I must have missed the memo

The memo that said that in order to homeschool your children you had to be a bible-thumping, dinosaur-riding, right-wingnut. Somehow, in our decision to homeschool, Mrs. CyberLizard and I missed that obvious fact. Apparently a large majority of homeschooling families are doing it out of a desire to save their children from that secular cesspool known as public education. You know, that place where they try to turn your kid gay and force them to become socialists and allow old washed up terrorists to participate on boards who's whose goals are to improve the quality of edumacation.

Anyone who knows me or Mrs. CL knows that in our homeschooling we are bucking the trend. We're trying to bring that gay-friendly, secular, skeptical thinking mindset out of our public classrooms and into our home. I'll be damned if I let some bureaucracy turn my kid into a gay socialist terrorist sympathizer; I'm gonna do that myself.

So we completely missed the memo and are only now being confronted with our nonconformity. It is becoming more difficult to disentangle ourselves from the tentacles of the religious whackaloons grip on homeschooling. Most recently, in a completely secular home education co-op group we belong to, the nutjobs are trying to jump in with their propoganda in support of Amendment 2, the proposed amendment to the Florida constitution to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. Amazingly, this person thought that it was perfectly acceptable to post their screed on the dangers to our rights as homeschoolers if teh gays were afforded the same rights and responsibilities as the rest of us.

In a twofer on the religion front, Stephen Colbert has on his show Michael Ferris, president of Patrick Henry College. This school is apparently primarily a place for religious homeschoolers to send their kids to college after preventing their children from actually learning anything factual about the nature of the world around them.

All I can say is, we're not all like that. Some of us not only have brains, but use them and encourage our children to do so as well.

Amazing interactions with kids

I found this article, Why We Banned Legos, to be incredible. At first I was drawn in by the obvious reference to LEGO. Curiosity drove me to find out what egregious crime it was that my beloved LEGO brick had committed that would cause it to be banned. Soon into the article it became clear that the focus wasn't on the LEGO, but rather on what these children's LEGO community had brought out in the children and how they explored it. I was completely enthralled by the article and the processes they described. The things that children can teach us about ourselves and society are astounding, if only we have the ability to observe them honestly and as close to objectivity as we can.

Thanks to Brian Little for posting about this on Wired blog Geekdad.