And She Homeschools? 10 Reasons Sarah Palin Terrifies (and Fascinates) Me
I'm worried that I'm obsessing too much about Sarah Palin. She terrifies me! She fascinates me! She could be running our country! Here are ten reasons I can't stop thinking about our First Hockey Mom:
10. She homeschools! A clutch of creationist and homeschooling blogs have joyfully lit up with the idea that Sarah Palin has enrolled her children in the Interior Distance Education of Alaska, a program "created by homeschoolers for homeschoolers." Actual schools -- serving about 98% of America's students-- need clear-eyed presidential attention. I don't care if some members of Palin's family were teachers or if she used to be a member of the PTA. When I think of how Palin would govern--just one heartbeat away from the Oval Office-- her radical choice to homeschool her kids terrifies (and fascinates) me.
9. Palin practiced unabashed cronyism as mayor of Wasilla, firing the police chief and library director for not endorsing her mayoral campaign. She was almost recalled. And "Troopergate" is just waiting to blow up. That scandal concerns Palin allegedly firing a public safety commissioner because he refused to fire her former brother-in-law, an Alaskan state trooper involved in a messy divorce with Palin's sister. Such shady power plays terrify (and fascinate) me.
8. Speaking of Wasilla, Alaska--a town with a population around 7,000, only slightly larger than many high schools-- below is a picture of Wasilla City Hall, where Palin garnered the lion's share of her executive experience that the McCain camp trumpets. The fact that someone who ran this town from 1996 to 2002 and has less than two years under her belt governing a state with a population smaller than the city of Indianapolis has a very real chance of becoming America's vice-president terrifies (and fascinates) me.
7. Her website, www.palinforgovernor.com is no longer accessible. The main page goes straight to the John McCain For President campaign website and the other pages like "Issues" and "Articles" go nowhere. This isn't necessarily terrifying or fascinating; it's just sketchy.
6. She supported the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" project before it was outed and made an embarrassing symbol of wasteful pork spending. Newsminer reports :
On Oct. 22, 2006, the Anchorage Daily News asked Palin and the other candidates, "Would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges?"
Her response: "Yes. I would like to see Alaska's infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now -- while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist."
She was for it before she was against it! Such obviously phony political posturing truly terrifies (and fascinates) me.
5. Sarah Palin doesn't seem to know much at all about the history or policies regarding the war in Iraq. She told Alaska Business Monthly:
"I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq. I heard on the news about the new deployments, and while I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place; I want assurances that we are doing all we can to keep our troops safe."
Her oldest son Track is going to Iraq to serve, and his commitment is honorable. I'm not sure that it computes that his "hockey mom" should be the potential commander-in-chief. At this crucial moment in world history and international relations, this news of a vice-presidential candidate's myopic ignorance simply terrifies me.
4. She doesn't believe global warming is man-made....
3. Now that the dust is starting to clear from the bombshell that Palin's unmarried teenage daughter Bristol is pregnant, CNN reports that evangelicals are thrilled about it:
"Before, they were excited about her, with the Down syndrome baby," conservative, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist said. "But now with this, they are over the moon. It reinforces the fact that this family lives its pro-life values."
Okay, but what about Palin's record on staunchly opposing sex education? She supports abstinence-only education, a position that she should now realize to be futile and counterproductive. Bristol Palin's behavior and its consequences may be a family issue, but Sarah Palin's position on sex education is not, given that she is poised to become vice-president of the U.S. The fact that Palin is receiving support for her hypocrisy terrifies me.
2. Politico surmises that Palin may benefit politically from such humanizing details as: "Fishing permit violations. A blue-collar husband who racked up a DUI citation as a 22-year-old. An unmarried teenage daughter who is pregnant and a nasty child custody battle involving a family member."
By Politico's calculations, such "averageness" makes her "politically promising." This People-Magazining of presidential politics (Yes, I used "People-Magazine" as a verb) that ushered George W. Bush into office in 2000 terrifies (and fascinates) me.
1. From the LA Times:
"[S]he is against abortion even in cases of rape and incest, sued the federal government to take polar bears off the endangered species list, has said creationism should be taught in schools and advocated a constitutional ban on providing healthcare benefits to same-sex partners."
I'm terrified!
In 2004, Republicans proved themselves to be experts at scaring the American public into voting for them. John McCain's "bold" choice of sharing the ticket with someone so profoundly inappropriate for leading the United States of America just may scare those votes in the opposite direction. At least, that's what this terrified (and fascinated) American is praying for.
Dan Brown is a teacher and the author of The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle.
Follow Dan Brown on Twitter: www.twitter.com/danbrownteacher
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And she's still more qualified than Obama. And she's just the VP!
Do remember, virtually all of the content of Governor Palin's campaign website is STILL accessible, even if the site itself is not.
Simply got to http://www.archive.org and enter the campaign website's URL in the search bar, hit "Take Me Back," and the archived versions of all the site content are accessible.
And probably a great deal of fun to read. And not something anyone associated with Palin or McGovern can "erase" from the Internet.
3. She doesn't believe global warming is man-made....
First of all the silly chart does not have a temperature component? It does not show anything about warming.
It does show that CO2 has increased by some 0.06% as a % of the atmosphere since - whenever.
For the record, most scientists do not believe that Global warming is man-made. Many believe that it [greenhouse gases] probalby is a component in the current little cycle of warming. Many believe that the role is significant. Many believe that it is a very minor, if any, contributing part of this current warming cycle (which sort of is in a reversal since 1998).
This woman is simply put... UNEDUCATED! Being street smart and a "social buterfly", might get you an excecutive job of a tiny town, but not the USA! And how is it not OK to question her religious grounds when she plans to enshrine them in law! She has no clue of what separation of church and state means - due to her ignoracne of American history and how these measures came to be! In addition, she has no understanding of rudimentary modern science, thus lumping evolution with creationism.
ONLY in America out of ALL the developed nations is evolution considered "controversial" (only to the general population - the scientific community has already accepted it since the 1800s...) This comes from a lack of education, in turn due to a lack of federal standards of education. So her children can be born and raised without ever being asked to challenge their beliefs.
It is terrific that everyone in America can get some type of higher education, but what about asking more of those who lead us? A little study of journalism does not teach her what GDP, inflation and interest rates really mean. She probably doesn't even know what the FED is....
I work at a university in Boston and most faculty, who previously supported Clinton, then McCain, have jumped the ship JOYFULLY donating to Obama even! I did the same - though I dislike Obama personally, I certainly like his policies better....
I guess I fall on the terrified court!
Speaking of Wasilla, Alaska--a town with a population around 7,000, only slightly larger than many high schools...Please if you could back to me on this one supporting this statements, I would like you to send me a list of schools that is SLIGHTLY less than 7,000 and then compare that to MANY of the thousands of schools in America. Being an educator myself and seeing public education the backbone of our country. I see that it does not provide our citizens with the right tools to succeed in this new world. While homeschooling is not for everyone, it is not RADICAL especially when our public schools are not educating!!!!! Please be rational
Agreed I have spent a whole day obsessing with a peculiar sort of fascination while concurrently being horrified and terrified ...
Mostly spot on (albeit boilerplate - you haven't said much very distinctive) except for one thing: I have to take issue with your blanket dismissal of homeschooling as "radical". Someone like yourself - a teacher and therefore presumably "educated" - MUST have noticed the rapid increase in homeschooling the past twenty years, and if you were paying attention, they're far from all fundamentalist Christians. Au contaire, they're as diverse as any other population.
See, I'm a teacher myself, in Asia at the moment, and I'm on my way OUT of the business. Because the longer I do this, the more I hate what I'm inflicting on these kids, especially when I think of how much I hated it myself ... and how much it *interfered* with my learning anything. Contrary to myth, Asia's schools (e.g Korea's, where I am now) differ from America's only in the degree of pressure applied; they're still rooted in the same 18th-century Prussian notions of sit-down-and-shut-up that produced our school system.
Dig into the writings of John Holt, John Taylor Gatto, and Grace Llewellyn for more on this. Working in schools has turned me firmly against the institution itself - and when I have children, I plan to homeschool them. Me, the libertarian pragmatist and very mild mainstream Catholic.
Unimpressed as I am by Sarah Palin, I can't fault her on that point. her own (utter lack of) merits, that's a different story.
Well what you said is respectable however consider the alternative:
Why should the answer to an abysimal standard of public education be homeschooling? Why not demand more of the govermnet to which you pay tax?
How does homeschooling make up for the career/income/social/productivity loss of the parent who must homeschool their children? How does it affect the social development of children themselves? How does homeschooling insure that religious bias/bigotry etc.. is not imprinted on the next generation? Homeschooling is fine, but it should only be reserved for few and not advocated for all... It does not bode well for society.
I am very familiar with the Korean school system, and have myself been educated in a similar European draconian system before experiencing both public and private high school in America. While the tough Korean system might seem backwards to you, such a system enabled me to learn enough math/science/philosophy to cruse through 2 years in the US and get a Harvard degree. [where coincidentally, many of my homeschooled friends had incredible social problems while adjusting]. Nothing is perfect but I would choose the lesser of the two bad options....
I think you misunderstand my complaint, but then I didn't go deep into it. I'll clarify, point by point:
1) Why not demand more of the government? Because I think it's the wrong tool for the job in the first place. (sorry if that sounds snippy)
2) Career/income/social etc: I don't hold careerism, income level, or productivity (for someone else's bottom line) as my highest values in life; I care more about being intelligent, loving, moral and appreciative of being alive.
If you disagree with me on that, suit yourself, but I don't think these values are well-served by institutional schooling.I would think that NOT submitting to those demands on one's time would free one to be as productive and social as one wishes - on one's own terms. "Social Development" I regard as a euphemism for unquestioning obedience, for reasons too long to go into.
But I don't see how being forced to associate ONLY with kids of the same age, in isolation, equals healthy social skills. Or knowledge.
(con't'd)
3) Bigotry: Korean public schools employ more than a few "science" teachers who happily employ Darwinian theory to explain the superiority of the Korean race to all others. Is that any less idiotic than creationism? Having worked in four countries (Korea mostly, plus Poland, Vietnam and Turkey) I don't for a minute think America is inherently more racist/jingoistic than the competition - quite the opposite. But neither you nor I have any right to compel anyone's "enlightenment".
4) I didn't say Korean schools were backward; in fact, they're based on exactly the same Prussian system as most nations'. I do think that the myth of how knowledgeable Asian students are compared to Americans is just that, a myth.
Korean kids may put in more hours, and go to all the "academies" they can stay awake for, but that just leaves them fatigued and with no time to actually learn anything. The students I teach here are as ignorant as any US suburbanite, or worse. Their "schooling" is mostly indoctrination and test prep. There's a joke that no Korean can choose a mate without lining up 4 prospects to choose from, just like exams - a, b, c, or d?
Consider how much time they spend studying English. (which is what I mainly teach). Now compare their high TOEFL test scores to their *ABYSMAL* inability to speak, read, write, and understand ANY practical English. True all over Korea - I've been here the better part of six years.
(cont'd further!)
5) "...reserved for the few ..." I ***VIOLENTLY*** disagree. One thing the USA does get absolutely right is that we give people more choices. Long-term, society's best interests are served by LIBERTY, not compulsion. (short of preventing harm being done) This is the sort of elitism that gives the word a bad name. People should be able to educate themselves and their children in whatever fashion they wish, that they're willing to work at. It's called FREEDOM of speech, thought and belief.
6) Harvard? Good for you, and God bless. But without meaning to cast aspersions on you, I've met my share of Ivy League grads over the years, and not been impressed. I've yet to be convinced that these schools teach people anything they couldn't learn just as well at, say, UW in Seattle (where I went) or with a library card. And one of my resentments toward "school" was that it sucked time from my own study of things I was interested in - I was one of these kids who preferred my huge stack of library books to whatever busywork my teachers assigned. (me and G.B Shaw both!)
There's a very good book by John Taylor Gatto on this subject called "The Underground History of American Education" that delves into the scary history of our school system. It's online here:http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm
Also, another article by the same author:http://www.spinninglobe.net/againstschool.htm
Check them out.
If you have a child who is 5 years old, and do not have a good public school available, you might decide to do BOTH--demand more of the government (a process which will take years, money, and the right political climate, which hasn't been available in most states since No School Left Standing got passed)--AND homeschool your child since your child only gets one chance at an education.
In my case, I chose to move to a city where the public school system is an "open choice" system and includes publicly funded alternative/magnet schools and public charter schools.
Brown is obviously ignorant on the issue of homeschooling. It is far from being a "radical" choice, but is rather the only choice for intelligent, responsible parents. And it involves far more than the fringe, fundamentalist, creationist crowd. It includes thousands of families who have seen that the government schools are producing only shallow, vapid, uneducated "sheeple". Brown should do a little research, or else quit pretending to be a journalist.
Agreed Brown should do more research on homeschooling. Certainly it is not only Chrisy=tians who are homeschooling these days. The bottom line against homeschooling is the parents turning out isolated zealots of any kind wehter they be granola, attatchment parenting atheist strict no-sugar and no meat eater no tv, unparenting, unschooling extemeists or Jesus Camp types, one fascist deserves another. No little mini boot camps for kids. Oh, but wait there are plenty of Private school boot camps and certainly even twenty years ago parents in most of the USA outisde of major inner-city spots did not have metal detectors, actual police on campus or were war zones in a literal, physical sense. Now many "normal" schools have metal detectors, no-violence tolerance policies, no child left behind (the rapture, anyone) so-caklled intelligent design is being infiltrated into schools, the arts and PE have been waylaid, and corporate America is taking over these kids lives by placing themselves in the classsroom via sponsorships that once only the US freakin Army would dare dream of, and even they did not go around putting their slogans on t-shirts for five year olds. So, the market is tough and the times are more than trying for parents, kids and teachers all.
What terrifies me is that a sizable portion of the American voting public claims that it will go to the polls this November to attempt to legislate their personal views on their fellow Americans.
I have a hard time believing that the vast majority of Americans do not realize that there are more important factors to vote on in this election such as the economy, the outsourcing of jobs, tax cuts for the middle class and America's standing in the world. Obama/Biden is the only ticket that has produced plans and demonstrates a real commitment to tackling these issues.
She homeschools, too.
"Now chitlens, what is 2+2?"
"Whatever Republicans say it is, Mommygov!"
Loved your article, but I take issue with your calling homeschooling a "radical choice". Not all homeschoolers homeschool because they're creationists or right-wingers. I am a liberal, Obama-supporting atheist and I homeschool. Why? Because I taught in my son's South Bronx school and saw first-hand how many public schools take all the joy out of learning. The high-stakes testing; the overloading of meaningless homework; the lack of gym, art, music and recess; the institutional atmosphere; the negative school culture...need I go on? Would you want that for your kid?
And then there are those children's names . . .
Everyone who homeschools is not a crazy christian extremist. I home schooled my daughter up to the 7th grade because public school is a joke. I couldn't afford private school and they would not have challenged her either. So I kept her home and networked with other home schooling families. She went to charter schools from 7th to 12th grade and is now a sophmore at Harvard. We are hardly Christian extremist. So do not over generalize. People choose homeschooling for many reasons.
Another week in the Straight Talk Express Troupe's Presidential Vaudeville. Nobody thought much of Ronald Reagan or George Bush either, though both of whom would be quite comfortable with Mrs. Palin's many perspectives. I can see Stewart and Colbert salivating, political cartoonists practicing their best upswept hairdos and rectangular granny glasses, while the Republican Party is staring the nation directly in the eye and telling us that it's time to break down the glass ceiling and let the caribou jerky and Christianist drill, drill, drill in. Rush's candidate is the "babe." Give that hard working woman a candy bar and heart beat away from being the most powerful human on earth. Three card monte anyone?
Mostly I agree with your post but I disagree strongly with you assessment of homeschooling.
Though it's true a lot of Christian fundamentalists homeschool it's also that a large number of progressives homeschool. I am one of them. That doesn't mean I'm anti-public schools or anti-teacher or anything like that. I believe everyone should be able to reach their full potential and everyone should be able to have a amazing education. I also believe current public schools in my area do not fulfill my learning needs.
Homeschooling your kids is not a "radical" and horrible thing. It's a path many progressives choose. You should look into homeschooling a little more before you issue judgments like that.
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