Home Schooling, America, And what I've been up to.

I have a few different American celebrities that I follow on twitter, and they have all been going mad about an American Politician who is running for the Presidential position.  His name is Rick Santorum.

Rick has nine children who he and his wife homeschooled.  So his political stance is that education funding should be cut, because parents should be homeschooling their children, rather than shoving them in schools to be taught by different people.

I know quite a few families that have chosen to homeschool their children, many of these are for religious reasons, they felt that they could better teach their values and morals at home rather than sending their child to school.

When Samuel had one of his various operations, he had a huge metal cage on his leg, and I chose to home school him for that period of time.  I have to admit it sucked!!  I just don't have the patience to teach a child.

I like schools, I like the fact that my kids are taught by someone completely independant.  Now I don't hold it against anyone who wants to homeschool their children, however, what I am against is being told this is what I should do.

I think that education is a very important part of society, and a very big role in producing well adjusted young people.  Already there are many families that just don't care about education, and give their children the choice to go to school or not.  The unfortunates of this is many times, the young person goes on to have drug addiction, alcohol addiction, violent behaviour, teen pregnancy and other such unfortunate behaviour, because they haven't had the structure that is needed.  When the family is lacking in structure, school provides that structure for the child.

I heard a fact today that in Australia there are currently 700,000 children living in homes where both parents don't work.  So this means that their parents only live on some sort of welfare benefit.  Which means that these families are below the poverty line, there is not a lot of opportunity for these young people.  What would happen if the education system failed them even more than what it already does?

We complain about our kids getting homework, or that there are too many students to a class, but imagine if we had a Rick Santorum running for Prime Minister?

It worries me that if America is willing to vote people in who are wanting to take away free choice from the American people, how much further stretch is it that Australia will have the same issues.  Take Bob Katter for example.  He has some very extreme views, and his party is growing in popularity.

I don't like being told how I should raise my children, I'm a bit of a rebel at heart. 


Anyway today I started my first day of 8 years of schooling.  I'm currently studying my Bachelor of Psychology, that only runs for three years, but then to become a qualified psychologist, I've then got to undertake a Honours year, followed by three years of Phd.  Bit exciting I reckon.

I had Behavioural neuroscience and Sociology lectures today.  So please bare with me and I no doubt will have much to share with you, whilst I'm being challenged and my brain is expanding.  The highlight for today, was finding out that my first assignment for Behavioural Neuroscience is dissecting a sheeps brain, while naming all the various parts of the brain.... How awesome does that sound?

Some other interesting news.... I have now officially lost 5.1kg in three weeks.... Yay me!!

Well excuse my silence over the next week or two while I get my studies into a rythym.  I promise I wont be very far away.

Love you all

Sam
xxx