificate and home insurance

Because water is essential for life, you should keep extra on hand at all times. Please make sure you have at least one gallon of water per person per day, for drinking and sanitation, for three days. So if you are a five-person household, you need 15 gallons of water on hand. Remember, children, nursing mothers or those living in a warm climate may need more.

A small water filter, similar to those campers and hikers take with them, can be a lifesaver. Some will actually turn coffee back into water. Water tablets are a wonderful, space-saving alternative to carrying a water filter.

In addition to water, store at least a three-day supply of non-perishable food. Canned food makes the most sense, but don’t forget the can-opener! You can also choose dry cereal, peanut butter, dried fruit, powdered milk, crackers, vitamins, even comfort food. Chocolate comes to mind right away. Don’t bother packing anything that needs to be prepared, cooked or mixed together. It’s just not worth the hassle.

Step Two: Prepare a Plan

So you have your kit(s) packed and ready to go. Step Two is to prepare a plan. What if your children are at school, your spouse is away on a business trip and you are at the grocery store.
Your family may not be together when disaster strikes, so plan how you will contact one another and review what you will do in different situations.

If phones are down in your area, it makes sense to have an out-of-town contact that each family member can reach. Be sure each family member memorizes this number and knows how important it is to check in, even if the lines are tied up for hours. Remember the situation in New Orleans . . . families spent many anguished days searching for their children and loved ones because they had no contact person from out of the area.

Step Three: Emergency Information

Find out what kinds of disasters, both natural and man-made, are most likely to occur in your area and how you will be notified. Methods of getting your attention vary from community to community. One common method is to broadcast via emergency radio and TV broadcasts. You might hear a special siren, or get a telephone call, or emergency workers may go door-to-door.

Find out if your workplace, school or daycare has an emergency plan. If not, perhaps you can volunteer to work on a plan. Talk to neighbors and others in the community. What is their plan? Perhaps you can work together.

The first major decision the head of the household will have to make is, “Do we stay or do we go?” You should understand and plan for both possibilities. Use common sense and available information, including what you are learning here, to determine if there is immediate danger.

In any emergency, local authorities may or may not immediately be able to provide information on what is happening and what you should do. However, you should monitor T.V. or radio news reports for information or official instructions as they become available. This is where the hand-cranked radio is essential. If you are out of power, which happens in almost every disaster, and you can’t find any batteries at your home (don’t even think about trying to buy them at a store) you have no way of knowing what is happening if you don’t have access to a radio.

If you’re specifically told to evacuate or seek medical treatment, do so immediately. Whether you are at home, work or elsewhere, there may be situations when it’s simply best to stay where you are and avoid any uncertainty outside. The first thing to do is bring your family and pets inside and calmly lock the doors. Locate your emergency supply kit and take it with you. Go to an interior room with few windows, if possible.

If you are worried about air contamination, turn off fans, air conditioning and forced-air heating systems. Close windows, air vents and fireplace dampers. Seal all windows, doors and air vents with plastic sheeting and duct tape. Consider measuring and cutting the sheeting in advance to save time.

If you decide to go, you might not be able to come back. Keep in mind, you might also be ordered to go by law. Plan how you will assemble your family and anticipate where you will go. Choose several destinations in different directions so you have options in an emergency. By creating an evacuation plan, you can keep your family safe and calm. Plan places where your family will meet, both within and outside of your immediate neighborhood.

If you have a car, keep a half tank of gas in it at all times in case you need to evacuate. Become familiar with alternate routes and other means of transportation out of your area. If you don’t have access to a car at all times, you must decide how you will leave if you don’t have transportation.

Don’t forget your emergency kit(s)! Take your pets with you, but understand they might not be allowed in shelters. If possible, have an alternative plan for your pets, e.g. leave food and water and lock them in the house. During a real disaster, you don’t have time or energy to worry about things like, “what if the cat makes a mess,” and “Should I grab the presents I bought for Aunt Millie’s birthday next month.” Just take your emergency kit and your family and move quickly and calmly.

In the next issue: The lighter side of disaster preparedness. Day Three and No Power: how to I feed and entertain my family! ?

One can view the history of education as an ongoing struggle between those who feel education is something to be done for someone and those who feel it is something people do for themselves. Educationists love to point out that their job is draw forth the latent talents of their students, to push and expose them to ideas and experiences they feel are necessary for children to know. Educationists find the origin of the English word “educate” in the Latin word, educere, meaning “to draw forth.” Our English word, educe, has the meaning “to make something latent develop or appear” according to Word’s on-line dictionary, so it is not surprising that educationists find their justification for pulling out students’ potential in that word. Indeed the political idea of “universal compulsory schooling” and the pedagogical concept of “making students learn what we think they ought to learn” are rooted in the educational concept of “drawing out,” even by force of law. This model of education is all about doing something to someone ­ whether they want it or not.|

Though America is a democratic republic where “the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness” are paramount, we school our children in a most undemocratic manner. Just over 150 years ago, America created compulsory school laws “for people’s own good” and these laws and educational customs have become so rooted in our culture that most citizens think they were ordained in our Constitution. However I think the political, spiritual, and ethical histories and reasons against universal compulsory schooling deserve a fresh look by we in the twenty-first century. Politically, Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson did their best to argue the need for government-supported public schooling, but it is an argument they lost. Education was considered, in those days, to be a personal, local and state issue, not a Federal issue. Spiritually and ethically, theologians and philosophers contend that it is wrong to compel someone to do something against his wishes, which is why God can’t make us always choose the right thing to do and why in a free, democratic society we tolerate weird ideas, alternative lifestyles, and odd religious practices. Today these issues get ignored or are dismissed with the arguments that compulsory schooling is, at best, the only way to ensure children become good citizens, or, at worst, a necessary evil because we have no place better to put children while their parents work. I hope we can create many more places and reasons for children to grow and learn in our society than the narrow options these arguments allow, which is also why I see homeschooling as a hopeful path for education.

What complicates my position is that I’m not calling for the de-funding or abolition of schools. I find it disheartening to continually have conversations about schooling revolve around issues of funding and curricula, which, to me, are conversations about the tickets and deck chairs for the boat we call USS Education. Instead, I want to talk about coming up with a completely redesigned boat! I challenge the need for compulsory school laws, not the need for places where people can learn. There have been schools, even in early America, of course, but they were ad hoc, short-term arrangements, not the womb-to-tomb credentialing bureaucracies we have today.

There will probably always will be schools, in one form or another, because it makes social sense to organize materials, knowledge, and gathering places in central locations for people to share. Indeed, as the home learning movement continues to grow it is creating its own types of schools, often called learning co-ops, learning centers, or resource centers. I hope these new forms of school will not just be replacements for brick and mortar schools, nor more educational institutions seeking to turn themselves into brand-names for privilege and prestige. I hope the creators of these centers will challenge the status quo of school and curricula, rather than gently seduce families into doing school-at-home. I want to remind people who feel compelled to build such places, and all adults, to be guided by the true meaning of the word “education,” rather than the accepted wisdom of what it means.

“Educere” is not the origin for our words “educate” or “education.” Educators who feel I am mistaken need only open the Oxford English Dictionary to see the origins and etymology of “educate.” Our word originated from the Latin word “educare,” which means to nourish, to rear, to bring up. Education’s roots are in the concept and image of breast-feeding, a moment when the child is an active recipient of nourishment. It is a moment of repose and sharing for both adult and child. Ivan Illich, who explained our modern confusion about the root meaning of the word “education” to me, noted that in early European Catholic monasteries one can find statues of Abbots that portray them as having breasts to dispense “the milk of knowledge” to the monks. This meaning of “education” is related to the word “educere” – drawing forth – but, in the context of a child drawing forth a mother¹s milk.

Over time we have forgotten not only our educational roots, but the roles of patience, love, and hope that should be integral parts of any educational environment. Indeed, the educational environment for children today is more workplace than home: Patience, love, and hope are replaced by time frames, curricula, and expectation. A parent is considered to be educationally neglectful if his/her children aren’ in school (and the younger they start school, and the longer they are in it, the better) or, if they homeschool, the parent is negligent if s/he isn’t hovering over the child, making sure lessons are dutifully tended to every day. To allow a child to roam freely and interact with people of all ages in their home and local community is viewed with suspicion in today’s world and borders on neglect to many authorities. But this is the way our culture developed and passed from generation to generation since the beginning of time, with children being part of their local community.

The root of education is nourishment from parent to child. Educationists will readily admit that children who do poorly in their classes probably come from a poor home environment where the parents are clueless about what their children are doing in schools, or they will blame communities that don’t support education. Yet rather than deal directly with the root issue of why homes and communities are not nourishing places for children to grow up in, educationists clamor for more school hours, as if mastery of state education standards can replace a lack of adequate housing, basic health care, and a living wage so parents can have time at home with their children rather than having to work more than 40 hours per week just to meet rent and expenses.

If we can keep the original meaning of education foremost in our minds when we discuss it, instead of focusing on more laws and techniques to draw forth what we expect from students, we can learn how to work with young people to create new solutions to the problems of growing up today. ? P.F.

Jimmy is sixteen and has been working every Friday the past few months at a delicatessen. He receives the annual flyer in the mail announcing Homeschool Day at Six Flags Magic Mountain. He loves roller coasters and wants to go just as he has gone every year since he was five years old. The event is on a Friday in one month. Does he decide to talk to his boss now about taking the day off, or does he decide to call in sick on the morning of the Homeschool Day? The latter choice would ensure getting the day off while the former may not.

Character will determine Jimmy’s decision. We each use our character to deal with situations both mental and ethical. Big and small dilemmas arrive in our paths daily. Our personal sense of integrity, honesty, ethics, sincerity, and kindness, among many other qualities, determines our own character. The stronger our character, the easier our decisions are to make and the gentler their affect on our inner being.

Teenagers are notorious for knowing “everything” by the age of seventeen. They are pining for independence as they develop their own beliefs and opinions. They are solving their problems using their judgment. Any mistakes they make, they must own and learn from. Independence requires responsibility. Their character will be tested and amended at every turn and it will determine their choices in how they think and act. As English philosopher, John Locke, reassured in the late 1600’s, “Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.” Now is a perfect time for teenagers to be aware of the make-up of their character. Sometimes parents can engage in discussions on character by sneaking in their two-cents or retelling an old story of heart or integrity from their own lives. I like to recount certain short stories from the radio.

As a harried driver in Los Angeles, I listen to KNX radio to hear their frequent traffic reports. As much as I denounce sound bytes, which make up most of KNX’s broadcasting, I try to catch one in particular: Michael Josephson’s daily essay. He always brings to light a social or personal dilemma that requires a judgment call to solve or ponder. The essays point to how hard it is to actually do the right thing but the importance of it, however small it seems. Michael Josephson is the author of Character Counts! a nonprofit educational program which you can download for free (www.charactercounts.org ). The site has a great two-page definition of character, listing his “Six Pillars of Character” and elaborating on each. Michael Josephson’s radio essays are also on this website, both today’s and those from recent weeks.

Therapists nowadays talk about finding one’s authentic voice. This is being able to speak with true honesty and integrity, not only to the recipient but to the self; it is saying what you really mean. However simply put, we all know this is harder than it sounds. It can be difficult to respond when you are unsure what the other person is saying or if you feel put on the spot. In a job interview, have you ever feigned eagerness or stretched the truth to fit an image you want to impress upon the employer? Oftentimes it is tough to be honest with one’s self in a given situation that is moving fast or out of control. How many times in high school did you go over and over what was said and what you wish you had said? Being aware of what an authentic voice is can help teenagers with personal difficulties such as these common ones:

A girl no longer wants to be friends with someone she used to be close to. Whenever the friend calls, she gets off the phone as quickly as possible promising to call the next day, but having no intention of doing so.

A boyfriend keeps putting off talking with his girlfriend because he wants to break up. For one month he does not call her and avoids her calls. Finally the girlfriend confronts him to find out the truth.

No one benefits from ignoring a conflict or avoiding an issue. One person is confused as to what is going on and the other is tormented by what they should be saying. A teenager is learning what their responsibility is in such a situation and what that means. Realizing responsibility, and honestly being in touch with beliefs and feelings, a teenager can contemplate and call upon the authentic voice. The more practice, the easier it will be to know and use. Of course, the authentic voice represents a person’s character, so that while saying something truthfully and with intention, appropriateness and kindness is included. This is especially helpful to remember when another person’s feelings are involved.

Forgiveness is a part of the authentic voice. It is interesting that your belief system knows you should forgive before your emotions are ready. For this reason, forgiveness is a difficult but necessary attribute for well-being. If teenagers can understand and allow themselves to forgive, they will be less angry or plagued by pent-up feelings. Forgiveness is not giving up your own power in a situation or relationship. It is the letting go of another’s behavior and the hurt or damage it has brought. Three years ago a very good friend of mine told me what a horrible friend I was because I did not call her enough during and after her divorce. I was shocked and crushed by her lashing out, but I eventually empathized with her own painful situation. This helped me to let go of her words and the behavior behind them. I did not condone her action in hurting me nor did we end up maintaining our friendship even after we tried to discuss what had happened. Forgiveness helped me to recover from the pain and disillusionment I felt, both from her words and from losing a good friend. Going through such experiences do carry over into new experiences to make them easier or clearer.

Forgiving ourselves can be harder than forgiving others. My daughter is like many teenagers in that she is a perfectionist. When she does not complete something perfectly or does not try her hardest, she becomes moody and upset. She continues to put herself down until she allows it to take on less significance so that she can let go of it. Last spring she was in her first recital and she was determined to smile on stage. She was naturally afraid and did not feel like smiling, but she knew it was part of the role. After each rehearsal, she beat herself up for not smiling. But on the day of the recital she relaxed enough to be able to enjoy herself and the show, and she smiled on stage.

Our independence-loving teens have to now seriously deal with their relationship to their world. They have to take on responsibilities like driving, college attendance, or employment. They have to be reliable and follow through with commitments. I have always thought it ironic that so many teenagers procrastinate when so much thought needs to go into their decision-making process. Perhaps processing is going on during this procrastination time. My seventeen-year-old procrastinates when she is afraid, or when doing something new, or when she is unsure of herself. She assists a dance teacher at an elementary school during the school year. The teacher offered her a summer job at a dance camp. Her job would be to watch the kids between classes and teach one or two classes if enough children enrolled. My daughter was very interested in the teaching opportunity but did not want to work solely as a babysitter if it turned out there would not be enough students. She did not know how to tell her boss this; she did not want to appear ungrateful or not supportive. Five weeks later she finally told the teacher the truth, even though she knew this was not what her boss wanted to hear. The teacher appreciated the honesty and my daughter did not work at the summer camp, but she was hired on the following autumn as a teacher’s assistant.

I do not understand the attitude of entitlement I have encountered from some teenagers that have jobs in my locale. I am often frustrated in the local music store when the cashier is too busy filing CDs to take my money at the nearby register. I feel sneered at for interrupting a task. I have tried to empathize with these young workers. Is it contempt for my money, my age similar to their parents, or their low wages? But then I think that it boils down to their choices and, ultimately, their character. Entitlement is a weakness in character, just as bitterness shows a rift from forgiveness and white lies show deviations from trust. Entitlement attitudes point to responsibility not fully taken.

Social responsibility brings up one disagreement I have with Michael Josephson in his definitions of character. Josephson unobjectionably lists citizenship, but among other valuable contributions as a citizen says obedience to someone in authority is required. Of course, we must follow rules and laws as a matter of our social existence. However, I disagree with this as an absolute. This goes hand-in-hand with being a homeschooler who does not believe in a law and its enforcers who insist my child go to institutionalized school. The saying, “Question Authority,” is promoted in my household. I do not find this in opposition to character building and social responsibility, but rather in accordance. Character is the part making this judgment for me, as I believe in respect and trust of each person in a society. For the most part, authority can rule for the greater good, and herein lies the judgment call. It is analogous to the subject of civil disobedience and its place in our society. I feel it is a part of our democratic system of checks and balances. And that it is the duty of each citizen to be aware and to speak out against injustices by authority figures.

That said, I love that someone is emphasizing character out there on a conventional radio station and asking for more of it. I am grateful that Michael Josephson has established the Institute of Ethics, which produces programs for school children as well as training programs for businesses and city administrators. In our world of “dog eat dog” and marketed ignorance and apathy, we need enthusiasm to approach becoming a more just, respectful, kind, and caring society. We need to redefine success and bring back ethics. Our children are the future and this may certainly be part of their role. Running gleefully away after receiving too much change from a candy purchase, or lying about a child’s age to get into a movie for less money are common daily occurrences that can abruptly bring character to light for our children, and thus for their future.

Developing strong character traits is a lifelong endeavor. As adults we are still trying to cultivate character in our own beings. Our own struggling can nurture a bond with our teens. When I ask for advice from my daughters, their clarity and sense of fairness amazes me. Their wisdom reminds me how close they are to becoming adults. May we all keep in mind this quote by Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher from 400-500 B.C.: “A man’s character is his fate.” ? E.C.

1. William Faulkner

On April 12, 2005, the August “New York Review of Books” pronounced William Faulkner “the most influential innovator in the annals of American fiction,” a man well-deserving of his Nobel Prize.
Faulkner, a high school dropout, was later able to enter the University of Mississippi on a special waiver for ex-WWI servicemen. After a single year there he dropped out with a ‘D’ in English. Between that time and his Nobel Prize he never returned to college.

2. Bill Gates and China

On February 28 of this year, Bill Gates of Microsoft, told a gathering of the 50 American state governors that the United States has reached a competitive crisis which we were losing. This could best be combated by making college prep the sole function of secondary schooling, college prep for everyone, and college, too.
Those who couldn’t afford it should be subsidized by the states. In Erving Goffman’s chilling locution, college was to become a “Total Institution,” controlling all work in the economy.

Gates’ speech was headlined in the European press, where I read about it the following day at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam, which I was leaving for Guangzhou, China. When I landed there, it was big news in China, too, if the English language “China Daily” can be believed.
It was the first thing my Chinese hosts wanted to talk about — this radically utopian idea of college for all.

3. But … Do As I Say, Not As I Do

I asked my hosts to consider this: If Gates’ proposal was such a great idea, then how was it that Gates, like Faulkner, dropped out of college his freshman year? And why didn’t he ever go back? And how was it that from among millions of college-trained techies, Gates decided to hook up with another dropout, Paul Allen, to found Microsoft?
That could have been a million-to-one coincidence, of course, except for the fact that Steve Jobs, the brains behind Apple, dropped out of Reed College after one semester. And never went back to college, not for a single day! Was it only an accident that Jobs chose to partner with another dropout, Steve Wozniak, in the founding of Apple?
Michael Dell of Dell Computer didn’t bother with college either. Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, said he didn’t have the time to waste on college. Is the penny beginning to drop? These multi-billionaires, who’ve changed the face of the global society in technology, were all dropouts. What do you make of that?

Ted Turner, founder of CNN was pitched out of college on his ear, flunked out just like Al Gore did at Vanderbilt. Ray Kroc of McDonald’s told his mother at age 15 that he didn’t have time to waste on high school, dropping out at almost the same age that the female auto-racing phenomenon, Danica Patrick did. Danica dropped out at 16, went to London on her own (just like Benjamin Franklin did two and a half centuries ago) and signed herself into a course on how to sustain speeds above 200 mph on a racetrack!

A few years later she almost won the Indy 500 and would have except for an error by her pit crew.

4. A Mass of Clerks

In his monumental history of civilizations, Arnold Toynbee said that institutionally forced schooling was always about creating a mass of clerks for the prevailing bureaucracy. Not educated people who can think for themselves, but clerks – parts of a social machine. In your heart, you knew that, with or without Toynbee, didn’t you?
Over in Guangzhou, I witnessed the largest society on earth undergoing phenomenal, dynamic changes that were intended to make China over in the model of Western industrialization, which steam-rollered the global economy between 1800 and 1960.
China has mastered the techniques of the West and has gone far beyond them. It employs the ruthless logic of financial capitalism with a discipline it would be impossible to achieve in the soft-hearted management systems of the United States and Canada.
They don’t make things better than we do, but they do make them just as good and cheaper, by a factor of from six to thirty. It is fanciful to say, as Mr. Gates did, that if we just have more schooling, we’ll be okay. In the next 10 years, China and India, et al., will release ten million well-trained engineers in excess of domestic needs on the world’s skilled labor markets.

These men and women will bid for work against your own techie sons and daughters.

At sixteen cents or so on the dollar, the effect on wages will be a catastrophe for this important segment of middle-class life. Mr. Gates didn’t bother to tell his audience that Microsoft has already opened large colleges in China and India to train young people in those nations to its own specifications.

That puts a new spin on his appeal for universal college training doesn’t it? Perhaps you believe the corporate policy of Microsoft will prefer to continue to pay high wages when a stream of its own foreign graduates becomes available.

Unless you do believe that, it becomes a duty for all of us to wake up and warn our children because one thing is certain: Schools won’t.

5. The Answer Is Jazz, Not Schooling

Saturation schooling, kindergarten through college, was a leadership response to the demands of a centralized corporate economy that replaced American/Canadian entrepreneurialism between 1880 and 1920.

What corporatism required was two things: A laboring mass – including a professional laboring mass of doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects and schoolteachers – who did what they were told without question, and a citizenry in name only, one which defined itself by non-stop consumption, one which believed that choosing between options offered by management was what democracy was all about.

Lockstep schooling, driven by standardized testing, testing not to measure learning but obedience, was the mechanism used to drive out imagination and courage. It worked and still works superbly, but, like the little mill that ground salt when salt wasn’t needed, this brilliant utopian construction is about to kill us.

North American economies dazzled the world for centuries because they encouraged resourcefulness, individuality and risk-taking to dominate the marketplace, and these qualities were encouraged in everyone, not just in the elites.

Three North American commercial juggernauts are currently blowing away competition all over China: computer hardware and programming, fast food franchising and commercial entertainment (singing, dancing, story-telling, games and all the rest).

Each of these businesses is almost exclusively the work of dropouts, from college, high school and elementary school. They are erected from imagination. Our fast food franchises don’t really sell “food” at all, but two intense tastes – salty and sweet – surrounded by clean, well-lighted places and spotless toilets and primary colors. They sell a return to early childhood and its simplicities.

Our computer world is built upon imagination inscribed on silicon chips on grains of sand. It’s magical. And our entertainment industry, which dominates China and every place else? Assembled from the raw material of people pretending to be who they aren’t and singing their hearts out about emotions some writer made up.

We need to realize what all this means. We need to follow the path opened by our unparalleled jazz domination of the planet.

Over in China, at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music (the oldest continuous music school on earth) they have a hard time believing that jazz can even exist, that with imagination and courage you can hear a piece of music once and ring dazzling changes on it forever.
Jazz writ large has always been the key to North American genius. As David Richardo, the great philosopher of capitalism often said: The road to wealth comes from understanding what it is that you do best, then doing it. It’s time we abandoned the cowardly path of imitating what China and India will do best in the future, realizing that our own security can only be preserved by encouraging imagination.

6. Stiffening the Backbone

Not long ago, I got a letter from Ed Hamilton, the largest mail-order independent book dealer in America, in which he disclosed that he had taken three college courses long ago before he realized that the time and expense was largely a waste and struck out for himself on the course that made him a multi-millionaire and, for what it’s worth, one of the most influential purveyors of self-education in the country.
Hamilton admitted to delight in the fact that most of his potential competitors did so waste their time, thus leaving the field much less difficult for him to negotiate.

Chris Paolini, a real-life homeschooled kid from the remote Absaroka Mountains of Montana wrote a fantasy novel at 15, “Eragon,” self-published the book with his parents and drove from school to school, library to library, with mom and dad who quit their jobs to help him so, so much did they believe in his book!

So far “Eragon” has sold 2.5 million copies – earning enough so mom and dad and Chris won’t ever have to work for strangers again – and Knopf is bringing out a sequel called “Eragon, The Eldest” with a first printing of 1.3 million copies. “Eragon” is scheduled for Hollywood release in 2006 starring Jeremy Irons and John Malkovich.
Chris is 21 as I write and, like Danica Patrick, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Michael Dell, has no plans to go to college.

Or, how about the boy who flunked out of second grade, the kid labeled with dyslexia and ADHD who was fired from his job at a gas station for writing illegible receipts? In 1970, that dropout founded Kinko’s.

And how about the dropout Richard Branson, who at the age of seven, was treated to this lesson in self-reliance by his mother: Miles from his London home on a drive with mom, she pulled over and asked little Richard, “Do you think you could find your way home from here?” He said he thought so, whereupon, she opened the car door on his side and said, “Well, get out and so so.”

Whatever education is, one thing is certain: It doesn’t take place locked in seats following the commands of total strangers, your obedience measured regularly by short answer tests. And it’s education we need to meet the future, not schooling.

7. Let the Past Go

Mass college attendance once served America and Canada very well, but that time is gone and good riddance. It dampened down the inventive, entrepreneurial spirit in the interests of habit-training and attitude-adjustment.

We have the most efficient management in the world at a very high price: Mutilating the public imagination, vesting it in a handful of corporations. School was the factory producing incomplete human beings who were easy to manage. It worked for a century to produce national riches and a citizenry increasingly poor in spirit.
Gates is correct: North America faces an emergency. Vested interests will have to be set aside for the common good. The biggest obstacle blocking progress is the shape of our forced institutional schooling and its weapons of mass destruction.

As Pope Paul once said to the Poles: “Young people, don’t be afraid. The future depends on you.”

Let me add, parents, don’t be afraid, either. Take your lead from Herman Melville’s immortal Bartleby, the Scrivener, and say to Mr. Gates and his ilk: “I would prefer not to.” ?

Have you ever read the story of Jacob and Esau in the Bible? They were the sons of Isaac, and in those days, the eldest son always received the birthright and all of the father’s worldly goods. One day Esau, the eldest son, who enjoyed hunting, had just returned from his time in the woods, and was absolutely famished. He found Jacob cooking a marvelous meal and as the smell came wafting over towards Esau, he decided he absolutely had to have a taste. Jacob replied that he could have all the soup he wanted, if he just traded it for his birthright. Esau answered something like, “What good is a birthright if I’m dying of hunger?” In one fell swoop, he traded everything for a single meal.

Are we homeschoolers guilty of doing the same? Are we trading our birthright, the right to control and direct the education of our children, for a bowl of soup? How about for a computer, or some free curriculum, or some gambling money to send our kids to college?
As I travel the country, in state after state I see the same thing happening, in slightly different guises. The older homeschoolers, those who fought for the freedoms we now enjoy, are starting to fade from the scene. The newer homeschoolers, in many cases, don’t fully understand the fight that was waged to secure their current freedoms. In some states, like California, they are being enticed by government programs, private school status, or charter schools. However, I’ll let someone from California discuss that some day. For now, I’d like to share with you the story of how the homeschoolers of Georgia (where I live) are giving away their freedom, one chunk at a time.

Years ago, in the eighties, when I was a young homeschooling mom in Alabama, everybody I knew was considering moving to Georgia because the law in Georgia was so lenient. For years, all Georgians have had to do was to file a simple paper at the start of homeschooling each year, hand in attendance papers once a month (as in “Yes, my child was with me today.”), and that was really about it. They were also supposed to do standardized testing once every three years and have some kind of an end-of-year assessment (that they did themselves) in their files, but no one ever actually asked to see any of this.

Over the years, the number of homeschoolers in Georgia grew and grew. They turned into a huge lobby, and after awhile, it became clear that the legislators were never going to be able to take the away the freedom they enjoyed. Then came the big, bad wolf….the “Hope Scholarship”.

Georgia’s Hope Scholarship program is a beacon of light to all, according to the media. Everyone wishes they had a program just like it. Only no one outside of Georgia sees the real effects of the Hope program. In my opinion, it has been the ruination of the educational system at the university level. You can get a full free academic ride at any Georgia college by simply getting a “B” average at a Georgia high school. I hate to admit it, because I really do like living here, but to get a B average at most Georgia high schools, you really only have to show up most of the time and avoid getting thrown out. Therefore, many students are showing up at Georgia colleges now that really have no business being there in the first place. The dropout rate for freshmen is very high. In order to maintain a reasonable number of students past the freshmen year, there has been a large tendency to dumb everything down and inflate grades. Many of these kids wind up getting “B” averages in college, despite the fact that the passing rate on the basic literacy test that is given between the sophomore and junior year is very low.

By the way, homeschoolers are able to get the Hope scholarship, too. They have to wait until the end of their freshman year in college, but then, if they get a “B” average, they receive the scholarship retroactively and continue to receive it throughout their college career, so although they are being discriminated against according to the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, they aren’t being discriminated against badly enough for anyone to actually read the constitution and demand a change.

So what is the main problem with this situation? After all, homeschoolers have NEVER had to be accredited to get into Georgia colleges. They are still admitted on the basis of a portfolio and transcript, and can receive HOPE money after the fact. They have NEVER had to show anyone their curriculum materials, or have professional evaluations, like some other states require. However, a few people, (who may or may not be well-meaning, and are often profiting from the situation), have set up something called “accrediting agencies” for homeschoolers. At the curriculum fairs, the programs that have chosen to accept such accreditation have big banners stating, “Fully Accredited and Accepted By the HOPE Scholarship Program”. Despite the fact that ALL homeschoolers are accepted by the Hope program if they get a B average their freshman year, many homeschoolers, especially newer, less knowledgeable ones, are flocking to these programs in droves.

So what is the problem with accreditation? Plenty!!! First of all, so-called “accreditation” is only as good as the answers to the questions, “Who has accredited this program?” and “Who accepts this accreditation and for what?” In the south, the only agency that is fully recognized as proper accreditation in all circumstances is known as “SACUS”, which stands for Southern Association of Colleges and Universities. This is not the accreditation that is being offered to homeschoolers. The other accreditation, in my opinion, is quite bogus. Most colleges, when approached with the question, “Do you require accreditation to apply to your college?” don’t even know what the students are talking about right now. Just watch what happens, though, if the current situation continues to build up steam.

As an educator, with a fairly broad view of the picture, (I’ve taught in college besides being a leader in the homeschooling movement), I can picture what is going to happen. First, a lot of people are going to accept this bogus accreditation. Second, when enough people are doing that, the public universities will be armed with the ability to say, “These people are accredited. Why aren’t you?” At that point, they will be able to sneak a new law or rule into the mix that states that you need accreditation to be accepted at college, or to get the scholarship. I promise you that the MOMENT that happens, the next thing that will happen is someone will say, “But that isn’t real accreditation. You need the real thing…SACUS.” (By the way, each region of the country has a corresponding organization…Midwest ACUS, NE Acus, etc. I don’t know the exact abbrevations, though.)
The moment that it becomes a widespread regulation that such accreditation is necessary for college admissions, we will have given away our birthright. Such accreditation requires a school, a headmaster, a large library, and other things that are impossible for homeschoolers to provide on their own. The only way for homeschoolers to remain legal will be to become satellites of schools. The personal freedoms Georgians have enjoyed for so many years, to select materials and methods without any outside meddling, will be a thing of the past.

What is the issue in your state? Are you willingly submitting to high school accreditation when it isn’t really necessary? Are you trading your freedoms for promises of charter school status, free computers, free curriculum materials, scholarship money, special education services, or anything else? Be careful of any and all attachments to public education. You never get something for nothing. There are always strings attached.

As far as Georgia goes, without a massive change of heart, I’m afraid I’m going to see a steady erosion of homeschooling freedom until it is all gone. Once the high schools really have to be accredited, it will only be a matter of a few years before the middle school, and then the elementary school will go the same route. At that point, homeschooling as a genuine, unique option will have gone away and we will simply be one subset of the public education system.
So, what do we do? Complain and gripe and cry about the situation? Or come out fighting????? Regain the spirit of the pioneers of homeschooling! Trust yourselves and try to do it without all those expensive curriculum materials and extra classes!!! Print out your own transcripts on your own computers and stop relying on “experts”, including me!!! With apologies to Home Depot: You can do it! God can help! – M.H. ?

Indiana University gives these students the opportunity to earn their college degree from home. By taking courses through the undergraduate Independent Study Program, students can earn an Indiana University Associate of Arts in General Studies (60 semester credit hours) or Bachelor of General Studies (120 semester credit hours).

General studies students pursue an interdisciplinary plan of study that encompasses three areas of learning:

• arts and humanities

• social and behavioral sciences

• mathematics and natural sciences

They complete required course work in these areas. In addition, they complete electives that suit their individual needs, and they may concentrate their course work in specialized fields. Graduates of the program go on to graduate and professional schools, and they pursue a full range of careers.

Below is a story about general studies student Natalie (she asked that we not use her last name). Natalie is a homeschooled student who earned her high school diploma by taking independent study courses through Indiana University High School. She was so pleased with the high school program that she enrolled in the General Studies Degree Program. Read on to learn about Natalie’s independent study experience.

Meet Natalie

General studies student Natalie believes there are two components to education: Book work and social interaction. The book work is a given, but social interaction is something that students must cultivate for themselves. A distance education student living in Florida , Natalie does both very well.

Natalie, 17, has always preferred completing her book work through home study. When asked why, she doesn’t hesitate to answer. “In one word,” she says, “the flexibility. With home study, I can set my own schedule and do volunteer work and travel.”

Natalie asked her parents if she could complete high school through home study. In theory, they wanted to say yes, but they didn’t feel they could take on the responsibility of teaching Natalie. When Natalie’s dad brought home an Indiana University catalog, they knew they had found a solution. Natalie enrolled in the Indiana University High School diploma program. “We liked having real teachers, lesson plans, and feedback,” she explains.

The bright and energetic Natalie — who went from sixth grade into high school — graduated from the diploma program at age 15. She began her college career by taking traditional courses on a small campus, but then decided to transfer into Indiana University ‘s General Studies Degree Program. “My parents and I liked the wide range of courses,” says Natalie, “and IU is a respected university. We lived in Indiana for 12 years, so we knew about its reputation.”

Natalie prefers to take online courses rather than correspondence courses. Although she likes the written feedback she gets from instructors in correspondence courses, she loves the ability to upload her assignments directly to the Web. Having taken online courses from other universities, Natalie says that IU’s courses are superior. “They are set up differently from other online courses,” she explains. “Each course has many different components. The instructors create an online framework for you. The courses provide a lot of help, so you’re able to digest more and learn better.”

Natalie says she has had some excellent instructors. Currently, her favorite instructor is her creative writing teacher. “I love to write,” she says. “This instructor gave me a warm welcome to the course. She turns lessons around quickly and offers constructive criticism and personalized feedback by e-mail. I recently submitted a poem for her to review. She liked the poem but said that a different title would really make it ‘pop.’ I thought about it and realized she was right. I like being challenged to ask myself, ‘What can I do to make myself better?’”

As Natalie talks about her instructors, it’s clear that she values the interactions she has with them. In fact, it’s clear how much she values all social interactions in her statement: “Education isn’t just the book work, it’s also the social interaction. Students who attend classes on a traditional campus can take advantage of several opportunities for social interaction. With home study, you must create your own extracurricular activities.”

And create she does. A recent transplant to Florida, Natalie has wasted no time in identifying volunteer opportunities. She’s a tour guide at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Florida’s state art museum. The museum grounds include the Ringling’s mansion, Cà d’Zan, where Natalie also leads tours. She’s recently volunteered for the Sarasota Film Festival, where she’ll assist the events coordinator.

In addition to her volunteer activities, Natalie participates in several other extracurricular activities. In February 2004, for example, she was featured in the ABC Family Channel’s program, Switched. The concept behind the show, Natalie says, is to take two teenagers and have them switch lives for four days. Natalie traded places with a younger high school student and had to return to traditional school. “I went to a punk rock concert,” she exclaims, “and I’m a classical music person!”

In addition, Natalie bakes, and someday she wants to own her own bakery. She’s been exploring Sarasota and introducing herself to the various bakers around town. Last year, she was a finalist in the Johnson and Wales University high school recipe contest. Johnson and Wales, Natalie explains, has a prestigious culinary school. Contestants in the recipe contest, she adds, are high school students from all over the country. After being named a finalist, she traveled to Providence, Rhode Island, to participate in a bake-off. Her recipe, which she created, was a low fat maple-pecan pie. As a result of the contest, she received a $3,500 scholarship to Johnson and Wales.

As Natalie looks to the future, she speculates that she may return to a college campus one day — to take advantage of the social opportunities. For now, she is content to enjoy the flexibility of home study: “Indiana University ‘s independent study courses, provide an excellent, quality education. If you work hard and do your work well, you’re going to learn a lot.”