Oh joy! I found this gem of republican mental deficiency, Dear Black Americans: Democrats Deliberately Hold your Children Down - E_Pluribus_Unum's blog - RedState via alicublog. Gives me enough reasons to focus my rants about education on both republicans and democrats

Let's check out this piece of GOP blogging genius:

Dear American Blacks:

Sometimes the very best act of friendship I could do is tell you that the person you think is your best friend actually works against you behind your back, laughing at you, mocking your hardships, secure in the knowledge that you need him too much to ever leave him.

Sometimes -no, actually always- the true friend is the one who tells you what you don't want to hear. The one who does not indulge you, the one who will neither promise you nor give you candy and other bennies. Instead he tells you to sit down and eat your green beans and spinach -and if you want that nice car, then quit whining, get an education, earn a good job, and earn that nice car.

The really ironic thing is that the slick, good-time "friend" will tell you what a jerk your true friend is. And you will believe him. You will believe him, that is, until you grow up, or until your good-time friend sells you up the river so far that your life is wrecked, and your future is ruined. Your wisdom will have been gained at a steep price.

But your true friend will still be there. And eating your green beans, securing an education, and working hard are still the path to success.

American Blacks, the Democratic Party is that good-time, lying, back-stabbing excuse for a "friend". The DC Voucher story is an illustration -hardly a unique story- of how Democrats continually seek to set you up as a permanent underclass, so that you'll depend on them to throw you scraps and believe their lies, in order to secure your votes to keep them in power.

Isn't "Epluribus Unum" a prime example of republitards at work?

So let me tell you why I think Republicans and Democrats are wrong about school voucher programs : they can be used only for schooling and they usually are used for religion-based schools.
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Have you got this vibe going in your family? We do!

Evolved home education and most all forms of "alternative education" just go hand-in-hand with this vibe. (Anti-intellectual church-driven school-at-home excepted, of course.)

I'll bet your kids exude it too -- Colleen's long-haired Jerry, Not June Cleaver's skateboarders, Nance's two quintessential unschoolers, Doc's quirky country fair quartet, Daryl's dancers, COD's fencer and equestrian. Heck, I was a brainy counterculture fencer myself, once upon a time. (The True Vibe can't be contained, even in regular public school!)

Always unschooled Favorite Daughter and her mostly-schooled boyfriend were part of The World Yo-Yo Contest in Orlando. For five thrilling days, they were organizer Greg Cohen's trusted roadies and grips and security behind the scenes, technical crew supporting and marveling at these brainy counterculture young boys and what they could do.

The contest from July 31 to Aug. 2 drew 196 competitors from 20 countries, mostly teenage boys, who exuded an unthreatening and brainy counterculture vibe. They looked like skateboarders stuck inside on a rainy day.

Many admitted to not quite fitting in back home, where no one seems to take the yo-yo as seriously as they do. Most dressed in black T-shirts and wore their hair long. They had callused middle fingers and forearms scarred by string marks, and often carried backpacks or hard cases filled with yo-yos, some costing hundreds of dollars.

The younger competitors were chaperoned by proud parents or grandparents, willing to keep their distance . . .

Passing guests invariably watched in wonder.

When she got home that Sunday night, FavD didn't stop talking for hours. She planned to blog it all, when she could process it into power of story she could corral and tame. So far that hasn't happened, but maybe it will. If it doesn't, that won't mean it's any less real. Maybe it means it's MORE real than the same old standard stories.

Today Barack Obama is in Orlando (although not literally with yo-yos, AFAIK.) Right now he is saying to the veterans' group that "I believe the American people are better than that", that our performance now must include "acting tough AND smart" to clean up the "calamity left behind" from the past eight years of George Bush and John McCain.

What I love about Obama is that he has the brainy counterculture yo-yo vibe going on. It's like he's speaking a whole new language as he explains the great new moves he's working up to show us. We're all invited to join in and be part of something magical.

But just copying old tricks like churches and schools do, is not merely inadequate. It's a loser move and everybody knows it, which means it's downright embarrassing! Makes the audience uncomfortable even as they try to be polite and respectful. Yes, John McCain, I'm talking to YOU.
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I am so sick and tired of seeing the crass way in which the New York Times equats "homeschooling" with radical right, christian fundamentalist loonies. Huckabee Draws Support of Home-School Families is a slap on the face of the millions of parents in this country who believe that independent, child-led, out-of-school, unschooled, parent-directed education is better and far superior than the crap that passes these days as "progressive" school-confined education --regardless of religion

Yet the only people who are to blame are the leaders of the secular homeschooling movement. They have failed to raise money and to raise awareness among the progressive movement about their true politics.

First, their libertarianism has hampered the growth of the independent and even "open source" learning movement in this country because they've stuck their heads in the sand on about what they've needed to do to attack the politics and PR game of extremists like Michael Farris and his radical Home School Legal Defense Association. This guy is one of the signers of "A manifesto for a Christian America", just FYI.

Second, their natural disgust of Democrats has unfortunately marginalize them within the progressive community, even though most homeschoolers are more than liberal but progressive in their education and political thoughts and would most likely align themselves to the Democrats. But because Democrats treat them like three-eyed bible totting hill billies, they'd rather stick with the tried and true millions of the schooling industry and teacher's union than "explore" a constituency that appears anyway to be hostile to them.
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Calling Rob Reich, calling Rob Reich . . .
Self-driving cars?? Right there at Stanford University, whence emanate your advanced theories of controlling kids to set them free?

Homeschooling should not be banned, but regulated much more vigilantly.

Not to mention the intellectual cradle of your Stanford-educated colleague Kimberly Yuracko, who quotes your theories so um, liberally -- or illiberally, both, neither? -- as spitshine for her own Stanford-servile theory that home education is a public function from which government is required to protect all children. (Did you two go pub-crawling while she was a student, to swap collegial notes on these elaborate fantasy worlds you both had under construction, like CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien?)

It says right there in the news, “The idea of a self-driving car is a really big idea that will have a big impact on society.”

Only if society is asleep at the switch, and that's where you come in, quick! There's still time to cook up some kind of ethical servility theory to stop it. Maybe use your homeschool regulation screed as a template, here, we'll help --
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The families of homeschooled children are clearly different from those of traditional schoolchildren.Some 97 percent of homeschooled children live in married couple households; the comparable number for public school students is 72 percent. Nearly 88 percent of homeschooled parents continued their own education beyond high school; less than 50 percent of the general population has attended college. The home environment of these students is supportive, nurturing and encourages diligence. . .

Yes, good! Let's actually focus on the kids and their learning, not just exploit them in the name of helping their exploited moms or any other political agenda. Let's leave prayer and religion out of it, too, since most folks in schools and government (and politics) also self-identify as god-fearing believers; religion is a confounding variable in education analysis that may quack like a duck, but really is more of a duck-billed platypus.

In other words, religion is not education and religious freedom is not academic freedom, wherever it happens. So let's stick to the constitutionally sound raison d'être of Compulsory School -- secular academics and independence sufficient to preserve and protect our liberties and provide for the common good -- for at least this one conversation.
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This is the kind of media exposure that gives homeschoolers a bad name. Check out the 450+ comment thread over at LiveJournal's Oh No They Didn't and see for yourself.

Let's just say this is one of the most painful interviews I've ever watched. Someone ought to smack the parents of this child for putting him in front of a camera without any supervision.

As some people on the thread have said, he seems to have high functioning Asperger's Syndrome but without that context he comes across as both awkward and rude as a consequence of being homeschooled, not necessarily due to possible developmental disabilities.

Sigh.

Let me just state the obvious : What you will see is the exception not the rule when it comes to homeschooled kids.
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