Seven Reasons to Homeschool

Yahoo! Health published an article today entitled “7 Surprising Back-to-School Hazards;” they may as well have called it “7 Reasons to Homeschool Your Kids.” From the article we learn that, remarkably, ”40 percent of kids ages 5 to 17 get hurt or sick at school each year.” Of course this statistic ignores the emotional and mental trauma that children in government schools endure for virtually their entire childhoods, but let’s move onto some of the items on Yahoo!’s list.

“Sitting disease.” Lisa Collier Cool, the author of the piece explains that, according to the CDC, “only 3.8 percent of elementary schools, 7.9 percent of middle schools and 2.1 percent of high schools provided daily physical education or its equivalent for the entire school year for students in all grades.” Considering that kids are in school or riding in schools buses for roughly eight hours per day, this is astounding. And on top of this, children often have homework to do each night that limits the amount time for physical activity.

So not only are government schools feeding kids garbage-quality food, they’re feeding them the wrong types of food, and they’re also forcing children into sedentary lifestyles for a majority of their school day. Collier Cool writes that:

There’s a new recognition that ‘sitting disease’—a deadly epidemic of health problems linked to a sedentary lifestyle, including obesity, diabetes, and heart disease—can be as dangerous to kids and adults as smoking.

And it’s governments that are always blaming parents for childhood obesity.

Weight gain is another problem that Collier Cool warns of, and relying on the schools to look after the nutrition of children is foolish. She notes that the food Nazis have imposed bans on sodas but neglected sports drinks,* which are often no better on sugar levels than soda. Not only that, but she reminds parents that schools are “where ketchup may be counted as a ‘vegetable’.”

Cyber bullying is another danger Collier Cool warns about. This is to be expected, given that government education is essentially a complex system designed to stamp out all individuality and force children into generic molds. The antisocial behavior of bullies is both a symptom of this system and a logical extension of this type of programming.

Sleep deprivation, too, is a feature of attending government schools, and we learn that during the school year, teens operate on average with two fewer hours of sleep at night. Forget the cell phone police, a lack of sleep is a far greater danger, and the story links to this report, which suggests more accidents occur on school days as a result of fatigue.

Collier Cool concludes by writing that “A balanced diet, getting enough sleep and more exercise can also help children cope with the tension in their lives.” Given that government schools aggravate or impede all of the above, the best solution would be to remove your children from them altogether, or better still, never send them in the first place.

*Lets hope they don’t also ban sports drinks, but the point is that the busybodies are nothing, if not inconsistent.

My Calendar’s Clear

“If strong public schools are important to you, if you are concerned about school closings, unfunded school libraries and expanding class sizes … you must VOTE on August 7th,” read the flyer I received in the mail today. Well, none of those are important to me. In fact, the more government schools close, the better. So, I guess my calendar is clear August 7th.

‘I Have No Idea’

A funny thing happened yesterday:

We attended a wedding, and at the reception made small talk with one of the other guests and her husband. She asked about our daughter and where the nearest elementary school was, and that’s when it occurred to both of us – we had no clue. So my response was simply: “I have no idea.” My wife at least had the wherewithal to mention we were both homeschooled and planned on homeschooling our daughter as well.

It struck us both as hilarious that a) we care so little about sending her to a government prison school that we’ve never even bothered to pay attention to where it’s located; and b) how blunt our initial reaction was. As could be expected, the conversation took an abrupt turn and we never came back to homeschooling.

For a brief explanation of why people should homeschool themselves and their children, listen to Lew Rockwell’s latest podcast featuring Josh Taylor of Blimey Cow.

Challenge Accepted

As many are now aware, Robert Wenzel recently published a “30 Day Reading List that will Lead You to Becoming a Knowledgeable Libertarian.”  I’m several essays in and it is indeed a great collection.

Tom Woods posted a video of Steve Cronin explaining his plan to read each essay and provide an accompanying YouTube commentary. He explains that it’s meant to both help others understand the content, as well as improve his own communication skills, after having recently heard Woods explain the benefits of starting a blog or YouTube channel.

Interestingly enough, I started writing after first reading this Gary North column on LRC, and then hearing Woods at this event encourage people to do the same. And after watching Cronin’s first video, I’ve decided to offer a similar collection in written form, rather than a series of YouTubes.

The first piece is Henry Hazlitt’s “The Task Confronting Libertarians.” It’s a great introduction to the liberty movement, not so much the ideas or an exposition of the philosophy, but what we face in our effort to advance the cause of personal freedom.

He describes a “growing bureaucracy,” which consists of “some 2,500 different functioning agencies, bureaus, departments or divisions.” He notes that within just a few months of his writing, the number of federal civilian employees will be nearly 2,700,000. Who even knows how many agencies and bureaus are now entrenched within the federal government, considering several new cabinet departments have been created and myriad agencies have been added since 1969? As for the number of civilian government employees, that number has only risen to around 2.8 million, but as James Miller notes, the number of contractors has grown to nearly twice that figure.

Hazlitt touches briefly on the idea of engaging in politics (in addition to education, journalism, business, and others). Many in the libertarian movement reject political activism as either ineffective or morally corrupting. While this can be true, there is at least some value in political activism, as Tom Woods has noted.

His argument is basically that not everyone spends their free time contemplating how a free society might operate in the absence of the state. For the vast majority of people, the only time they give any thought to politics or public policy is during the election cycle. So if advocates of liberty don’t participate in the process, they miss a valuable opportunity to share the ideas of liberty.

In Hazlitt’s piece he advises libertarians to find an area of economics or political theory that appeals to them, and focus on it, in a loose division of labor, rather than everyone getting bogged down with everything the state regulates, controls, or prohibits. We can see this now, with various figures specializing in one area or another. For example, Laurence Vance tends to focus on war, William N. Grigg devotes a great deal of time to police abuses, and Floy Lilley has written a great deal on conservation and environmentalism, to name only three.

In an effort to motivate his readers, and inspire them to take on the task he explains above, Hazlitt quotes Ludwig von Mises’ admonition in Socialism:

Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping toward destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us.

Indeed They Are

Salman Khan and Ron Paul were each named one of Time’s 100 most influential people in the world this year.

The Khan Academy is one of the most innovative programs ever, in terms of the service it offers. Its more than 3,100 videos on everything from algebra to macroeconomics are brilliantly done and truly meet the mission of the academy to “[provide] a free world-class education to anyone anywhere.”

Ron Paul’s lifetime of work in defense of liberty has changed the course of history. His message of personal freedom and voluntary association appeal to virtually all demographics, and his influence goes far beyond the US borders. Millions of people have been introduced to sound economics and the philosophy of freedom because of Ron Paul.