Working for New China.

Did you ever see the Last Emperor movie? After the emperor's capture by communist Chinese forces, he's sent to prison for "reeducation." He finds many people who were formally in the Imperial Court as his fellow prisoners. One feeds him the party line that they are all "working for new China!" Dejected, he tells them that they are all the same people. Nothing has changed.

"GUARDS!!" yells the man. "GUARDS!!"

There are just some viewpoints you're not allowed to have in some places.

A blog I frequent had a rather interesting explosion of comments of late about the evils of homeschooling. You know, the usual "party line" about parents who teach their children "hate," or worse yet, creationism. I'm sure you *must* teach your children hate if you homeschool. I mean, that's number one on my list. I wake the kids up at 5:30 in the morning for the "Anti-Gay Hitler Pledge" (tm). This is soon followed by "Racist Bible Reading 101," in which I insert commentary on the sin of Caanan, relate it to slavery, or... well, something. Then it's followed by a rousing rendition of "Jesus loves the little children of the world... white and white and white and white, they are precious in His sight..." Then the kiddos are chained to my kitchen table and fed dog food on the floor while they pick lice off one another for the rest of the day.

Well, anyway. I hope that was silly enough for ya. I started to run out of creative ideas toward the end there.

But homeschoolers must have *something* to hide. Otherwise, why wouldn't you send your child into the local public school? Public schools are for the benefit of all children! You really do everyone a disservice if you pull your children out and educate them separately. You are not working for new America.

Hey, go ahead and keep your kids in public school if you like. I have a couple older ones at the junior high, myself. Free country. Whatever. But why can't I pull my children out without being accused of working against poor kids who depend on these schools? Or of being isolationist? Or anti-American?

Oh, that last one gets me. I kinda thought this was the land of the free and all that. But since I am not working for new America, "change," or whatever buzzword has come down the pike lately (and some of 'em are funny!), I must be pretty much running an abusive Christian Madrassa from my home. Yeah, that's it. And how are the poor little children going to be cared for if they can't be watched over by certified teachers every day?

I just think it's silly.

And of course I have an agenda with my children! You betcha. But... so do the public schools. That's the nature of education, you see. Oh, and while I'm on the subject, I have to tell you a story.

I was looking around on the internet for some stuff about pandas and China. I think next month or so we'll take a break and do pandas for science and China for social studies. It'll be fun. I have about 40 books (no exaggeration!) on reserve at the library. Worksheets galore from the internet! See what happens when I get pestered by a little Emperor to learn about pandas? And his really good reason for studying them? "Because they're so cute I need to find out more." Awww.

But back to topic. I was looking up some things to print out about China and came across a really neat study on the subject. I'm not going to do the whole thing. I'm free to eat the meat and leave the bones and all that. I have no plans to read aloud about how the whites in America are "racist" for believing that Chinese workers were taking their jobs. (Yes, there is racism. Do I need to label everyone who's afraid for his job as a "racist?" Huh? It has parallels to today, you know.) I'm going to do some of the "calligraphy" with magic marker, though. I enjoyed reading some of the background details.

I thought it was an interesting study, so I went to the school's web page to find out a little bit about their grade level standards. Do you know what the NUMBER ONE standard is when considering what to teach a child about music or art? Did you say "music has notes" or "colour wheel" or anything like that? Did you? Racist.

The number one goal for teaching music and art is that the child identifies "anti-bias and anti-discriminatory" behaviours. Yes. It is the number one goal, folks. Now, will those of you who think homeschoolers ought to be tested each year to see if kids meet a "state standard" please admit that sometimes, juuuust sometimes, the standards are a bit wacky? Just a little?

I mean, not that I want my kids cussing and using derogatory and bigoted language all the time. I'm just saying that it isn't my number one music class goal, ya know?