On-line support for home-schoolers.

People who home-school their kids generally have good results with the “Three R’s”. Most kids are instinctively curious and really want to be able to do stuff their elders do. Here in Indiana the home-schooled lower-grade kids routinely trounce the public school kids and score on a par with private-school kids on the state (called ISTEP) standardized tests. If sent off to public schools in the fourth grade the kids look upon their peers as ‘dummies” and it takes years for the public schools (with their emphasis on egalitarianism) to wear the little home-schooled kids down.


Where the home-schoolers struggle are in the middle-school and higher classes. Algebra is not an easy thing for most parents to get across and indeed, many never mastered the subject themselves. Science can be tough for some people. Geography and history require someone with a real passion for the subject.

Some local churches are marshalling retirees to help out homeschoolers. Retired engineers can teach math and some sciences quite well. Retired doctors are strong in biology and chemistry. Retired airline pilots know geography in a way few people can even approach. Retire military officers have stories that can make history come alive.

These people have a huge advantage over regular teachers. When the kids ask: “What good is this?” the old goats can hit them with a barrage of stories of how they used the subject.

Problem is that these old greybeards and bluehairs can only do this in short bursts. Also few places have that wide variety of retired specialists.

Already some higher education entities are using Internet based classes. By doing this one could leverage the experience of retired technical specialists over a wide area.

As more and more Americans are laid off due to ObamaTax and runaway regulation, they’ll have the time to devote to properly teaching their kids. By assisting them with the specialist classes, we have yet another tool to break the monopoly of unionized teachers, and a way to combat the brainwashing of the next generation.