I’m sorry for my poor choice of an offensive word. Also, sorry if my comments somehow hijacked the topic too. I feel just as I suspected I would after posting an alternative view. I agree that this is a generally respectful forum, but I do not see it as quite as open as you do.
Thank you; I appreciate that. We all flub on our word choices at times. I personally don’t think you hijacked any more or less than I did! I felt I needed to clarfiy my previous answer to the OP, that’s all. You gave your answer to the OP and your reasons why-I don’t think that’s hijacking, you just had a different opinion, that’s all. From my perspective, the OP’s question was open-ended for people to give a variety of opinions.
I’m afraid you misunderstand that it’s not an alternative view that was at issue for me – we all have our own opinions about a variety of things; disagreement isn’t attacking nor a sign of disrespect. For example, Bookworm and I disagree on the effectiveness of our state reps. on this post.
I would consider it a loss for the topic if you ceased expressing your opinion that may be different than mine.
One of the interesting aspects of discussion forums like ours is it that the people who are passionate about a topic tend to post on that topic the most. It makes it appear that most people agree even when there usually are plenty of dissenting opinions. However, those with differing opinions often don’t care passionately enough to bother getting into the discussion when it appears that they would be swimming upstream.
I understand Claire’s word choices in light of some of what has been going on in a bit of a homeschool publisher witch hunt, where compliant is equated with selling out to big brother.
For example, it’s been really sad to see good companies like Math-U-See raked over the coals for being compliant. They didn’t dumb down their materials. They didn’t fill their books with indoctrination. They didn’t take anything away. They didn’t compromise. They didn’t endorse government control.
They simply added a few pages that allowed them to meet the standards. It’s still the same great math curriculum and still goes above and beyond any government standards.
I understand all the stuff about possible national standards and testing and databases. But as long as individual states don’t force the standards on homeschoolers, we are relatively free from all of this if we’re not taking government money for educating our kids. Actually, if standardized testing is dumbed down then homeschoolers with high standards will shine even more in the results.
By the way, we have no plans to try to meet the standards. In fact, it would not be possible to align what is taught and when in CCSS English standards with a Charlotte Mason style of educating.
Funny this topic just came up. I just placed an order for Teaching Textbooks for next year because of this. We’ve been using MUS for 2 years now. We’ve loved it but I won’t support a company that acknowledges Common Core Standards as legit. I realize their curriculum hasn’t changed MUCH, but it’s the principle for me. TT has stated that they are focused on homeschoolers and don’t look to outside standards to define their scope and sequence. That makes me happy. 🙂 Maybe I am paranoid, but something just doesn’t feel right about all of this. It makes my skin crawl to think about these organizations formulating curriculum standards for the entire country. What happened to local control of education? Creepy.