School System More Powerful Than Police

Another day, another article in The Washington Post. This one continues to detail the involvement of five city agencies with the mother who killed her children sometime after pulling them out of school to "homeschool" them. The tragedy is that we all know that the school system could have saved these children by regulating homeschooling even when child welfare, social services, and the police failed. In Washington, D.C., which we all know has efficiently run agencies where tragedies like this never occur. Sorry, got distracted by a leprechaun and it's not even March. Let's turn back to the article and try to tone down the sarcasm.

Five agencies had contact with the family. Six child welfare workers have been fired for failing to respond to concerns about the children dating from April 2006, the article says. Clearly, D.C. has some problems. The article doesn't list the agencies, but I'm wondering if law enforcement is once since the article later mentions that during a visit to the home, the mom was "very difficult" with police and a social worker (just laying a foundation for my post title).

The part of the article that I love is the report of the D.C. Council meeting, which picked apart the case to determine whether this was a rare tragic occurrance, or whether it's systemic. During their analysis, council members asked why school truancy and homeschooling policies failed to follow up on these kids. From what I can see, the mom pulled the kids out of school in March 2007 and may have told someone she was homeschooling, but at least one of the schools claims it didn't know why. Six weeks later social services sends a letter to one of the school's offices asking for more information. Public school officials cannot confirm receipt of this letter.

So many mistakes by so many people. But one of the questions the Council is asking is the principal of one of the schools, who received "verbal withdrawl" from the mom when pulling the kids from school, was why he didn't ask about the mom's level of education and fitness to educate her daughters. Well, that would have saved the kids, wouldn't it have? Maybe they should have considered her mental illness, her drug use, her failure to follow-up on paternity suits that she brought -- no, her educational level and ability to homeschool her kids would have been the question to snap people to attention and to help these kids.

Okay, I'm not angry anymore, just sad. Come on, though, the school could have helped these kids when FIVE other agencies failed? Please.

Haiku for a Yarn Winder

I watch it wind yarn

spinning non-spherical balls

it makes me happy

The Shallow Learning Curve of Knitting

wow, I've learned a lot since I first cast on for one of the kids' ponchos back in September. I can actually understand how the stitches are supposed to look and identify mistakes and how to fix them (the best use of a crochet hook I've had so far).

Anyway, a quick chronology of my knitting thus far: I began with ponchos for the kids. Then I did one for me. I moved into spiral scarves. I had a couple failures before successes but I learned that a failure need not remain so. You can fix mistakes with creativity. If your spiral scarf is ridiculously long, simply seam it up the middle. It wasn't what you were expecting, but the result is nice. A parable for life, don't you think?

I'm currently in my shrug phase. I knit a mohair one that really didn't go the way it should. I changed the pattern and in my ignorance, made a lot of mistakes so that it just turned out funky. When I get to it, I'll wash it and block it (after first weaving in those threads I still haven't gotten to), then we'll see what we've got. I knit a flower to pin somewhere to cover some yarn sin.

Now, what now? I'm trying another shrug. I'm very interested in knitting flowers and I took an odd cupcake tangent whereby I acquired patterns and yarn and have now lost interest.

Oh, and I was thinking I'd try my hand at cables. Sometimes they intrigue me, sometimes I could care less.

What is wrong with The New York Times?

What kind of sensationalistic crap are they writing? Did you see the article about that horrible multiple homicide in Washington, D.C.? The mom had pulled her kids out of school at some point and claimed to be homeschooling them. As a result, the NYT used the headline Lack of Supervision Noted in Deaths of Home-Schooled. Terrible, tragic, awful -- but she wasn't a homeschooler. She was a woman who took advantage of the law and pulled her kids out of school and said she was homeschooling.


If you read The Washington Post, the hometown paper for this incident, you'll find out the woman had a long history of troubles. Here's their headline - Making of a Tragedy: The Single Mother's World Included Drugs, Homelessness And Paternity Suits. Her Children Paid the Price. This was not a woman who was reading about education, going to homeschool conferences, perusing websites and chatlists and catalogs to figure out what curriculum to use. This was a woman who was falling apart. One wonders why the school-system and home education are to blame when welfare and social services failed this woman. Heck her food stamps were cancelled because she failed to update her information. Why not go after that? No, who cares if they eat, let's wait until she snaps and blame it on homeschooling.


The Post article barely mentions homeschooling. It only does so in the chronology of the mom's very sad life. It's obvious she is sick and has had bad luck and lots of troubles and it sounds like homeschooling was one of the last things she did. She certainly was not a 'homeschooler' gone bad but a very troubled woman who pulled her kids out of school.


I think it's outrageous that the Times would put it into the headline that these kids were homeschooled (make that "home-schooled"). So many of these abuse stories aren't about homeschooling, this one seems like it really has very little to do with homeschooling and far more to do with poverty and mental illness and instability in the family.


And what is Mitchell Stevens babbling about in his quote in the Times? He is paraphrased as saying that "school officials, who are required by law to report suspicion of child abuse, were society’s best watchdogs of how parents treat children." Yes, and we all know there are no abused kids going to school who aren't getting noticed and helped. Please. Mitchell, shame on you, you should know better. But hey, it's nice to see your name in the Times.


What gives, is the NYT pissed off about Huckabee? That's not our fault. Really.

Addicted to Ravelry

I know that in trying to build a readership for your blog, you should stick to one subject. Well, I gave up building a readership a long time ago - this is a diary and I'm a messy person. For those interested in my homeschooling thoughts, you'd do best to check out Life Without School. I write on a regular basis there and it sort of taps me out as far as wanting to write about homeschooling.

A few months ago, at the urging of my good friend and fellow homeschooling hottie, I decided to try my hand at knitting. It clicked, it stuck, and now I'm crazed. Knitting is great for me, I feel creative, I feel productive, I feel peaceful. And it's the perfect hobby for an unschooler like me who basically sits around watching the kids learn and tries to keep up with their questions and interests. I knit at playdates, I knit at parkdays, I knit at Brownie meetings, I knit while the kids watch a video, I knit while they read and play and learn and live. I knit, knit, knit.

I started out with a kit from HearthSong designed for kids. That worked out so well that I adapted it to an adult size for me. Then began my obsession with spiral scarves, an unfortunate affair with the Lion Brand website's free patterns, perusal of knitting books, and (thanks to the GFFHH mentioned above) visits to Craftster.

Craftster tipped me off to Ravelry, which is invitation only at this point because it's so new, but will go public sometime soon. Ravelry is too awesome for words and I will have to write more about it later as my spare time this morning has already been used.

My Educational Philosophy - Get a Life

This is a post I wrote for the community blog, Life Without School.

"Get a life" was a comment I received fairly recently on my blog, unclimber....For a moment, I felt a bit upset to get what seemed to be only a mean-spirited comment. Then I realized it was an opportunity for reflection....

The irony is that in ruminating on "get a life", I realized that it sums up my educational philosophy. 

Well Said!

Not all homeschoolers are politically conservative and we aren't too fond of being painted that way! Here's a response to an article about the political power of homeschoolers who come together for a common goal -- just don't think all homeschoolers think alike!