Fifteen years ago I decided to homeschool my kids. My kids were 10, 8, 2 and on the way at the time. .
When I decided to homeschool I went to teacher stores, and bought the typical posters you'll find in American classrooms; alphabet posters, nouns and verbs, history, science and one poster listing all over our presidents with their pictures.
It looked something like this, except the background was deeper blue, the lettering was in gold/yellow, the presidents only went up to Clinton and the pictures of the last 9 Presidents were in color. It was very pretty and I hung on the wall opposite the stairs going up to our bedrooms.
One night as I came down the stairs I was stopped by my husband, who was quietly sitting on the steps looking at the poster. I stood behind, not disturbing his revere and wondered what he was thinking.
My husband was born and raised in another country, what we once called the third world and now call the developing world. In his country he was educated in Catholic schools. The years we spend in high school they spend at a college. He came to this country to get a Baccalaureate degree in Electrical Engineering, got married, earned a Master's degree, worked and raised a family.
As I stood behind him watching him as he sat studying the poster it dawned on me the significance of what he was seeing. Everyone of those faces staring out of the poster represented the peaceful transition of power. Something that his country and his government had yet to achieve.
During our marriage in his country, there had been upheavals, violence against citizenry who sided with the government and/or against those that did not, assassinations, coups, extra constitutional removals from power, etc.. In fact while he was studying for his bachelors' degree the government had, on a few occasions, been rendered so dysfunctional that he could not even get money out of the country to provide for living expenses. His visa prohibited him from finding employment so in those times what ever was left in the pantry was all that he had to eat.
At one point it meant a diet of nothing but onions for several days until his friends noticed and brought him some food.
So he sat there, looking at that poster quietly, and, maybe unknowingly, teaching his American born wife something.
Ironic then, is it that when he is (finally) submitting his paperwork for citizenship there are representatives working in our government, citizens of this country, and a media echo chamber on the right side of the aisle that is preaching, encouraging, contemplating ending that peaceful transfer of power all because they do not like (for whatever reason) those in power.
Not placed there, but who were Democratically elected.
starting at 1:52
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I no longer homeschool and have been a substitute teacher.
Some day I will write diaries both exploring my reasons for homeschooling and how I learned of insider Republican plans to destroy public education. Because I am planning on writing about those things I won't discuss them in the comments today.
In one of my jobs I was an "educational advocate." I worked with schools to get foreign language listening labs for their students and have recommended after school and summer school "home school" material to parents who wanted to supplement the material/lesson their children received in school.
There has been a lot of talk on Dailykos about the absence of critical thinking from classroom curricula due to high stakes testing, NCLB, etc. For those wishing to supplement their children's education in this area I can suggest the Critical Thinking workbooks. They are relatively inexpensive and easy for parents to access (especially with the teacher editions) Student Editions (grades 1-6), Teacher Editions, and the entire set
This poster can be found on Amazon