Tag Archives: Educrats

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Homeschooled student about to enter law school at age 16

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Reggie sent me this story from WSU Today.

Excerpt:

A 16-year-old student from Union, Wash., will soon become the youngest person on record to graduate from Washington State University.

Kayla Heard could talk at age one and read at 18 months. She started first grade at three, graduated from high school at ten and began community college at 11.

Kayla was home-schooled and is earning her social sciences degree though WSU Online.

“My parents felt it wouldn’t be good to send me to a campus at such a young age,” she said. “I appreciate their decision, mainly because online studying has given me quite a bit of flexibility in my schedule.” Kayla and her family will attend the May 7 commencement in Pullman.

Kayla’s mother said she knew her daughter was different early on.

“When she was a baby, she respected paper,” Marlyn Heard said.  “She didn’t tear it or put it in her mouth. She would look at a picture or writing like she wanted to know what it said.”

When Kayla was seven months old, her mom laid out flash cards with numbers and letters.

“In two months she knew them,” Marlyn said. “She would pick the right ones – before she could speak.” Kayla could print letters at three and write in cursive at four.

At the age of two, Marlyn said, Kayla realized that all the presidents of the United States have been male. She looked at her mom and said, “I’ll be the first female president. And I’ll defend the rights of children.”

Kayla graduates with a 3.71 grade point average. She’s already passed a law school admissions test, and will spend the summer filling out law school applications.

“I’m interested in pursuing a degree online in international law,” Kayla said. “I have a passion for traveling and learning about foreign cultures.” She wants to work abroad, possibly in Hong Kong, and she plans to “visit a plethora of foreign countries” before settling down.

Kayla spends her spare time singing in church, playing piano and guitar, and reading and writing. She also stays in her room a lot, Marlyn said. “We call her cave girl.”
Are there other brilliant members of the Heard family?

“I have relatives who are scholars, but not like Kayla,” Marlyn said. “And my son is more like a normal kid. He’s 12. When he was a baby, he put the flash cards in his mouth.”

This is what I expect from homeschooling families.

Homeschooling is not something that the secular left is OK with. The secular left doesn’t want parents to have a big influence on their children. The secular left is not OK with the generally traditional moral beliefs of the parents. They don’t want some families to be different from other families. They want everyone to be the same, even if that means that the public schools make everyone equally crappy. If homeschooled children today expect to homeschool their own children tomorrow, then they better set goals to get into the university and have an influence on public policy. Because there are forces at work who want to take homeschooling away, no matter how well it works.

Somehow, we have gotten the idea that our children are not our responsibility, and that God will not hold us accountable for the children we raise. I think that’s wrong. Why are we all so anxious to lower the bar for ourselves and lower expectations? Why don’t we look at children as serious projects worthy of our attention and RAISE the bar for what we expect from them – and help them all the time so that they can achieve it? You can’t make a succesful child like this without giving them care, attention and guidance – letting them see downfield where the challenges are so they can make the right moves NOW.

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What do public school teachers think they are teaching your children?

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From The Minority Report. (H/T Stacy McCain)

Excerpt:

Sarah Knopp, a Los Angeles teachers union leader (in the Tax the Rich shirt) and Megan Behrent a New York City teacher affiliated with the International Socialist Organization, explain how to push Marxism in the public school classroom.

McCain writes:

This panel discussion, entitled ”Capitalism and Education: A Marxist Discourse on What We’re Fighting Against and What We’re Fighting For,” was sponsored by the magazine International Socialist Review.

Notice that participants in this panel included two public university professors who train teachers: Jean Anyon of City University of New York and Jeff Bale of Michigan State University.

Parents who continue sending their children to public schools government indoctrination centers always react to revelations like this by saying, “Oh, that kind of stuff isn’t happening in our school. We live in a good district!”

To such parents, I ask: Do you think people like Sarah Knopp and Megan Behrent only teach in bad school districts? How many more socialist teachers like Knopp and Behrent are there in America? And do you think they advertise their beliefs to the parents in their districts?

We keep hearing the Democrats sob about how we need to spend more and more money “for the children”. Is this what they need more and more money for? Maybe we should introduce choice and competition into the school system, and make union membership optional. That would be good for parents and children, anyway. And aren’t they supposed to be the customers of the education system?

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Do public school teachers want to give children a quality education?

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The Miami Herald reports on a new bill designed to improve education quality. (H/T Weekly Standard via ECM)

Excerpt:

The proposed law, which passed the House of Representatives 64-55 and the Senate 21-17, would base half a teacher’s evaluation on progress that students make on tests, most of which have not yet been developed. If the students improve, educators could earn more money.

The current system rewards teachers based on years of experience, advanced degrees and extra certification.

Got that? So the bill would make it law for teachers to be paid based on their performance, (at least a little), just the way that you buy things from Amazon.com and Wal-Mart in the private sector. If you don’t like what you’re getting, then why should be forced to pay more for it?

Well, here’s what the unionized public school teachers did:

Miami-Dade schools are open Monday and parents are told their kids should come to class as usual, despite hundreds of teachers planning to call in sick to protest controversial legislation that would overhaul teacher pay and tenure.

At John A. Ferguson Senior High School in West Kendall Monday morning, the teacher parking lots weren’t as full as usual.

“There’s nobody at school,” said 17-year-old Stephanie Barrios. “Everyone’s being relocated to the cafeteria and gym.”

She said a two-page handout listed the number of absent teachers on Monday — about 180 out of 600, Stephanie estimated.

Unionized public school teachers are not actually grown-ups. They are in a state of arrested development, hoping to put off the demands of adulthood by throwing tantrums whenever anyone threatens to take away their over-paid, underperformed jobs. There should not even be a federal department of education, in my view, and teachers should not be allowed to unionize. Why should parents be forced to pay for a low-quality education, which is really nothing more than coercive indoctrination of children by the secular left? Private school teachers are hard workers – they get paid based on the quality of what they produce.

This article is a fine, fine piece by Mary Katherine Ham, and I highly recommend that you click through and read the whole thing. I wish I had written it myself, since school choice is a big concern of mine. It should be a concern for all parents. We need to be pushing for more homeschooling protection and more school voucher programs.

UPDATE: I’ve received an e-mail from a hard-worker public school teacher who wanted me to say that not all teachers are happy with what the unions do, and that some public school teachers do work hard in spite of the anti-child, anti-parent stance of the teacher’s unions. Some teachers work extremely hard on their kids, teaching them well and volunteering for sports and field trips. But the union won’t allow them to be paid more. Some teachers have to work in very difficult environments like Compton, CA, dealing with children who are very challenging. In those cases, the hard-working teacher may part of the solution for a child looking for a better life.

Wouldn’t it be great if those good teachers didn’t have to join unions and could be paid what they are really worth? But the unions says no way.

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