Six Simple rules on How to get 50 or more comments on your post about home education.

Sandy Laurence recently did something I have not been able to do in over 2 years of blogging. On February 28th She posted this piece about what she thought were some disadvantages on home education @ Type-A-Parent. Within a fortnight she had received over 100 comments on her article.

What Ms. Laurence achieved that I have not, was to generate more than 100 comments on one post. The most comments I ever received was 40, when I was giving away 50 state quarters. That's not even a comment a quarter!

I don't want to just pound away on Ms. Laurence's piece as she is not the only blogger in the past couple of years to surpass my high water comment mark by posting about homeschooling. Sylvia Biu wrote a piece a couple of years ago called Homeschooling is a Bad Idea. To date she has received almost 60 comments about it.

So based on these and other posts about Home Education, I present:

How to get 50 or more comments on a post about Home Education.

1. Write a post about Home Education.

2. Come out against it (or at least be leery of it).

Both pieces question the effectiveness of homeschooling in their title and their first few lines. Both topped the 50 comment mark. Phillip Faustin started out well in that regard in his 2007 piece, entitled "Homeschool is Dangerous." Except Phillip really came to the defense of Home Education. The result: 0 (Count them) comments. I am not saying that all good pro home schooling pieces will garner no comments. But it has been my experience that these negative pieces get much more attention.

3. Present misinformation as fact.

Sylvia Biu says this in her second paragraph:


Homeschooling was originally thought to be a good idea, but recently it has become the subject of late-night comics. Now, it is mostly frowned upon for all but severely disabled children or those otherwise unable to attend school for whatever reason.

WOW. That's like saying that democracy used to be a good idea but isn't any more because it has become the subject of late-night comics. Then the second "fact" follows one of my favorite rules for passing on information. Say it: don't back it up. Mostly frowned upon by who? Don't know. Doesn't matter. Sylvia Biu said it, that settled it. Not likely.

4. (Very similar to #3) Start with facts and sprinkle-in falsehoods.

Here is a prime example from Ms. Laurence's concluding paragraph . . .

The vast majority of American children successfully attend public or private schools.

That starts out like a solid fact. The vast majority of American children attend public or private school. Throwing in successfully, throws the fact under a bus. I guess it depends on what you mean by successfully. If you mean anything other than they get there and back, it's not successful. Consider these quotes from the Time Magazine review or "Waiting For Superman." . .

Americans also can't afford the fantasy that we have the world's best educational system. The U.S. is near the bottom of advanced countries in math and reading scores. We may not pass sleepless nights worrying about Finland, but that country's kids get a world-class public-school education, and ours don't.

And this about film producer Davis Guggenheim . . .

What he found in his two years of researching Waiting for "Superman" (with co-producer Lesley Chilcott) was that a lot of schools aren't right for any kids.

That hardly seems like a definition of successful. But point out this or any other inconsistencies in her piece to Ms. Laurence and you get . . .

5. Defend your right to have opinions. (Even when people are questioning your facts.)

In more than one of her comments and in a subsequent post trying to clean up her previous mess, Laurence said something like this:


.. .this IS a blog. These aren’t research papers. Each article I’ve written has contained my opinions.

She was right about one thing, this is a blog. However her post contained facts, or at the very least opinions written so they looked like facts. For instance What she said about the vast majority of American children did not seem like an opinion, it seemed like she meant it as a fact. Blogs might not be the place for facts, but if you are going to use facts, use them properly. I will save any more of my opinions about opinions for an opinion piece I will be placing here soon.

Also opinions can be argued, refuted, and even refined due to the presentation of facts. I would think that the owner of opinions, especially an owner who shares those opinions on the Internet would welcome the presentation of facts to the discussion of those opinions.
6. When you do state opinions make them as preposterous as possible.

Consider Slyvia Biu who said . . .


First, unless a parent is himself a previous honor student or a genius who mastered more than just the three R’s, a child may not receive quality home education. Even if a parent earned a degree in one or more areas, it may not suffice and could limit the scope of a child’s knowledge, unless a parent excelled in other major subjects or supplements with tutors in areas in which he may be weak.

Sure it's an opinion. She says may not and could limit. But come on, really! How many public or private schools only employ teachers that are honor students or geniuses? How many of those teachers have earned a degree in more than one area? This is just an example of setting the bar higher for home educators than other educators without any reason. Her opinions were so off base that many commented just to tag her out. (Baseball reference, couldn't resist.)

So, if you want a homeschool post with more than 50 comments follow some of these simple rules and you should be just fine. Here is a bonus tip if you want to make the century mark.

Bonus Rule: Be abusive to your commenters.


Sandy Laurence had a few choice words for her commenters. Like this . . .

Well, at least I’m getting reader participation. I expected people to disagree with some of what I said, but I figured the good homeschoolers would be better at reading comprehension.

Or if that wasn't direct enough she later said this . . .

Did you really read what I said? Are you offended because you’re one of the homeschoolers I described in my post? If you’re not one of them and, instead, are doing a good job with it, I’m not talking about you. Get over yourself. And brush up on reading comprehension.

Thanks for your well-thought-out comments.

In her follow up post she tried to explain her rudeness by saying that it was because her piece was edited and she didn't realized it was edited. So she thought people were misreading her. I understand what it means to be edited for newspapers and other blogs. The first thing I do is read my piece as it appears in publication. She could have done that ,and as I tell my kids, you don't have to say (in her case type) every thought in your head.

That's all I have at the moment. If you want, you could prove me wrong by helping me get 50+ comments on this post. I think (and hope) it only follows the first rule. Feel free to pass it on to friends and neighbors because, when all is said I done, I just want more comments. Please!

Sorry, I got a little carried away there. But that doesn't mean I don't want you to comment :)

For those joining from HSBA Post click here or on the graphic tto head back to the Green Edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling.

If we ain't broke don't fix it.

I am a sign reader. I especially like reading signboards over local schools. The ones that say things like Book Fair Tuesday through Thursday, or Congratulations to our students who were just in the state robotics tournament. Recently these signs have been more about money than merriment. Signs like Illinois owes our district 10.6 million dollars.


Yes, wherever I am in this great state of mine, I see signs outside schools telling passersby that they can't do the job educating their students because the state ain't showing them the money. I often joke with friends and family that I should put a sign outside our home/school that the state of Illinois doesn't owe our school any money.


So the fact that our state is broke and can't afford to educate the students they now have in the public system should be a problem that our lawmakers in Springfield to sink their teeth into. Instead one state senator , Ed Maloney (D-Chicago) is taking a different approach. He is trying to cost the state more money.

Maloney introduced SB 136 on 1/27/2011. The gist of the bill is to have all non public schoolers register annually with the Illinois Board of Education. Illinois law currently doesn't mandate any
registration annual or otherwise.

Home Educators in Illinois are considered private schools and pending this legislation, Illinois is one of the least restricted states in the country to home school. Last year my local state representative came by for a visit and wanted to know how he could help me. I told him that Illinois was one of the least restricted states for home schooling. I told him that if he wanted to keep me happy he should keep Illinois that way (Guess who's getting a phone call tomorrow?).

In Illinois my taxes go to public education. I am fine with that. On top of that I pay for all the materials and other learning (co-operatives, lessons etc.) for my students out of my own pocket. Home school families aren't the only ones, parents who send their children to private schools have to pay tuition on top of the taxes they pay for public education. I imagine that most private schoolers don't mind paying double as long as they have the freedom to educate their children the way they see fit.

I said earlier that State Senator's Maloney is trying to cost the state more money. What I meant by that is that overseeing the annual registration of all the privately educated children in Illinois is going to cost the state money. Money, they currently don't have. Money that could be going to pay all the school districts what they owe them. Money that could be used to hire more teachers, fund more programs and decrease class sizes.



But instead of using tax dollars for the job of educating the public, it seems that Sen. Maloney would like some of our tax money to regulating the private and that frankly is not a sign I'd like to see.



Note: I am certainly not the only one blogging about this issue. Click here, here or here for more views.

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Six Word Saturday

http://www.showmyface.com/ hosts an extravaganza called Six Word Saturday.

My Six: Swimming against the dead pool current.

A couple of my relatives are participating in a dead pool this year. A dead pool is basically like any office pool but instead of best actor or super bowl halftime scores you pick celebrities who you think will croak first (Kermit the frog excluded).

One of said relatives likes to talk about it all the time and preface it with "I know you don't like me to talk about this, but ..." I'm in many ways drawn to death. I used to have a page of my now defunct geocities site where I posted recent obituaries of the famous. I didn't have any qualms against calling the page, Currently Dead. But Death Pools? No Way!
I think there are just a few main reasons why I'm against death pools:

1) On some basis you are rooting for the death of someone else for your benefit. (Note: My relatives have no money at stake in their pool. Just bragging rights.) One of my relatives likes to tell me proudly who she picked correctly. The other is "jokingly" mad that someone on her list has been twice hospitalized but has not paid off for her.

2) I think it is insensitive to the families of these famous people to speculate on the demise of their beloved. Sometimes this speculation is on perfectly healthy famous people. Many dead pools give more points the younger the deceased. This point ties in and overlaps with my first. My relatives and I all lost a dear family member (my brother) in the past 18 months. I questioned one of my relatives about this asking her what would you say if I said "cool! I had Keith in my dead pool."? The reply was that He wasn't famous. But these famous people have relatives too. Where is the empathy?

3)The greatest reason I am against Death Pools is that it is counter to my entire philosophy of life: A)We were made by a creator for the ultimate purpose of eternal fellowship with Him. B) In life we have the opportunity to follow Him reject Him. C) Those who follow will have eternal fellowship, Those who reject eternal torment. D) As long as life continues there is opportunity to follow.

Many of you may not hold to the same philosophies as I do. That's not the point. The point is I would never want to hope in any way for the eternal torment of anyone. For me, participating in death pools or tolerating them would in my mind, be a way of doing so.

So thanks for visiting the Illinois Suburb of Downer's Grove today. You can participate in Six Word Saturday by clicking here.

Next Time: Overheard

It's Not Even Thanksgiving!

The apple doesn't fall too far from the tree, so they say. In our house, if the tree is of the Christmas variety this phrase is especially true. Over the past few weeks there has been a proliferation of Christmas decorations everywhere our family has been. They always bring out the same reaction from my oldest daughter, "It's not even Thanksgiving!" Now our youngest daughter has joined in on the refrain.

On October 1st I blogged here about how Halloween displays had been up since early September. It seems that holiday preparation (read commercialization) extends every year. Today, I heard long time Chicago radio voice Garry Meier talking about how it is too early to play Christmas music and suggest to hold off playing them until the Friday after Thanksgiving. He is absolutely right! I was glad to hear someone other than my own family members suggest it.

I don't have the exact dates but by mid to late July the back to school sales had already begun near me. Labor Day was September 7th, and I saw Halloween displays on the 10th! As soon as those Halloween displays were removed they were replaced immediately with Christmas! I often see Easter displays a week before Ash Wednesday. 40 days isn't enough to sell a Holiday?!?!

In my opinion marketing these holidays for such a long time has a number of adverse effects:

1) It takes away from the meaning of other "lesser" holidays. Thanksgiving has been changed from a day to thank God for his provisions and has now been marginalized to an old McDonald's ad slogan: food, folks and fun. Actually it's more like food, folks and football. I ate dinner at an excellent restaurant last night that was advertising their Thanksgiving buffet. But instead of the traditional cornucopia and the like, they are already dressed in full Christmas mode, tree and all. One would hope they won't be piping in the Frank Sinatra Christmas album as they were tonight, but one can never tell.

2) It takes away from the meaning of the holidays they are promoting. The over saturation is so much that some people are ready for it to end weeks before it gets here. I can understand that in a political campaign, but when celebrating such special events as Christ's birth, resurrection or the founding of America we want the days to be special not something to be endured.

3) Running from holiday to holiday creates more stress than good will. Rest is good. A few weeks between celebrations is a good thing. Rest gives us the opportunity to celebrate holidays all our own. Yesterday Lucy declared to Amy you're the best Mom ever. Tonight is Mommy night. When she woke up this morning, Lucy furthered her proclamation and decreed today Mommy Day. Mommy Day so far consists of Lucy coming in our room every few minutes with a new gift or card for Amy. The latest was a folded up piece of blue construction paper which Lucy called a laptop. This freedom also gives us the opportunity to celebrate something equally important, everyday life.

Next year I plan to post about what in my perfect world is the best way to celebrate each holiday as they occur. Let me just say now that getting back to traditional observances and time lines would be great. Advent generally runs from December1st to the 24th. I would be perfectly fine if I didn't see any decorations or hear any carols before then. I would also be okay if "Black Friday" was the official "unofficial" start of the season. Any sooner and hey I've got daughters to contend with! etiquette

Unbelievable (You want me to do what?).

I love blogging. I would probably blog even if there wasn't such a thing as comments. But I really like getting comments. Every once in a while (okay every other post) I get no comments. I'm cool with that. But I really like getting comments. What I don't like is getting derogatory, mean spirited comments. I haven't told my parents about my blog ,so I thought I could avoid that sort of thing. Just kidding!

The other day I received a horrible comment. I don't remember all of it because it was laced with profanity and I erased it as soon as I was able. The general idea was that I was a horrible person and the commenter wanted me to die a horrible death. So what could have caused so much anger? Did I offend someones religion? Did I make some ethnic slur or stereotype? Did I say that Lost was worse than Gilligan's Island? No. What I did was merely mention that my family and I were embarking on what we called No Junk Food June.

It seemed that the commenter was most upset that I would put my children through that. I was ruining their lives and they would end up hating me forever. Because we didn't eat sugar for a month? Because we didn't go to fast food restaurants for a month? Please!!!

Now two things I'd like to mention. One, if you read the post after the one you commented on, you would have read that my kids had plenty of sugar and junk food in June. We traveled quite a bit that month and I let the kids eat their regular diet when we were on the road. They also went to a major league baseball game, two museums which they all enjoyed and many other fun things in the month of June. Two, on this painful death thing, No Junk Food June is intended to increase my life expectancy not decrease it. I just lost a brother and while his death may not have been painful, it certainly was to those he left behind. My desire to shed some pounds, has something to do with his early demise.

My kids survived their "ordeal" quite nicely. We will probably attempt to do it again next June if I can avoid painful or any other kind of death until then. I wonder what that commenter would say if they knew our family was already in the midst of no television for the summer?

Next Time: June, July and August.

Unbelievable (A Family of 5, irresponsible?!?)

I had a few free minutes a couple of nights ago and decided to do a little googling. I googled "I have three children", because a) I have 3 children and b) I thought I might find a couple cute little blogs or websites with like-familied people.

What I found was extremely troubling. First, I stumbled upon a website called the Responsibility Project. It seems to be one of those old fashioned bulletin board type chat rooms where people post on a variety of topics. Well, someone posted on whether having three children was responsible or not. I was astounded by what followed.

One person began her post ...

"The single most effective thing an individual can do to help the environment is not to have children." Many disagreed, many agreed.

One 14 year old stated ... "I have no problem with abortion, if a kid has no memories or consciousness, it isn’t a human being. If the baby is unwanted then killing it isn’t hurting anyone. "

After that it was a free for all.

I then viewed the original article that spawned all this discussion. It was an article about how having three children is now only achievable by the extremely rich, how many people desired to have more than two children but simply could not afford it. What I found extremely interesting, was how the columnist defined necessities ...

"Consider raising a single "luxury" child. By luxury, mind you, we're not necessarily talking hedge-fund rich, merely able to afford and "raise right." And the pressure to do that, even if you're not uber-wealthy, has become overwhelming. From the moment the heartbeat blinks across the sonogram screen, Big Baby starts in with its pleading and conniving: I'm your child! How can you spare any expense? Don't you care?"

Finally, I looked at another listing for parents of three child and found a study from Psychology Today from 2005, (Which would really make it Psychology Four Years ago, but I digress) showing that additional children don't make parents any happier than their initial child. Yipes.

It was unexpected and unsettling to have Google treat me this way. I started out by looking for people with 3 kids like me. Instead, I found people who found having 1 let alone 3 or more children irresponsible. I found people who found raising children a luxury. And I found people who thought raising children would bring them happiness. In retrospect, I am not quite sure why I was surprised.

We live in what many call a materialistic age or world view. The three responses to large families that I found are all aspects of materialism.

The idea that large families are irresponsible to the environment stems from the basic tenet of materialism: Material is all there is or, as Steven Eyre put it in his excellent 1992 book on world views: Defeating the Dragons of This World, "Matter is all that matters."

Now there is nothing a matter with matter. You could say that I'm not antimatter. It's just that all this talk about matter without a maker makes matters worse. God created the material universe. Taking God out of the equation as we have, makes ideas like the ones I read at The Responsibility Project perfectly understandable.

The second tenet of materialism is what Eyre sums up with the motto "you are what you own." This explains why people put a high price tag on children. I read more than one account of people who wanted to have a larger family but could not afford to raise them in the "modern western lifestyle." We don't need to raise designer children. We need to raise children to know their designer.

Finally, if the material world is all that there is, it seems natural that we would seek fulfillment from our things, the people around us and the people we make. The divorce rates now make perfect sense to me. If happiness is the grail that we are searching for, I am surprised that 1/2 the marriages survive. But if there is something outside the material universe, such as, and I'm just spit balling here, the God who spoke that universe into being, then perhaps it is that God and not our possessions, or the people around us, or the children that God entrusts us with, that our well being comes from.

Next Time: And the winner is ... me.

Unbelievable (No Child Left Ahead)

I recently received the following e-mail from a college friend who is employed as a school psychologist (She's also my wife, but I digress):

Dave,

Here's a post idea for your blog:

I was observing in a middle school social studies classroom today. After talking about the topic, students were instructed to read the chapter and take Cornell notes (a specific note taking system.) One student sat there quietly looking at his book. The teacher asked him, “Why aren’t you working?” He said, “I did it yesterday.” She said, “Why?” indignantly. He said, “I was bored.” She said, “Don’t do that again, it messes everything up! Go to the Internet and take the quiz then.” The student spent the next 30 minutes unsuccessfully trying to sign on to a website and take the quiz. He asked the teacher for help several times. Each time she responded, “Don’t do this to me again. Do not work ahead.” She would not help him sign on. She repeatedly reprimanded him for working ahead in the chapter. What do you think this student learned?
Love,
Amy

Thanks for sharing that Amy. That teacher was probably upset that students were getting in the way of her teaching. I recognize myself in that teacher. Having all these great things I want to teach my kids and getting very frustrated when my children get in the way of that. Seeing my foibles demonstrated by someone is very instructive on how to handle such a situation when it comes up again.

Check out other Home School Blogs at this weeks edition of the Carnival of Home Schooling hosted this week at About.com bt clicking here.

Next Time: A Simple Plan