Banff.  Love Banff.  Love Chateau Lake Louise.  Edmonton is nice too.  Although it's milder in Kelowna.  Hell, I like Canada.  Don't like the taxes so much, but their healthcare's pretty good.   

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Yes.  It should be illegal because most times it is administered incorrectly and for the wrong reasons.  The reason I have heard most often is that homeschooling is necessary to protect the kids from bad outside influences especially from the liberal, secular brainwashing that happens in public schools.

Granted there is liberal, secular brainwashing that happens in public schools.  And frankly, I believe our public schools in America are a total failure at preparing the future of America to compete intellectually with other nations.  But it does teach students to operate on a schedule, in a hierarchy, and with one another.  Learning to deal with the complex social dynamics is important to function in a society.  You can't learn that at home with mommy and daddy or by going over to friends' houses or even participating in intermural sports.  It has to come from an environment that mimics the greater society (even if that society is corrupt and filled with idiots, criminals, and other scum--perhaps especially).

You also learn about the democratic process, even though you learn that democracy in America (or perhaps has always been even in Greece) a farce and a joke manipulated by the popular, good-looking, smooth-talking (Barak) and the rich.

It is the parents' responsibility to keep the dialogue open and to train their child to operate in a contaminated environment and maintain her integrity.  Homeschooling is just chickening out of that responsibility.  Frankly, I've known and taught, too many people who have come out of that environment.  They're stunted socially.  They don't think that they are, but they are:  no volume control, no ability to adjust to different kinds of people, no ability to work in a hierarchical environment that requires time management and a schedule.

Look, we're not talking about the old days of the educated leisure-class elite.  Their social activities were dances and balls and such.  Their days were filled with servants and people and teachers and tutors of all kinds of subjects from dancing, to art, to science, fencing (*sigh* for those days again--I can rely on family connections and not have to eek out a living as a schoolmaster).  There was no need for the social training we need now as bourgeois that need to function in a bourgeois workforce and workplace.

No.  Homeschooling is for the ultra-rich who can afford the best tutors and who don't need to rub elbows with other ordinary joes and take orders from THE MAN--heck they are THE MAN.  It always has been.  As for private schools or charter schools.  That's a different discussion entirely.

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More than my salary so I can take a year of leave.  I have to use the computer for work after all.  And if I go back to school then I'd need to hire someone to type stuff for me.  I'd record all my papers and have them typed.  Also, I'd have to hire a computer user for me to do all my other work--would that be giving up computers to hire someone to use it for me.

There's too much technology dependancy anyway.

But to answer the question in short.  I'd probably quit using computers for 100,000,000 for absolute contact with computers.  But then how would I withdraw money from the bank?  Aren't ATMs computers?  I couldn't drive a car since my car has a computer in it.  I'd have to hire people to carry me on a  litter or rickshaw.

What kind of question is this?  Computers are everywhere.  I'd not be able to use an elevator for Pete's sake.  I don't think that I'd be able to give it up if I wanted to since there are things that use computers that I am not even aware of.

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You know, I didn't like it when I was a kid.  People would always make fun of my name Samuel until I reinvented myself as Sam.  It was such an unusual name for a generation of Michaels, Seans/Shawns, Chris and Davids and such.  For a long time as a 5 year old I wanted to be named Michael because then maybe the people around would the foreigner in their midst.

I like it now.  It's a distinguished name with history:  Samuel the prophet and Judge, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Samuel L. Jackson, and of course Samuel Adams.

I googled my full name and came up with doctors, lawers, and pastors.  So it can't all be bad if a small person like me working as merely an underling-grunt-school-teacher shares a name with those folks.

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Actions of course.  Words to come from the heart, but actions make intentions real.  The use of words can be considered an action at times--like encouragement.  But the goal of rhetoric (use of words) is always to move the audience to action whether to make a judgement based on past facts (forensic), or to make a decision for future action (deliberative), or to affirm common values by praising or blaming (epideictic).  So words to action.

Anyway, to another topic.  I heard about this story on my favorite radio station.  I find the entire thing ridiculous a student has control over his or her learning.  But in America we have to blame someone instead of take responsibility for our own failures.  And that blame and the witchhunting that comes afterward creates fear (a fear that wouldn't exist if our justice system weren't so broken with beauracracy and shamless pandering to the lawless mob).  Fear to fail the student because of parents suing for discrimination.  Now, fear of passing because the student will sue the school for not doing its job to teaching. 

Well, how is the school supposed to do its job if:

1. Parents don't to theirs.  It's their kid.  It is THEIR responsibility to teach and train their children.  They brought it into the world after all.  It is NOT THE SCHOOLS' REPSONSIBILITY TO MAKE THEIR CHILDREN LEARN.  Schools teach.  Parents make sure their kids learn.  That's the social contract.

2. Schools are not allowed to discriminate based on test score and ability.  Let's face the truth:  education is by NATURE discriminatory.  Not about ethnicity per se, but about merit and ability.  It is supposed to separtate those that know from those that do not hence degrees.  If everyone can get (not earn) one then degrees are worthless.  We might as well be communist and have doctors work on the farm and farmers perform surgery!  Which brings me to my next point.

3.  Schools are afraid of accusations of racism from racist minority people.  We all know who they are.  People who would readily blame their ethnicity for all their woes.  People who would cry havoc and immediately think that whatever failure they have achieved in life is because "The Man" is sticking it to them, oppressing them.  Well, I've got news for those people:  YOU'RE THE MAN NOW.  Everybody's afraid of you.  You've already killed "The Man" in the '70s.  Yet you keep on beating his dead body and then threaten to do the same to others (kinda reminds me of one time at Hollywood Park.  A man lost a race and kept on screaming that the man rigged the race while beating his own hand with his racing form.  'sblood.).  You keep reminding us of your skin color, of your past oppression, of perceived oppression, special disabilities, etc.  Geesh! Stop oppressing the rest of us.  You are not the victim anymore, you are the victimizer now.

Schools can't do their jobs when racist people keep terrorizing the weak-bellied administrators.  I guess it beats actually having to earn something.  If you can't beg, you beat it out of someone else.

Anyway, it all reminds me much too much of the satirical movie Teachers with Nick Nolte.  The movie put everything bad about education in the 1980s and spun it as a worst case scenario.  Well, I guess that satire isn't far from the truth.  Our education system is a genral failure.  You have to be a lunatic, like Custer, to stand with your limited resources, shoulder to shoulder with incompetents, and try to stave off the lawless horde of America's future.

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My favorite movie of all time has to be Empire Strikes Back becuase it's all dark and moody, but really, because it's a well made movie with good story elements and good pacing and it just had that dramatic emotional connection with the audience.  To be honest it just went downhill from there for the Star Wars franchise.

Other favorites are Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan same reasons as above.  Emperor's New Groove, Emperor's New Clothes.
   

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On just a bad day I read a book in a quiet place preferably away from people.

On a really bad day, I call up a friend to talk or maybe go out and eat a really nice dinner at one of my favorite restaurants.

On really, really, really, bad days (I've only had a few) I go and get a drink.  There was one time in 2003 my buddy, Willie, and I went to get drinks a McCormack and Schmick's--I was in a really, really, depressed mood and three or four hard ones helped me forget the pain of ending a relationship.  I don't think I've been the same since then.  That drink signified the beginning of my emotional numbness.  The stopping of joy and ending of smiles in my life.  I don't think I really smiled out of contentment or love since. 

The other two times I had to go to my favorite spot in the Fullerton Arboretum (there's some pain that not even alcohol can't numb) on the steps of the Heritage House (the victorian house in the arboretum).    The place in '93 when I parted from Kelly McNally.  A place of permanant sorrow and regret.  That's the place I put them ever since that December evening when we said "That's it" and parted.  I never could bear to tell her how I really felt about her.  That's my Waterloo where I surrendered to my fear of inevitable rejection by terminating a perfectly good relationship.  It's easier to be in exile.  At least the boundaries are clear and all the relationships are safely certain.

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