There’s a story around, a valid one. This mother of a home schooled kid, who went to school for first time invited his grade friends to his birthday. As a routine, the RSVPs were handed out. Per her story, nobody RSVPed nor called but she went ahead with the party and subsequent kid crying because nobody showed up.
Some people blame the mother for not understanding that no RSVPs, no phone call, nobody attending. And, I think that this is due to the kid not being friendly or communicative enough with his friends because he was used to talk to mom all day long. He may have lost that trust to speak to anyone.
Vaccines? I hate them! Never got flu, I have no idea what is to suffer of that, but hey! Here it is, my wife and my kids and my arse going to the hospital to get the flu one.
MRSA? I can’t tell you the horror of seeing somebody being cut, squeezed the pus out, then they put some gauze in it, days later, take it out, less gauze in, couple of day later take it out, and less gauze out until it closes. Horrible disease, but as I am told, the thingy itches you so much you enjoy it while it develops, but when it gets “ripe”, hold on your underwear, you are in a ride of your life.
So, @buyinghouse, you essentially are siding with me, in that:
Home schooling may work for a tad, but probably not a great idea for too long or the kid(s) just might develop a social interaction complex that they may not recover from, and
Vaccines are the way to go, for the vast 99.9999% of the time. Just do it so that your next Disneyland trip does not turn into a nightmare like that previous real case.
What is your definition of those who fall into “tad group” here?
Homeschooling is very challenging job and I don’t think parents want to do that without very good reason.
Here are a few different examples.
Early on we realized Jeremy wasn’t really ordinary,” said his mother, Harrey Schuler, who put her career on hold to focus on her son’s education. “We briefly considered sending him to a charter school or a school for the gifted and talented, but in the end there wasn’t much of a choice because he was way too advanced to be enrolled in any traditional schools. So I quit my career to dedicate my time to teaching Jeremy myself. I have been homeschooling him ever since.”
In a 2012 report published in the Journal of Black Studies, Mazama surveyed black homeschooling families from around the country and found that most chose to educate their children at home at least in part to avoid school-related racism. Mazama calls this rationale “racial protectionism” and said it is a response to the inability of schools to meet the needs of black students. “We have all heard that the American education system is not the best and is falling behind in terms of international standards,” she said. "But this is compounded for black children, who are treated as though they are not as intelligent and cannot perform as well, and therefore the standards for them should be lower."
“Then I got this kid. The school system was sucking the life out of him. He had ADHD and dysgraphia,” a disorder that makes it difficult for him to express himself in handwriting. A special-education teacher, who Smith described as emotionally “abusive,” didn’t seem to her to be interested in helping him improve.
What is the point of judging the parents who made very tough decision sacrificing their careers and dreams to support their children because public education system didn’t work for them?
You mentioned in other posting that you believe your parents generation (early Chinese immigrants) did their best in spite of other people’s criticism such as “they didn’t try hard enough to integrate into society”. They made a decision to spend most of their hours in working to support their family instead of learning English and Culture. Those who criticize them simply didn’t understand because their never went through such challenging situation and never bothered to try to understand their situation. However, you do understand because you saw them closely.
I don’t think it is a good idea to judge other’s decisions (especially in a generalized way) without understanding individual’s motivation well.
You mentioned that you are worrying about negative impact of homeschooled kids on society but do you have any statistical evidence to back up?
Read the stories above. Do you really want to judge parents in these stories?
Late to this thread. Not sure how Bill Gates turn into home schooling and vaccination.
I go thru the vaccination issue myself. I’m for vaccination. My wife is anti-vaxxer.
Anti-vaxxer claims are not scientific. If a person had vaccination and then got some disease or condition; they will say vaccination caused it. Correlation does not imply causation (cause and effect). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation
Another issue with anti-vaxxers is the hypocrisy. Basically they are relying on others to have the vaccination to prevent epidemic outbreak and to protect those who are not vaccinated. You can read more about Herd immunity and Free rider. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity. Hey, maybe my wife’s selfishness is good for our kid. The problem with this thinking is when the enough people believe it and the vaccination rate falls below the level to prevent epidemic.
Basically, this is a 1st world issue. People have not seen the devastating effect of how these disease can inflict on children. Risk of the vaccination far outweigh the damage that these disease cause.
And there is no way to have reasonable dialog with anti-vaxxer. Some anti-vaxxers are based on religious ground; others are highly educated middle- and upper-class folks who believe conspiracy theory. I won’t touch religion, because there is no way have scientific dialog on religion. As for those in 2nd group, when presented with scientific study and data, they will just argue that study was done by (or paid for by) big pharma and data is not trustworthy. OK, let’s just throw away hundreds of years of science; let’s believe conspiracy theory and anti-vaxxer websites.
In hindsight, what happened to us is a bit funny. During our 1st or 2nd baby wellness visit, my wife hesitated when asked for consent. Nurse immediately called 2 doctors who cornered us in the exam room, explaining very reasonable benefits of vaccination. I think they noted in our record that I’m for and my wife is against vaccination. Because just last year, my wife took our kid for checkup. Then the doctor called me on the phone stating that my wife refused vaccination. And asked that I should talk to her or I can bring the child in.
When a condition shows up two days after vaccination and has no other explanation or cause, then it is logical to believe that the vaccination caused it, especially when the condition is related to the body’s immune system going haywire–which is exactly what the adjuvant is intended to do–get the body’s immune system to go into full-gear. This is in fact the problem with the anthrax vaccine and Gulf-war-syndrome. The Anthrax vaccine contained squalene as the adjuvant which exists in the body, and mistaking it as an intruder, the body started attacking itself. I have a friend who had to drop out of the Army because of this. Took him 3 years to get his medical discharge, but it is now accepted that the Anthrax vaccine did indeed cause his medical issues.
Many people who forego vaccinations do so because they don’t believe that the disease is as bad as the reactions their kids had. If you ever meet a child of a parent whose kid has regressive autism after vaccination, you will find that they would rather their kid had caught the measles than got autism. That’s how difficult it is to have an autistic kid. They aren’t asking anyone to vaccinate to protect their child. They would never wish that damage on anyone else.
I should also point out that some diseases are pretty benign when caught as children like Mumps (which confers protection against Ovarian cancer later in life) and Chicken pox which is an itchy nuisance, but has a very low death rate. It’s well known that the varicella vaccine was originally used by “daycare moms” who didn’t want the inconvenience of having to stay home from work. I personally would have preferred my kids catch chickenpox naturally rather than having to have them vaccinated, especially since the vaccine wears off within 5 years, and may require lifelong boosters–we don’t know yet as we’re only 20 year into the experiment.
Not all vaccines are the same, not all diseases are the same.
Good, I didn’t know that. Now I don’t have the fight the BS battle with my wife for next vaccination.
Chickenpox is just an itch? It is high transmittable (infection rate of 90%) and death occurs in 1 out of 60k cases. In 2013, there were 140 million cases and 7000 deaths worldwide. Plus others with debilitating side effects for life. Only you can assess whether 7000 deaths is high or low. To me, 7000 is way to many. Source, wikipedia.
And chicken pox can results in shingles. And there was comment about shingles above; about shingles vaccination is only 50% effective. What do you think can happen to people with shingles? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycUrkbWHrmI . I don’t know this person, just some random person on youtube. My mom had shingles. For 6 months, she didn’t want us to visit her because she didn’t want us to see extreme pain she was in.
As for vaccination causing autism. This has being debunked in many scientific studies. But of course anti-vaxxers refuse to believe in those data and rather believe in conspiracy website or what their anti-vaxxer friends tell them. Thanks Jenny McCarthy (sarcasm) http://jennymccarthybodycount.com/ http://jennymccarthybodycount.com/WhatsTheHarm.html
Death rate on chickenpox was 100/yr in the US before the vaccine. That’s very low.
“From 1990 through 1996, an average of 103 deaths from varicella were reported each year.”
There is no assurance that the Varicella vaccine won’t also result in Shingles as it is a live, but attenuated, vaccine. However, it is definitely known that adults exposure to kids with Varicella reduces the incidence of Shingles. You’re gambling on your kids not getting Shingles from the Varicella Vaccine. I can understand the decision to take that gamble, but I wouldn’t go forcing it on other parents.
As for autism being debunked, there are many studies showing that vaccines cause autism. It has not been debunked, it has been swept under the rug. There are also many people with personal accounts, including video and pictures, of vaccine-injured kids (you can watch as many as you have time for by searching for #Hearthiswell stories). We’re talking specifically regressive-autism–cases where a toddler or 2-3 years old child was talking, walking, socializing, and making eye contact who received a round of vaccines (not always including MMR–various vaccines have been implicated), often ended up in the emergency room, and when the visit was over, they were not talking, making eye contact, or socializing normally anymore.
Unfortunately, the 2004 CDC study which was supposed to end the discussion on autism and vaccines was fudged. The only way they could show that vaccines didn’t cause autism was to throw out data. You can find more on CDC Whistleblower William Thompson:
Statement he made through his lawyer:
Statement by William Posey on behalf of Thompson asking for Congress to investigate:
There were also a couple of major cases of Vaccine Injury Court payouts after the 2004 CDC study which pretty much allowed the court to reject all autism cases (they had been paying them off prior to that)
Hannah Poling is one (father was a neurosurgeon–the VIC judge had a hard time blowing him off). Ryan Mojabi, Emily Moller.
The problem with this thinking is when the enough people believe it and the vaccination rate falls below the level to prevent epidemic.
Leave nothing to your kids, people. Let them sink or swim on their own… 