So what is a home school radio station? Quite simply it is an Internet radio station created, programmed and maintained by home school students and parents. This broadband station is free for anyone to listen to when they want to.

The name of the radio station is RadioGrace.org with music of the Rock, Gospel, Contemporary, and Praise & Worship from a wide selection of Christian artists. If Christian is not your thing, well that is your freedom to hold that opinion. Just as it is the opinion of those founding this radio station to promote Christian music.

What cannot be overlooked is the scope of this project. Programming a website takes skill. Not just anyone can do it as many have no idea. Layer in the server space needed to host the quantity of visitors, proper bandwidth for uninterrupted play and storing the library of music is no small feat of technical skills. The organizational skills of assembling the permission to use the music and images of many artists are quite impressive to pull of such a significant feat.

So my hat is off in respect to the accomplishments of the parents and students who have spent the time and effort in producing this quality free music station. With Ruben Studdard, Hezekiah Walker, the Winans, Switchfoot, Relient K, Kirk Franklin, Chris Daughtry and many more artists represented, we have a new station to add to our favorites section.

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But the worst was when the Principal made an error with the public address system and broad casted her morning announcements to everyone outside which included me. Her main line threw me for a loop. I couldn’t believe a person that ignorant and uneducated was put into a position of guiding the education of hundreds of children.

She had gone on the PA system and declared which student found out the name of the first black Congresswoman in the US Congress. No problem there. Her next line though was “It will truly be a wonderful day when Congress will reflect the population of the USA.” Wow, that’s sad. She didn’t know a few minor details found in the USA Census and the Wisconsin Census.

Before any statement can be made, you need people who are willing to run for those offices. That cannot be quantified. But population figures can be. Also, census numbers for a state do not reflect the other key factor involved and that is the population distribution in the district of a given Senator or Representative whether it be on the State or Federal level. In Wisconsin, 90% of the population is white. The black population is only 6% and most are concentrated in the Milwaukee as are the Asian (2%), Hispanic (4.7%) and others. That makes the highest percentage chance of a Latino female Representative coming from the same district as the Asian and black populations as well as still a large percentage being white.

So if we look at this Principal’s wish on a federal level we would have a Congress that is:

20% High School Drop-Out
25% College Educated
55% High School Grad only

By ethnicity as I refuse to call them races (we are all part of the human race just different shades of skin & hair):

80% White
15% Hispanic
13% Black
4.5% Asian
1% Native American

That is if we choose to ignore details on where the populations are in corresponding districts. Obviously, some identified themselves in multiple categories. We also have to ignore that the vast majority of those in Congress are college educated lawyers so there goes any chance at balance in career distribution too.

With great leaders like these at the helms of schools, no wonder skills in Math, Science and logic suck.

So why do we homeschool? Do I really need to say more?

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The answer to this question comes down to a few basic answers for us. They are as follows: Federal Dept. of Education, Wisconsin Dept. of Public Instruction, West Bend Curriculum Director, and the Principal of our daughter’s Kindergarten school. All four have taken a stance of trying to dictate to the parents versus realizing they are Public Servants whom answer to the parents.

The Federal Department of Education starts off the list as it controls the choices of the remaining three. First, the DoE should not even exist if we were to follow the Constitution of the United States. Second, the DoE is subject to the whims of select special interest groups that do not have the best interests of the children at mind regarding true education. Instead, it is all about control of what the masses are instructed to believe not proven facts.

The Wis. Department of Public Instruction or DPI takes its guidance and sets further detailed standards for the local school districts to follow. Whereas you can count on them a little for resolving some issues, little research is done on sources chosen to listen to for guidance on the curriculum structure. This lack of vigilance in the defense of educating children on proven facts versus what some special interests want taught is the core reason we found this governmental unit wanting. Also, I was licensed under them so I know their operations fairly well.

Next up is the Curriculum Director who thought it was a good idea to give all Kindergarten children regardless of parental consent instruction on the location and name of all of their private parts. After all, they had a study that showed….you know the line. That ended up failing as it outraged many parents. Add in numerous other off-base concepts of what is good to teach children and we had to pull our daughter for the sake of her education. Left to the devices of this crackpot going on the other crackpots’ ideas, my daughter would be a victim of their incompetence.

Lastly, the Principal of the school was fresh out of getting her degree. Somehow she felt she could dictate to all the teachers what they had to teach despite it being very poorly researched. Two incidents showed us what this lady had in mind. The first was a school wide education on the holidays in December. In Kindergarten and the rest of the grades, they dove into the details of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, glossed over Christmas as a day belonging to Santa Claus and materialism as opposed its true origins, and heavily indoctrinated the children into Kwanzaa. My question when I saw this on the future curriculum for the month was – What is Kwanzaa? You can read my post on that.

We pulled her out of the Kwanzaa garbage and the teacher and the Principal tried their utmost to use guilt tactics to change our minds. Teaching the religious holidays of Hanukkah and Kwanzaa but not the true meaning of Christmas is a double standard. There is no using the “separation of church and state” argument on that. Somehow the principal thought it was a good idea to teach the concepts of an ex-convict found guilty of committing rape and torture. In most other countries, that would be banned and the guy would have been executed for the cruel nature of his conduct. Here, the principal wanted to celebrate it.

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Normally, I wouldn’t be giving a report on the happenings of the day in my personal life but today was just so special it required commentary. Today, my daughter and I were headed to a homeschool outing in a city an hour’s drive away. The social event (see social is factored in) was to join other students and parents in a hayride through and apple orchard field then pick out some pumpkins at the end. That was the goal in mind. To facilitate my getting there without a wrong turn, I mapped out the most direct route to avoid the big city lunch hour traffic. So all plans were a green light and the event was going to be fun. That is when Murphy’s Law stepped in. (photo credits: magazineusa.com)

To start the trip, I tried to print off the directions from my computer but for whatever reason (Murphy) my printer opted to disagree. After a number of attempts, I just wrote down the directions I needed in hopes it would be sufficient. **Minor detail about me (& my wife) we never get to a new destination without getting turned around at least once or asking for directions a few times.** So we loaded up and out we went seemingly without further issue.

Until we got ½ a mile from our home and got clogged into slow moving traffic. Eventually, I made my first turn and seemingly had some smooth sailing then turned off to the next stage of the directions. So I landed smack into the first detour due to construction. Hoping and praying the gas station attendant could give us directions to route around it, I stopped the first time and found we were in a bit of luck. Yippee!! I followed his directions to perfection and found the route he said and clear sailing...right? Wrong!!

With the time on the clock ticking away, I ended up behind a semi-truck going 15 under the speed limit. I finally got past him only for him to be replaced by a pick-up truck towing some stuff and going 5 under, then another, then another semi, so on and on and on. Finally, I freed myself of the slow moving traffic only to get caught in another detour.

That finally gave way until I found a bottleneck caused by utility work. More slow traffic and the time was getting very tight so what do I find? We find more utility work that clogged our 3 lanes down to 1 with a slow traffic light. 12 minutes to go before the hayride leaves and 19 miles left – maybe they’ll hold it for us as we scheduled ahead.

So now my daughter has to go to the bathroom really bad and we need to pull off to the nearest restaurant. Result was we were 11 miles out and 11 minutes late already. We opted to give it a go but the 20 or so turkeys that needed to cross the road was the final straw. We surrendered and opted to turn back.

On the way back we got lost and blocked by more utility work. So how did the day end?

Getting in the car one last time split the rear of my pants right on the seam for a good 8 inches to show the world my underwear and I managed to have a 12 fl oz soda explode in my hands on my lap.

Murphy wins the day. He kicked my butt. I’m going to bed.

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(photo from homeschoolmania.com)

…that I’ve heard over and over and over. Anyone who has home schooled their children or verbally contemplates it has heard the same line in support of public education. “What about the Social aspect?”

Please forgive me for being more than a bit facetious on this entry but I just need to let the vitriol fly on this one.

To all those who have ever used the line “What about the Social aspect”, I wish to extend a few questions to you.

1. Do you think all home school parents and children are hermits that live up in the Himalayan mountain range?
2. Did it ever dawn on you that when you live in a place of population 50 people to 10 million people that a child just might have to interact with other people and children?
3. Ever heard of things like the park or the library?
4. Ever pondered the concept of dance classes, Girl / Cub/ Boy Scouts, church groups and Sunday School, or any sport like soccer, Little League or some other TEAM sport?
5. Better yet, has it ever crossed your mind that we might have…*gasp*…neighbors?

Now I know my daughter isn’t the norm but here is a little concept to ponder. Who is better well-rounded socially at age 6-7, the child that has rarely ventured past city limits or possibly one that has experienced 4 different countries, several different states and multitudes of different cities? My daughter is in the latter category.

Let us shift this entry to another bit to ponder. Perhaps one of the primary reasons why parents want to home school their children are BECAUSE of the social aspect of public schools. I’ll list a few reasons why.

1. What does going to the Prom mean to life outside of school?
2. Do children really need to be subjected to peer pressure to do drugs, sex, and be part of the “in-crowd”? Or would they be better off tackling that after they have matured enough and are well grounded in who they are?
3. Since when is having to discipline your child for bad behavior picked up from other kids a good thing?
4. Maybe some of us parents do not like the public schools teaching our children to denigrate the beliefs of others and being programmed to be materialistic, selfish and valuing the opinions of murderers, rapists, torturers and slave traders.
5. Perhaps we as PARENTS WANT to and have the means to take the RESPONSIBILTY for raising OUR children and teaching them a solid VALUE system and not just let that up to the whims of a Curriculum Director at the local, state or federal level or some other staff member.

I would caution all to not be quick to assume or judge others as there are many sides to a topic.

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Homeschooling

This is a category that I have direct experience in. There are groups out there that are helpful to “homeschoolers” and all those we come across we’ll introduce and link up to. There are also many misconceptions about homeschooling which I will elaborate on. Some will surprise you. As a brief intro, there are a number of reasons why people choose to home school or use a virtual school system. The first reason happens to be the most common criticism of homeschooling. “What about the social side?”

So the top 4 reasons are thus:

1.)Social aspect of child development

2.)Lack of proper challenge for the student in public schools

3.)General disdain of the public school system

4.)Personal reasons of the family, parents, and child

You may be surprised as to why this area is growing. Hopefully, this will also serve as a resource site for people to ponder this and research the topic further.

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