Excerpt from The Home at Greylock by Elizabeth Prentiss:

“Ms. Heath always does what she wants the children to do; she never tells them to say “I thank you,” but always thanks them, down to the youngest, whenever she has a chance; she never orders them about, either, but always gives directions kindly; and she never speaks unkindly to them at any time.”…snip…

”Now all this may seem small business, but this boy is being education into refinement, and courtesy, and kindliness, or the reverse.”….snip…

”Are children, then, mere monkeys, imitating all they see done?” asked Laura. “They are not,” was Mrs. Grey’s reply. “Some children are so original that they cannot imitate. They think and act for themselves. They are hard to deal with in most cases, each needing a mother all to itself. But they are the exception, not the rule. Most of us owe almost everything to unconscious influence.”

     What influences will your children be exposed to in ps? Is their (the government's) education worth the extra baggage? My children have witnessed a 7 yr old ps boy in the park pretend that an eggplant was his privates and run around after the other children menacing them with it. Shall we sacrifice the purity of our children’s minds and spirits to the system for the sake of their “education“?

     I went to public high school one school away from Columbine. I used to deal drugs at my school, Columbine, and others. The Lord has saved me from such a sewer. I totally know why that shooting happened.

     It would be better for my kids spend their childhood playing in the yard and be as dumb as rocks than to be exposed to the children that are sent to public schools. (No, I’m not an unschooler and they’re not allowed to be in the yard all day, I’m just being extreme.)

     Whatever education you give them, will be better than what they get at ps. And it’s also a matter of what you WON’T teach them.

     I have 7 kids. There are days I want to give up. It’s hard. It’s harder than the Navy , work, or anything I’ve ever done before. They try my patience and sanity in every way. But all my life, all I ever wanted was a family. I practically didn’t have one growing up. Now I do. I always contemplate on how lonely and empty I was before the Lord blessed me with these monkeys.   Do you want your monkeys to copy you, or the children they will be surrounded by at public school?

     If the Lord leads you that you place your kids in ps, I will pray that He will also protect them from the poor influences that are there too. We are all here to support , encourage and pray for you. Just tell us sooner that you need prayer, before you feel so down! (That goes for everyone!)

     I’ve told my most difficult child that I will be proud of him even if he’s a garbage man, as long as he loves Christ. He says he just might be a garbage man for Jesus. That to me = success.

     In Christ’s love - Lisa

An excerpt from “Chicken Soup for the teenage soul”, page 175-176

What’s Wrong?

A newly trained teacher named Mary went to teach at a Navajo Indian reservation. Every day, she would ask five of the young Navajo students to go to the chalkboard and complete a simple math problem from their homework. They would stand there, silently, unwilling to complete the task. Mary couldn’t figure it out. Nothing she had studied in her educational curriculum helped, and she certainly hadn’t seen anything like it in her student teaching days back in Phoenix.

What am I doing wrong? Could I have chosen five students who can’t do the problem? Mary would wonder. No, it couldn’t be that. Finally she asked the students what was wrong. And in their answer, she learned a surprising lesson from her young Indian pupils about self-image and a sense of self-worth.

It seemed that the students respected each other’s individuality and knew that not all of them were capable of doing the problems. Even at their early age, they understood the senselessness of the win-lose approach in the classroom. They believed no one would win if any students were shown up or embarrassed at the chalkboard. So they refused to compete with each other in public.

Once she understood, Mary changed the system so that she could check each child’s math problem individually, but not at any child’s expense in front of his classmates. They all wanted to learn - but not at someone else’s expense.

The Speaker’s Sourcebook