Crazy Comment Monday!

"Unlike formal instruction in school, baby reading doesn't begin with learning the alphabet; it begins with recognizing words. Flash techniques and multisensory approaches are time-tested for babies and toddlers. A baby-sensitive curriculum makes it easy to slowly move from words, to couplets, to phrases, to sentences, to easy and happy picture books. Enthusiasm, attention, imitation, and fun drive the curriculum--no testing! The five-minute process is engaging for the child and easy for the parent."

Go ahead and read Early Homeschooling Can Save American Schools and tell me if you get some of the same feelings I did:

1.  Uiiuugghh.  "Baby-sensitive curriculum?" Really? I think the Baby Einstein stuff is cute, and I have some LeapFrog items at home, but bleh.  "Baby-sensitive curriculum" sounds so... like the crap I vomited out to impress my professors when I was in college.  Now that I've been out for a while, I can't keep a straight face when I hear such things.

2.  People should HOMESCHOOL so that the SCHOOLS ARE BETTER?  Who on earth is gonna homeschool so schools are better?  People homeschool because they think the schools suck.  I have never, never, never, NEVER met anyone who even remotely thought that they were homeschooling with an aim to make the schools better.  Have you?

Perhaps the author doesn't know what homeschooling is... or maybe he doesn't really mean it when he says people should "homeschool."  If he did, why would he be concerned about saving American schools?  Surely he doesn't mean that parents should only "homeschool" until children are "school-age?"  That... would be so backward and oddly-reasoned that I don't even know what to say about it.

3.  How can there possibly be an ACHIEVEMENT GAP when someone is ENTERING school?  They haven't been taught anything formally yet, so that means something besides "achievement" is being measured.  And saying that schools are an unequal playing field "littered" with black and Hispanic children is... wow.  "Littered?"

4.  I refuse to believe the outlandish stories in the comments about families who have NO books at home except for what is provided by the school. I think this is a made-up story, sort of the opposite of the "my cousin homeschooled her kids and they can't read so homeschooling should be outlawed" type comments we see in other places.