Practical Homeschooling » in the news

Alberta Ballet Refuses to Accommodate Homeschooled Children

Laura — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 14:39:19 +0000

An Open Letter to the Edmonton Journal

A lady in our local homeschooling wrote this letter to the Edmonton Journal, media sponsor for the Alberta Ballet. Please send in your own letters of support so that their Alberta Ballet’s many sponsors become aware of this unfair treatment.

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing to you because The Edmonton Journal is one of the media sponsors of the Alberta Ballet. The Alberta Ballet offers each year “Discover Dance, a Community Outreach Program designed for students and teachers to view culture in a new way.”

This year, Alberta Ballet has informed homeschool families that they are not allowed to purchase tickets to participate in this program unless they are grouped as schools do. This means that Homeschool children can only access the ballet if they are part of groups of 1 Adult per 10 children. Organizing such groups is very difficult to do as homeschool families are independent small “schools” on themselves.

Organizing a group that meets the Alberta Ballet requirements may mean that most homeschool children would have to participate in this program with a stranger, instead of their parent (teacher). School Children are allowed to attend the same program with their teacher. As you can imagine, most families are sadly choosing to let this program pass this year instead of putting their children into a potentially unsafe/uncomfortable situation.

School teachers know the children in their class and take responsibility for their care while participating in a program like this. Just like parents do. Homeschool kids should have the right to access the Discover Dance program with someone they know, trust and cares for them: their parent.

The Alberta Ballet Marketing and Customer Service wrote to me “… we got in some trouble with funders because this program, very popular with homeschoolers, filled the house with parents..” Isn’t this program for all students? Why is there a problem with its popularity among homeschoolers? Why does the Alberta Ballet thinks that school teachers have more right to take their class children to this program than a parent that is teaching their children at home?

I find very hard to believe that Alberta Ballet sponsors such as Edmonton Journal, Calgary Herald, Nexen Inc., Enbridge, TD Bank, Esso, Husky, Lexus, Field Law and the Alberta Government would agree to put barriers to the access of any Alberta children to the Ballet company they support.

Please note that this is not a financial issue. Homeschool parents always pay for their tickets. Unlike school teachers who get free tickets for taking their classes to the Ballet.

Other Art institutions offer fair access to tickets to both School Teachers and Homeschool families. The Alberta Ballet should have the same fair policy. Have the Edmonton Journal, the Alberta Government and all the major corporate sponsors being informed that dozens of students cannot participate in this program because their teachers, their own parents, are not allowed to go with them?

If you can do anything to convince the Alberta Ballet to offer fair access to tickets, On behalf of all the little children who love ballet, Thank you very much!

Students paid $100,000 not to go to college

Laura — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 05:32:22 +0000

I just HAD to post this article that another homeschooler discovered on Yahoo News. It’s nice to see how society is beginning to understand that it’s our instinctual desire to learn and advance ourselves that will determine who we will become – and not be defined by what school or college you attend. Read on!

It sounds like a teenager’s dream and a parent’s nightmare.

Peter Thiel, PayPal’s co-founder, is paying 24 college-aged students $100,000 to just say no — to college.

For two years, winners of the 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowship have focused on developing business ideas instead of heading to class.

The fellows will work in Silicon Valley with a network of more than 100 mentors where they “will pursue innovative scientific and technical projects, learn entrepreneurship and begin to build the technology companies of tomorrow,” the press release states.

Two Canadians are among those selected.

Eden Full, a 19-year-old woman passionate about making solar power more affordable, is the founder of Roseicollis Technologies, an enterprise she began at the age of 15. Her SunSaluter, a solar-panel-rotation system, currently provides electricity for two small villages in Kenya.

Albertan Gary Kurek, also 19, has spent the last four years developing mobility aids. Inspired by his grandmother’s battle with cancer, he built her a walker-wheelchair hybrid that adjusts to a user’s moment-by-moment power needs and encourages strength restoration.

Four hundred applied for the positions, all eager to prove Thiel’s hypothesis that they’ll learn more in two years in the real world than four in the classroom.

Thiel has made no secret of his opposition to higher education, calling it the next bubble and criticizing the often-crushing cost of study.

“A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed,” Thiel told TechCrunchearlier this year. “Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.”

He decided to offer students an alternative to the direct-to-university path.

“There is irreducible conflict between staying in college and implementing a great idea,” Thiel told USA Today. “The pernicious side effect of the education bubble is assuming education [guarantees] absolute good, even with steep student fees. That is often not the case.”

His experiential fellowship may prove that future Mark Zuckerbergs and Bill Gates of the world — both of whom dropped out of Harvard — don’t have to be the exception when it comes to success in business.

(Photo credit: Doug Palmer/Reuters)

Quebec Homeschooling Family Forced To Place Children Into Govt Institutions

Laura — Thu, 12 May 2011 14:51:00 +0000

Imagine living in a society which, although claiming to be free, is able to dictate how and where to raise your children. Now imagine that this society is right here in Canada – a country reputed to be among the best in the world according to the United Nations.

For one Québec family, this has sadly become a way of life. They were forced to place their two older children into a public school last year, with the judge citing “a need for more socialization” as to why they should be ripped away from their family and essentially raised by the state.

What’s even worse is that a judge has now ordered them to place their two younger children into state-run subsidized daycare. Apparently one of the children is speech delayed and they are blaming it on the fact that this child is being “isolated.” There are no allegations of abuse or neglect against his family – so what right do they have to remove the older children and force them into school, then take the younger children (whom are not even school-aged) and forced him into daycare?

I’m sure that there are thousands of Québec children, not yet in school, with speech delays and I’m willing to bet that they are not being forced to place their children in daycare.

I grew up in Québec, south of Montréal, and I am ashamed to say that I have lived in a society with such intolerance for varying views. There is no doubt in my mind, that if I had remained in Québec to raise my children, I would be on schooling under the proverbial table in order to stay out of the government’s overzealous radar.

Judge orders kids into state-run daycare.

Parents slam forced daycare as’ witch hunt.’

What would you do in this situation?

Are Picture Books Too Babyish?

Laura — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 04:11:48 +0000

Lenore over at Free-Range Kids picked up an article by the New-York Times questioning why the sale of picture books are on the decline. It seems that in their not-so-experienced opinions, many people feel that children should be practising their ‘reading skills’ asopposed to looking at books for babies.

The thing is, they couldn’t be more wrong… Read-on to find out why.

More Families Deciding that School’s Out Forever: Globe and Mail

Laura — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 22:27:11 +0000

It may sound flaky, but the ‘unschooling’ movement’s ideas are going mainstream as parents are increasingly opting to keep their kids out of class.

Kate Hammer
From Saturday’s Globe and Mail
Published on Friday, Sep. 10, 2010 5:00PM EDT
Last updated on Sunday, Sep. 12, 2010 12:11AM EDT

It has been Saturday in the Laricchia household for nearly a decade.

The family’s three teenagers, Michael, Lissy and Joseph, have known nothing of alarm clocks, races for the school bus, arguments over homework or report-card angst since their parents started “unschooling” them in 2002.

The small but growing movement the Laricchias have joined is known by many other names, including deschooling, life learning and edu-punk. At base, unschooling is home-schooling returned to its postwar progressive roots, far from the Bible-thumping mould that has come to dominate the modern image of home-schoolers.