You can’t have a police state without police. And, if you allow government to have police, you’re probably going to find yourself in a police state sooner or later.
Tag: family
New Reflections on the Evolution in France
The biggest change is the ubiquitous police and military presence. Teams of militarized police and policified military patrol every tourist site and every public function, plus numerous random locations. It wasn’t just Paris; even small cities like Bayeaux were on guard. I’ve never seen anything like this in the United States, even on September 12, 2001.
Homeschooling Can Be Tough Sometimes
In a span of 24 hours this week, I heard from two homeschooling moms threatening to send their kids to school. First, was a text with “I can’t do this!” Next, was a conversation with a mom who wants to send her child back to school and catch a break. Both moms were feeling frustrated, tired, and uncertain. Both were feeling that school would be easier, better; yet knowing deeply that isn’t true. Both were feeling what we all feel sometimes.
15,000 Hours of Playing School
As so often happens when we reach adulthood, and especially parenthood, we realize how much we don’t know. I realized that I might have been successfully schooled, but I didn’t feel well educated. When I reflect on the approximately 15,000 hours I spent in K-12 public school, I think of what a waste of time most of those hours were.
Worksheets or Wonder: A Story
The sky was a bright blue, clear with wispy white clouds and a strong June sun. My four children were ankle-deep in ocean water, shrieking with excitement each time they spotted a hermit crab or a sea star or a snail as the tide retreated.
How Mass Schooling Perpetuates Inequality
For kids like Matt, schooling can bring out the worst behaviors. Like a trapped tiger–angry and afraid–they rebel. Unable to conform properly to mass schooling’s mores, they get a label: troubled, slow learner, poor, at-risk. They will carry these scarlet letters with them throughout their 15,000 hours of mandatory mass schooling, emerging not with real skills and limitless opportunity, but further entrenched in their born disadvantage.
While I’m Far More Inclined to be a Prick Online, I’m Definitely Not a Bigot
Granted my exposure to black people and homosexuals and the transgendered has been quite limited, in every case as far as those particular groups are concerned, I’ve never been a prick.
@YesYoureRacist Crowdsources Social Preferencing
The main objection to @YesYoureRacist doesn’t cut much ice with me. The project is not an “invasion of privacy” or a “violation of rights.” The Charlottesville marchers engaged in public action with the explicit purpose of attracting attention. Mission accomplished. They got noticed.
Why You Should Pull Your Kid Out of School
Kudos to these parents for listening to their parental instincts, despite pressure from the school to do otherwise. They saw that forcing their son to read at age 6, before he was ready, was causing him to hate reading and despise books. They recognized that the rigidity and uniformity characteristic of the mass schooling model was smothering their son’s curiosity and innate, self-educative ability.
How an Airborne Ranger Became a Voluntaryist
Government directives to do evil (whether by commission or omission) do not override our conscience and our understanding of right and wrong. I favor agoristic obviation of government institutions. I support voluntary alternatives to government services as much as I can and continue to encourage government institutions to reduce and eliminate their restrictions on our freedoms.