A VIRTUAL RESOURCE FOR

LIFE-LONG LEARNING

ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION

HOME LEARNING

Schools are ''something else.''

(Visitors are encouraged to send recommended revisions and additions to mltew@charter.net.)

. . . And also trust no one to be your teacher nor your minister, except he be a man of God, walking in his ways and keeping his commandments.

No one knows who discovered water, but we can be certain it wasn't a fish.

Read about efficient and cost effective educational procedures recommended to a city school system board of trustees. Consider the book, EDUCATION: THERE MUST BE A BETTER WAY!, as background. A better way has since been found, to what is referred to as the ''soviet conveyor belt'' traditional system, by Oliver DeMille in his book A Thomas Jefferson Education and related seminars

Examples of cost effective education are Alternative Education Resources (AERO), the California Homeschoolers' Network, The Digital Education Network, Choice 2000 in Riverside's neighboring city, Perris, and Boston School in nearby Big Bear City, CA, an apparent umbrella school for home schoolers. Students in Kindergarten through Grade 5 in southern and central California are eligible to enroll in K12, formerly the Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School, which provides an innovative, personalized education for students, developed for home schooling parents with the help of former Education Secretary Bill Bennett. [Charter Schools' Caveat] ATCO School Supply's Home Schooler's Educational Products store is located in Corona. The Corona and Riverside Academies are unique site-based educational co-ops for Eagles Peak Charter School. The Arizona Virtual Academy appears to be a type Merrill envisioned in his 1987 book's conclusions. A very progressive option to the public education system, a type of ''learning community,'' is located very close to Riverside, the Hawthorne Center in Bloomington, which sponsors training in several subjects.

The ''caveat'' above has additional support in We Stand for Homeschooling, which accuses government funded schools of usurping the word ''homeschool'' and derivatives:

. . . Anyone who is enrolled in a publicly-funded school program, even if that public school is based in the home, is a public school student and not a homeschooler. . .

A CHN (California Homeschool Network) Local Contact for the San Bernardino area has arranged with Barnes & Noble in Rancho Cucamonga to sponsor a lecture series every 4th Thursday 7:PM at 11090 Foothill Boulevard. One speaker was author Susan Peterson. The coordinator of a Home School Fair has also been a presenter. Available at these meetings are copies of THE LINK, THE NATION'S HOMESCHOOL NEWSPAPER, editors of which were presenters at the January 2001 CHN Barnes and Noble meeting Michael and Mary Leppert, also sponsors of HomeSchool Zone. Lindamood-Bell was represented at a CHN presentation in September 2002. The meetings function as support for those who attend. There the viability of home learning is reinforced from observations such as those of Cal Thomas' ''Coming home to school'' of June 7, 2000 (Mallard agrees) and ''Inventing a Girl: An Experience in Homeschooling'' a video with a fresh learner-led-learning twist by filmmaker Fernanda Rossi. Grown Without Schooling documents other home school successes via video. Read also ''There's No Place Like HOME'' from Scouting Magazine September 1992, an excellent rationale which summarize home learning advantages. How does a homeschool education compare to a public school education? According to Brian D. Ray, Ph.D., ''Dozens of studies have now been completed. Often such studies involve an analysis of standardized achievement test scores of home-educated students . . . . the national average for such tests is the 50th percentile. The home-educated students averaged at or above the 80th percentile on standardized achievements tests in all subject areas.'' (From Homeschooling on the Threshold; A Survey of Research at the Dawn of the New Millennium, by Brian D. Ray, Ph.D., NHERI Publications.) Concurrence is in ''The Why of Homeschool'' by Isabel Lyman. Researchers may wish to seek corroboration from The National Center for Education Statistics. The socialization criticism and myth is debunked in a research project reported in ''Homeschooling Grows Up''

Homeschooled youth Kyle Williams demonstrates his journalistic ability and political discernment.

One on-line alliance (Click here to support this organization by purchasing a gift) (website home page) has written an on-line book about progressive options to education, CREATING LEARNING COMMUNITIES (also published in paperback - 380 pages [August 2000] Foundation for Educational Renewal; ISBN: 1885580045), to which Merrill has contributed a chapter to the on-line edition, which encourages and proposes a plan for individualizing instruction.

Without extreme adjustments, different personality types , learning orientations and temperaments render individuation impossible in the typical overcrowded school. ''One size fits all'' schools deny the existence of individual modes of learning, as exposed in Michael Gurian's book on gender differences in learning. New Zealand's St. Georges School is a pioneer. Failure to individuate violates a learning principle, ''Really effective education must give learners an opportunity to formulate their own patterns of understanding.'' An Internet search for ''individualized public school'' led to an expected result in ''AltaVista found no document matching your query,'' but use of ''individualized school'' led to these and approximately 80 more:

Enhancing Learning Through Multiage Grouping. The Lancasterian Monitorial System of Education appears to be an earlier, similar approach.
I-HERC Academy
Thomson Learning is a global provider of tailored learning solutions for individuals, businesses and institutions.
Laurel Springs
WE ARE THE HARKER SCHOOL (Math Department provides links to on-line math websites.)
THE NEW SCHOOL

Considering the observation that learning is as individual as a person's fingerprints (documented somewhere herein), the following anecdote, contributed by a former student, is significant:

. . . . But this doesn't take into account plain ol' hardwiring differences in people's brainpans! I think learning takes a combo of "nature" and "nurture". My sister and I both took piano from the same teacher for years and years. She can sightread like a bullet-train, I can't. I can play by ear, she can't. I can fake a song with an accompaniment if someone hums a bit of it, in whatever key. She can play four-part choir music for rehearsals without ever having seen the score before.

Things I take for granted, like memorizing music in a day or so, other people think are miraculous and truly could not accomplish. I have tried for years to improve my sight-reading, and have not been successful. I don't think it has anything to do with the way I was taught, but more with what comes easily to my wiring system.

Golden Retrievers retrieve because they were bred to do so. I've never seen a pit bull retrieve.

Soar with Your Strengths.

Visit National Coalition of Alternative Community Schools. Individuation through self-learning, now recognized as extremely more effective, fulfilling and pleasurable than the traditional institutionalized curriculum system, protects students from becoming conditioned to accept being subordinately compliant, the apparent unstated anti-democratic objective of coercive schooling. The Autodidactic Press provides book reviews of several excellent books on the subject. Teacher dependency through graduate school is perpetuated as a consequence of procedures followed in traditional education. Yet, several, after having escaped the strangling and stifling compulsory education system, followed their curiosity and became very successful and influential without college degrees. An audience participant in a home learning seminar (20 Sep 2001) stated that many of her Maritime worker associates without High School diplomas earn six-figure annual incomes. Another reported that her son is an apprentice plumber who makes nearly $50,000 a year and never graduated from High School. Several other such jobs can be found by searching Career Builder.

Gary North writes, ''Formal education is so unimportant that you can leave it in the hands of professional educators,'' in a comparison of the real world of business and artificial world of academia, and provides evidence that self-learning is more valuable in the real world. Kathie F. Nunley explains that learner led learning can exist even in the traditional classroom, and Bill Ellis, one of the founders of the Creating Learning Communities project, initiated this whitepaper developed by the All Kinds of Learning Forum. .

Don't be fooled by B.S., M.S., Ph.D.; educated is as educated does.

Dr. Thomas Armstrong shares his views on genius in children.
Hunter School personnel concur with Dr. Thomas Armstrong regarding ADD/ADHD: ''. . . We view children with Attention Deficit Disorder not as disabled or disadvantaged, but as possessing a powerful talent to learn and succeed. Children with ADD think faster and can perceive a wider range of stimuli than other children. . . .'' Dr. Fred Baughman exposes the Fraud of ADD and ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder).

Theories of Learning Index contains links compatible with the Armstrong/Gardner ideology. Regarding the most common prescription for ADD, an article, ''Blackmailing Parents To Keep Kids On Drugs,'' underscores the stupidity of schools' forcing children into environments which are not compatible with their temperaments and parents' acquiescing to such abuse, even death.

In 1971, George Lucas produced his first feature film, an anti-utopian masterpiece entitled THX-II38. One particularly arresting feature of THX (which was the "name" of the film's main character) was that in the society envisioned by Lucas, "drug evasion" was a crime. . . .

Phyllis Schlafly's ''No Child Left Unmedicated'' convincingly explains that this situation is more present reality than science fiction.

Introducing Informal Education may be somehow connected to Summerhill, at least in philosophy.
The Living School appears to be similar to the Sudbury model democratic schools.

NO MORE TESTS!

Traditional, particularly public, education has not kept pace with understanding of how the brain retains information. Brain research since the early 1980's, as reported by MindLift Foundation, (web-site no longer available) finds that the typical school anxiety-laden environment produces blood flow and chemical conditions which handicap memory, render learning difficult, damage learning potential and contradict the primary stated purpose of schools' existence. It cites the research of Leslie Hart. The misguided proponents of "teach to the test" and "gorge and regurgitate" procedures are apparently not aware of the opinions of the Person of the Century, Albert Einstein, and other Nobel Prize winners, who took issue with such damaging anti-learning procedures. Another thought in support of the anti-gorge and regurgitate misguided mania of standardized testing is written in Chapter 3 of MACHINE PSYCHOLOGY (and the politics of everyday robots) by Franklin Wayne Poley, M.Sc., Ph.D. [copyright (c), 2000]:

For example, a physician will usually select a reference work off the shelf for prescribing drugs. It would be a waste of the physician's time, if not impossible, to memorize the thousands of prescriptions. That information on mass storage (eg disk or tape) can be accessed at least as quickly as a human finding a book on a shelf and leafing through it. Because it is untiring and error-free it surpasses human equivalency.

The Encyclopedia of Computing Science says, ''In contrast to the accuracy and high speed of modern-day digital computers, the [human] brain is relatively slow and imprecise. . . ''

The more we study, the more we know
The more we know, the more we forget
The more we forget, the less we know,
So why study?

Furthermore, aside from the damage to learning, harm is done by the federal government's intrusion into that which should remain a local concern. We do well to recall the purpose of government as expressed well by one of the United States' founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson:

The way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to. Let the national government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the State governments with the civil rights, law, police, and administration of what concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties, and each ward direct the interests within itself. It is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration of every man's farm by himself; by placing under every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best. What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body. (Letter to Joseph C. Cabell, February 2, 1816.)

The Freedom Force web site includes specific links which address this issue, ''The Chasm'' and ''Secret Societies and Hidden Agendas'' (''The Future Is Calling Parts One and Two'' c 2003 by G. Edward Griffin). A rather extensive review with quotations of a corroborative study, Cleon Skousen's The Naked Capitalist, is found in ''The Mail Archive.'' Applicable to education, in his Chapter Eight, ''The Subversion of American Education,'' Skousen reports that Quigley provides evidence that the public education system is used as a tool for collectivists toward a world government in which the United States' sovereignty is in jeopardy.

Beginning on page 980, Dr. Quigley mentions an incident which demonstrates how powerful tycoons of international finance have [Skousen's page 69] competed with each other behind the scenes to dominate American educational institutions.

Speaking of Columbia University, Dr. Quigley says: ''This, of all universities, had been the one closest to J.P. Morgan and Company, and its president, Nicholas Murray Butler, was Morgan's chief spokesman from ivied halls. He had been chosen under Morgan influence, . . . .''

. . . [Columbia's] . . policies followed the mainstream of world collectivism. . . . set up a "Chair of Polish Studies" and appointed the well-known Marxist, Dr. Manfred Kridl, to fill the position. . . . . The father of Progressive Education, John Dewey, made Columbia his chief center of operations. His favorite students and disciples, . . . a relatively small group of educators, who gravitated toward Columbia Teachers College, have in the course of twenty years turned thousands and thousands of teachers into missionaries of the collectivist, i.e., socialist, creed. . . . getting policies from the National Educational Association and being required to teach from . . . texts which downgraded traditional ideals and basic concepts of economics and government.

Dr. Wittmer: Conquest of the American Mind
Dr. E. Merril Root: Brain Washing in the High Schools
Dr. E. Merril Root: Collectivism on the Campus
Augustin G. Rudd: Bending of the Twig

These authors were able to document the fact that for many years American schools have been infiltrated with a steady stream of amorality, humanism, collectivism and anti-individualism emanating from Columbia's Teachers College, the National Education Association and other Establishment centers.

''Hitler Said it Best'' applies here. Phyllis Schlafley believes activist judges are also culpably influenced to undermine constitutional protections. An Independence Day 2004 Eagle Forum editorial strongly emphasizes that independence depends upon sovereignty. See the AMERICAN RESISTANCE FOUNDATION for solutions. A brief history of the gradual loss of United States' sovereignty, which began over a century ago, is included in an introduction to global governance; this ''Timeline to Global Governance'' provides further corroboration with very informative links. The Freedom Force web site above suggests an earlier beginning:

. . . . to the year 1870. We find ourselves suddenly in England in an elegant classroom of Oxford University, and we are listing to a lecture by a brilliant intellectual, John Ruskin.

Even earlier than that, according to the Chronological History of the New World Order reference above, a clandestine ''financial element'' was identified:

On November 21, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt wrote a letter to Col. Edward Mandell House, President Woodrow Wilson's close advisor: "The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson... "

The Title of Liberty was initiated in July 2004 to remind citizens of the important values retained through defense of freedom.

Education's attack on individual liberty and promotion of increasing and increasingly remote government control are exposed in ''FedEd: Education for Global Government,'' by Steven Yates, a review of Fed Ed: The New Federal Curriculum and How It's Enforced, by Allen Quist. The national government's ability to seduce state and local governments to lose their rights is compounded in a presidential order to seduce churches to do likewise through the ''Faith Based Initiative,'' which will cause churches to lose control of their own schools when they use public funds for church education:

Article IX (Education) SECTION 4 SECTARIAN CONTROL OR INFLUENCE PROHIBITED. All schools maintained or supported wholly or in part by the public funds shall be forever free from sectarian control or influence.

''The Impact of High-Stakes Tests on Student Academic Performance'' by Audrey L. Amrein and David C. Berliner underscores the error of the federal government'$ $eduction of local $chool di$trict$. (Education Policy Studies Laboratory, Arizona State University, December 2002)

Although test scores on state-administered tests usually increase after high-stakes testing policies are implemented, the evidence presented here suggests that in these instances students are learning the content of the state-administered test and perhaps little else. This learning does not, however, appear to have any meaningful carryover effect.

Models and Theories of Learning provide additional related resources. See also Your Amazing Brain Rediscovered, a chapter from The Learning Web's THE LEARNING REVOLUTION, apparently a book in the traditional sense as well as a hypermedia CD-ROM, an extremely more efficient means of conveying information than traditional books (Quotes from the CD-ROM sampler: ''One of the only places operating largely as it did more than 50 years ago would be the local school,'' ''The traditional education system is obsolete,'' and ''People of all ages can learn virtually anything if allowed to do it through their own unique styles, their personal strengths''; but discussion of CD-ROM is a topic more appropriate for the next few paragraphs dealing with educational technology, anticipated in (Technology). More: The Brain Lab; Mind/Brain Network and Caine Learning Center. M.I.T. research continues. Related is KCET's: The Secret Life of the Brain. A pragmatic application of this research is used by a homeschooling group.

Not exactly parallel, but contain similar suggestions:

     "What, a university in the city?
          Why, the city IS the university."
                      -----Aristotle

     "What, a computer in the school?
          Why, the computer IS the school."  Here's proof:

The school considers the community to be its classroom. When learning takes place in the world beyond the classroom, the learners understand their connection to that world and their responsibilities in it. We regard our immediate community to include our staff, our children and our parents.

What is MaMaMedia? Founded in 1995, MaMaMedia Inc. is a privately held Internet company creating unique activity-based learning products for kids 12 and under and their families. The company's mission is to promote playful learning and technological fluency. MaMaMedia Inc. prides itself on creating innovative, meaningful ways to marry the power of the computer with the potential of the child. Learning through entertainment is valid.

Yue-Sai Kan,, one of Merrill's former students, now a celebrity in China, has recently launched an Educational Toy Company which features a doll, ''Yue-Sai Wa Wa'' and an associated cartoon series, whereby children will enjoy learning about cultures, ethics, English and computers, also marketed by ChinaSprout. Additional Chinese innovative educational products are found at Asia for Kids.

Merrill has advocated use of computers and other electronic educational technology since the mid 1960's, wrote about it in the manuscript referenced above and included his prognostication of the value of on-line computer education (distance learning) in a presentation to the Western Educational Computing Conference in Palo Alto in 1989. Cerritos College's English 100 Online 15-Week Freshman Composition was operational before the InterNet was invented. Designer George Jaeger, then Cerritos English instructor, Steve Eskow, then president of the Electronic University, and Merrill were discussing its development in the late 1980's via ISAAC (Intergrated System for Advanced Academic Computing), an IBM and University of Washington sponsored E-mail & BBS system. Distance learning is now not only a reality but a main feature at Rio Salado College in Phoenix and at many other progressive institutions of education, including The University of Phoenix Online, the University of Maryland University College and Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow. InterWise interactive elearning makes it possible ''for teachers and students to interact with each other making U4all.com's concept not only educational but fun.'' The Distance-Educator.com appears to coordinate such endeavors, as does the About Distance Learning site. P.J. Pinchbeck's Homework Helper site contains over 700 links to sites that will help with homework.

Thanks to the Internet, information, per se, is becoming as free and accessible as the air. It is ludicrous that school districts spend an inordinate amount of money to distribute a virtually free commodity. (Letter to RUSD Board of Trustees July 1996)

Math lessons are on the InterNet, as is a statistics (hyper)text book with exercises. MathNerds is a discovery-style, volunteer-based, free service providing help in mathematics to students, teachers, parents and industry.

Fairleigh Dickinson University expects students to take at least one course a year online, and MERLOT> - Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching - appears to provide all courses online and FREE. An apparently new concept in distance education is the ALLSHOUSE & ASSOCIATES site. Sparksnotes contains a veritable library of study guides in several subjects.

( See more cartoons which poke fun at the formal education scene.)
See T.H.E. JOURNAL [TECHNOLOGICAL HORIZONS IN EDUCATION JOURNAL]. The Distance-Educator provides evaluation of technology-based educational systems and many other services. Alike Technics, a Bay Area information design company, is committed to helping users achieve their goals using information available on the Internet. Although those who are victims of the ''Digital Divide'' cannot see the films, and the information is spoken -- much slower than the literate can read -- (''old wine'' in ''new bottles'') the Reinventing Education web site is an impressive example of how the InterNet can use multimedia, as is How Stuff Works, a virtual animated encyclopaedia. The GALT GLOBAL REVIEW reports plans for more technological innovation. Futurist Alvin Toffler describes a home learning center in the ''electronic cottage''; the future about which he wrote is our present. WebCT is actively designing e-Learning solutions for higher education. Kids Design Network is another excellent example. Alfred Bork of the Educational Technology Center for Information and Computer Science at the University of California in Irvine has designed and written about educational technology for decades. His ''Adult Education, Lifelong Learning, and the Future'' gives some idea of his recent activity. AllLearn is an online learning alliance among Oxford, Stanford, and Yale universities. The Learning Community Group's CyberSchool utilizes multiple approaches to train in multiple disciplines.

Online information sources on any subject:
Smart Search "Ask Jeeves" search with keywords or questions.
BrainBoost
InfoPlease Sources: Almanacs, Atlas, Dictionary and Encyclopedia
Scientific Information
Internet Public Library
Librarians' Internet Index
Search engine directory
Search engine directory

Margaret Wente proposes, ''Let's Trash all High Schools,'' where students gain more pain than brain. Vin Suprynowicz agrees:

. . . . Pull your kids out of the government schools, today. Home-school every child. Leave their charnel houses of child enslavement and family destruction derelict and abandoned. We only think we "need" their glorified day care services because mom now has to work full-time just to pay the taxes on dad's paycheck ... to fund the government welfare schools. Refuse to pay another penny in school taxes, loudly and publicly. They've declared war on the rights of parents to raise our own kids. And if it's war they want, Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower taught us the only terms we can afford to offer fascists: Unconditional surrender. An end to the government schools. Close them all.

Dr. Laura Schlessinger concurs in ''Time for public schools to throw in the towel?'' Emerging from the encouragement of Dr. James Dobson, endorsed by Dr. Laura, is a ''Get the Kids Out'' movement, which includes reference to the Exodus Mandate, founded by Gail & Ray Moore. Reverend Moore has expressed his frustration about the lethargy he has witnessed regarding the urgency of his call. Perhaps the John Stossel ''20/20'' Story about ''government monopoly'' of public schools may remove the lethargy. Read comments in an ABC Message Board.

The statement in Henry David Thoreau's classic 1849 essay on civil disobedience (full reference below) applies:

There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; . . .

There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to compulsory school attendance and to public, tax-supported education, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; . . . . . . . let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.

The encroachment on parental prerogative ''Declaration of War on HomeSchoolers'' from the California Department of Education is sufficient to warrant civil disobedience, about which Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) wrote. His 1849 essay ''Civil Disobedience,'' prompted by his refusal to pay taxes, advocated peaceful resistance to unjust laws and had a wide impact [as it can in compulsory attendance laws].

Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? . . . . it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. . . . Why does it not cherish its wise minority? . . . Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. . . .

Of course sustaining the law is important, but, of several contradictory laws, the fundamental law is that of individual rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution: one has the right to do or refrain from doing what s/he wishes, as long as others' rights are not obstructed. Several states' laws recognize families' rights to homeschool (see for example the Texas Leeper/Arlington case), as all states' laws should.

Compulsory education makes about as much NONsense as compulsory entertainment.

reflecting their thoughts.

Purchase one and risk it: To adhere to a principle, a school principal friend one may offend. GET THE KIDS OUT! The public education system is the primary reason constitutional government and conservative principles are being lost to our society, because the ideology of those who control schools is antithetical to such principles. Don't be a wimp! Review the Thoreau admonition above, '' . . . . let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine'' (of compulsory education). The

Merrill's book, Education: There Must be a Better Way, rejected by a literary consultant for representation to publishers because it was considered " . . too controversial; would cause every school board member in America to be up in arms . .," was written during the 1980's. Frustrated by the lethargy and reluctance of educational personnel to accommodate more effective learning techniques, for a few years Merrill abandoned affiliation with the educational establishment by retiring in 1992 from his community college faculty position. In the late 1990's he returned to education and was consequently exposed to many progressive movements which proved that THERE IS A BETTER WAY! There are MANY better ways! These accompanying web pages contain methods in which interested learners have found better ways, albeit, for the most part, outside the scope of traditional, public schooling.

Merrill and his wife, Alta, took an August 2000 work/vacation and were able to visit unique alternative learning facilities in search of ideas for adding to a tutorial academy's services a community life-long learning and homeschooling resource center. Trip planning suggestions were proffered by many individuals mentioned above and below. The implementation of composites of these suggestions and observations may eventuate in the establishment of customized learning centers appropriate for each community according to its circumstances for those who wish to do likewise.

The travel route included much of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah; some of the sites on the itinerary were missed due to time adjustments, routing problems or summer closure.

A resource for assisting parents to assess their children's academic progress has an educational center in nearby Chino Hills.

Orange County Christian Home Education

Laurel Springs School in Ojai, CA is located at 1002 East Ojai Avenue 93024 (administrative offices only; there is no campus except in a learning lab at a nearby church, more a ''virtual'' than physical learning place.) From its brochure: ''Laurel Springs School is an accredited independent study program, offering enrollment in distance learning options and customized online and text-based curricula for Pre K-12th graders . . . .'' Flexibility, use of new educational technology and individualization are promoted.

Bayside Children's College (831/454-0370 - - 1025 Center St., Santa Cruz, CA 95060), founded by Karen Funk, is a purposely small learning center for fifty students ages five to eighteen. Claudia L'Amoreaux (Haven, ''A Collaborative Lifelong Cyber-Learning Community''), [L'Amoreaux link 2]) recommended a visit there. Jr. High and High School credits are earnable at Bayside.

South Street Centre is a Community Learning Centre for Homeschooling Families in Boulder Creek, CA 95020. Also in the Bay Area is The Center for New Discoveries in Learning.

A Sacramento California group of school dropouts and school rejects formed their own school, "Drop Out Resource Center," at 1114 21st Street (916/443-2223), next door to "Time Tested Books," also with 1114 21st as the street address. The following was excerpted from an early Summer 2000 posting on a listserv forum (CCL-LCC):

They opened there in 1997, rented a room, worked with a book store to set up their own learning library. With donations from sympathetic neighbors they started a newsletter that has helped other nonschool groups start their own learning centers. [Drop Out, 1114 21st St., Sacramento, CA 95814 USA] DROPOUT E-mail: dropout@emrl.com.

The electronic mail for the contact person for DropOut referenced in CREATING LEARNING COMMUNITIES was inoperable.

Innovative Education Management is headquartered in Placerville, between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe, and has a campus, which serves Riverside County, as close as Julian in San Diego County. Home Education Magazine sponsors a directory of Support Groups nationally and regionally, which includes reference to the Riverside Area Home Learners.

Others in California:
Considering HomeSchooling
The CHN president (2001) is a sponsor of an independent study program (ISP) for home learners.
Legal Reference Desk for California Homeschoolers: A Page of Annotated Links
Opinions' rebuttal from the Home Schoolers' Legal Defense Association. WARNING: Adobe Acrobat ergo SLOW!
(Note: In May of 2003, California Department of Education Deputy General Counsel Michael Hersher informed the Legal Chair of the HomeSchool Association of California that the CDE is no longer telling anyone that ''homeschooling is not legal in California.''[hawt0522.dnl])
Paul Dorr explains how to defeat the tyrannical education system.
Help for Homeschoolers
Homefires~The Journal of Homeschooling Online!
Cedarwood Sudbury School
Sacramento Valley School
The HomeSchool Association of California
Play Mountain Place .Antioch University in Los Angeles offers ''an open, non-judgmental and nurturing environment..'' Some of its students function as interns for Play Mountain Place. Cooperative Education at Antioch College is apparently an alternative approach in higher education.
The George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF)
California Law Allows Opting out of Tests
BayShore School and BayShore Homeschoolers' Support Group in Long Beach, sponsor an annual home education conference.
EnCompass Family Center
CAHS:California Athletics for Home Schools
School of Choice Academy
The California High School Proficiency Examination (CHSPE) provides an opportunity for eligible persons to prove their proficiency in the basic skills and receive a certificate equal to a California high school diploma.
So positive are reports of homeschoolers' successes, that the University of California in Riverside recognizes this and actively recruits home scholars.

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Eastham Community Center "Linkup" is affiliated with the Oregon City School District 62 and is located in the former Eastham School. It houses a variety of alternative education programs including, among others, a Christian School, a pre-school, a Montessori School, a school for handicapped adults and Linkup, a parent designed and monitored program for homeschooling families. Eastham Community Center is an epitome of a composite community learning center, administered by Larry Didway and Becky Taylor. It reflects the school district's motto, ''Together we are boldly committed to lifelong responsible learning.''
Ann Lahrson Fisher is associated with homeschooling in Oregon, a founder of homeschooling organizations and author of HOMESCHOOLING IN OREGON, FUNDAMENTALS OF HOMESCHOOLING and a chapter or more in CREATING LEARNING COMMUNITIES. Ann Fisher explains the best of both homeschooling and community based schooling.
Home Schooling Resources in/near Oregon:
Oregon Home Education Network
National Home Education Research Institute

NHEN,National Home Educators Network.
Clackamas Community College
Oregon Museum of Science and Industry
Parents' Education Association PAC
Saturday Academy Oregon Graduate Inst.
The Teaching Home Magazine
Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory
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Washington information:
Washington Home Education Network
Moore Foundation (Raymond/Dorothy)
Multiage learning environments appear to be pioneered by Chimacum School District.
New Horizons for Learning is another innovative center in Washington, which is virtually available anywhere.
The Family Learning Center is in Redmond.
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Idaho, Wyoming, Utah:
The Pocatello, Idaho School District sponsors two alternative schools, the Kinport Academy and the Teen Parent Connection.
The mission of Rock Springs Alternative High School on the Western Wyoming Community College campus in the Sweetwater County School District is to develop self-directed lifelong learners.
The Community Fine Arts Center (400 C Street, in Rock Springs, WY 82901) is, although not deliberately so, a community life-long learning center for the arts.
Natrona County School District in Casper, Wyoming is a rare public school system which incorporates " . . . Alternative schools of choice with emphasis on a variety of instructional strategies . . . [and acknowledges that] no one school . . meets the needs of all children. . . "
The Hawthorne University receptionist is (Summer 2000) the widow of the founder of the school, Dr. Alfred W. Munzert, deceased. She graciously and enthusiastically provided information about her former husband and family. He was the author of a self-published book, National Directory of External Degree Programs (Hemisphere Publications, 4599 Sunset Hill Road, Machias, NY 14101, distributed by Hawthorne Books, 260 Madison Avenue, NY 10016, 1976). It includes listings of programs in institutions which give credit for Life Experience, Equivalence Exams, Military Training, Correspondence Courses and Independent Study, innovative concepts in 1976. He wrote several books (nine - perhaps most are out of print), most notably a Self-Scoring I.Q. Test (1977) and Test Your I.Q. (1997).

The Mt. Vernon Academy entry in the Jerry Mintz book, The Almanac of Education Choices, states that the school type is "home-based." A staff member clarified that that is the way it was formerly, but it no longer caters especially to the homeschooled.

The Utah Home Education Association is listed in the Jerry Mintz book, but was not visitable, because, as mentioned in the voice mail recording, it does not have an office. The phone number 801/535-1533 is apparently in Roy.

In search of a homeschooling resource center in Utah Valley, south of Salt Lake City, calls or visits were made to the Brigham Young University Independent Study Department, HomeQuest International, The Briarwood Educational Network, The Discovery Academy and another listed in the Provo, Utah Yellow Pages, whose facility was no longer functioning because of competition from the Internet. The contact there suggested a visit to ''Love to Learn'' (741 North State Road 198, Salem, UT 84653-9299). Although small and located in a remote rural area, ''Love to Learn'' is a viable homeschooling resource center and outlet for educational supplies, holistic health products and books, including a book by 1980's homeschooling poster-child Alexandra Swann, No Regrets: How Home Schooling Earned Me a Master's Degree at Age 16 (Cygnet Press 1989 & 1994). ''Love to Learn'' shares space with Latter-day Family Resources

Joyce Swann, mother of Alexandra, is a very strict home schooling taskmaster; nevertheless, Alexandra and her siblings, of which she is the oldest, never had to study more than three hours a day, and she accomplished all of her high school objectives in 18 months, before she became a teenager. Her elementary correspondence school was the Calvert School of Baltimore, her high school was American School of Chicago (a.k.a. American School of Correspondence), undergraduate college: Brigham Young University; graduate school: California State University at Dominguez Hills.

The book about the Colfax brothers by David and Micki Colfax, Homeschooling For Excellence (Warner Books 1988), did not include the regimen prescribed by Joyce Swann. Colfaxes even state (page 4)". . . allowed them to work alone and at their own pace to about the sixth-grade level. . . ." Their sons won scholarships to Harvard University.

This quote from Alexandra defends "peculiar" home schoolers:

Most people who have not been involved in home-schooling have images of the home-schooled child living his life in an ivory tower, surrounded only by books, food and water, cut off from all human contact from birth until adulthood. Therefore, they believe that he grows up to be a lonely, maladjusted, poorly educated, introverted, social misfit. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. The home-schooled child often has a very positive self-image because he has always been treated as an individual rather than merely "part of the crowd." He is accustomed to being related to on a one-on-one basis. Therefore, he rarely feels that he must do something to make himself "stand out." He often feels that he is special, a person of value who has a contribution to make to the world. Consequently, because he respects himself, he is able to show the same respect for others and to engage in lasting relationships. . . (page 69).

Others in or culturally related to Utah:
NDCHSG was created as a means to co-op additional ideas, field trips and park days specifically for North Davis County Homeschoolers.
Word of Wisdom forum.
Latter Day Saint Home Educators' Association
The Bowden Family & Education Bookmarks (formerly CTR Academy)-- links to California.
Home School Support Group of Orange County
LDS Internet Resources
Chat Transcipts
John Monnett's Archive Publishers.
School of Abraham
Karl & Betty Pearson
HomeSchool Utah!
Save LDS Youth!
LDS Homeschooling in California
LDS Living
MSTAR.NET
George Wythe College
******************End of travelogue***************

First Class, Inc. is another example of a program which promotes Life-Long Learning (Washington, D.C.).

The HOME EDUCATION MAGAZINE web site is a virtual homeschoolers' resource center. Sign the resolution encouraged by the HOME EDUCATION MAGAZINE!

The Nodland family member's Road School allows them to avoid concern about any state's compulsory education law. Adventure School has similar reports of travel experiences.

The American Homeschool Association (AHA) is a service organization sponsored in part by the publishers of The Home Education Magazine.

The Alliance for the Separation of School and State is a grass-roots non-profit organization founded in 1994. Its mission is to inform Americans how education can be improved, especially for the poor, by ending government involvement in K-12 education. A Separation of School and State message discusses the misinterpretation of the Constitution's occurences of the phrase ''provide for the general welfare'' as erroneous justification for federal involvement in education. More constitutional principles are addressed in The National Center for Constitutional Studies.

Whose values ARE your children learning at school? Consider this link. Leading educators were signatories to the original (1933) Humanist Manifesto. More recently, other educators endorsed secular humanism. Beverly Eakman warns of the effects, as does Lew Rockwell author Linda Schrock Taylor. More recently, Senator Zell Miller addressed the U.S. Senate about ''The Deficit of Decency'' (Senate - February 12, 2004) (search using deficit of decency), and a return to that ideology which Humanism has undermined.

Trustees of the California Homeschool Network opine ''Accreditation Plan Poses Threat to Homeschool Liberty'' and warn against the dangers of accreditation.

Accreditation, professional certification, and occupational licensing are all forms of regulation employed by interest groups to minimize market competition. School accreditation helps maintain the monopoly enjoyed by the public school system, . .

Government Licensing: The Enemy of Employment emphasizes the observation that the monopolistic education system controlled by teachers' unions has several parallels in the archaic Renaissance Guild system. ''The number one purpose of the craft guild was to protect the economic interests of its members.'' Enterprise and innovation were stifled, as they are now in education. Teacher credentialing is not a means of guaranteeing quality but a means of perpetuating mediocrity and excluding individual initiative. Merrill included this quote in his book's chapter on home education
:

One-on-one instruction is the ideal form of education. . . There is no credible study which indicates that a teaching certificate says anything concerning a person's ability to teach others. - - Dr. Donald Ericson, UCLA Graduate School of Education
.

. . . So you see that our schools are not failing, they're just succeeding in ways we prefer not to see. Turning out graduates with no skills, with no survival value, and with no choice but to work or starve are not flaws of the system, they are features of the system. These are the things the system must do to keep things going on as they are. . .

. . . . the desire to learn is hardwired into the human child just the way that the desire to reproduce is hardwired into the human adult. It's genetic. . . .

. . . the learning curve of preschool children swoops upward like a mountain--but quickly levels off when they enter school. By the third or fourth grade it's completely flat for most kids. .

California 2004 Senate candidate Gail Lightfoot ran on a platform which used Gatto's solutions to problems in education. Read impressions/perceptions of Gatto's recent book. Gatto helps readers realize and be able to observe how traditional compulsory educational procedures are unconscionably damaging to students' learning abilities. An officer in the California Home Schooling Network made the point (25Jan2001) that less than approximately 10% of students in school possess the learning modes addressed therein; others suffer, further emphasizing the need for individualizing the means whereby learning is facilitated. (See A.E.R.O. 9Jan2001. Without adapting to the learner is tantamount to attempting to get ducks to climb trees and snakes to fly. Furthermore, educators, constituting the ''Educracy'' (government of the government employees in education), who ''vote for themselves largesse from the public treasury'' (Tocqueville, Alexis Charles Henri Cl‚rel de (1805-1859) predicted [1835] that this would lead to the eventual demise of the American democratic system [DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA]), undermine family solidarity by presuming to usurp the proper prerogative of parents through encouraging legislation expanding the size of the day and year of compulsory education, rushing society head-long into the prognostications of Aldous Huxley. ( See letter to PRESS ENTERPRISE editor). Self interested school representatives' promotion and government lackeys' support of longer school days and school years are undermining parental influence and destroying family values and cohesiveness (See World Congress of Families observations), a situation perpetuated since the mid-19th century for their own benefit. (See another letter to PRESS ENTERPRISE editor) An 1886 book, POISON DROPS IN THE FEDERAL SENATE, provides statistical evidence that compulsory schooling is a cause of delinquency.

The Educracy has been exposed for illegal activity by The Landmark Legal Foundation:

As part of the Foundation's Quality Schools initiative, Landmark uncovered overwhelming evidence that the National Education Association has financed and run coordinated political campaigns with the Democratic National Committee, other Democratic campaign organizations, the AFL-CIO and Emily's List-without reporting the expenditures to its members or the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), as required by federal law. (LANDMARK UNLEASHES MAJOR CRIMINAL COMPLAINT AGAINST NEA September 4, 2003 -- link no longer available.)

Kurt Johmann's Homepage on Science, History, Politics reviews Gatto's and others' observations on education.

Wendy Priesnitz is the author of CHALLENGING ASSUMPTIONS IN EDUCATION and editor of NATURAL LIFE MAGAZINE (founded in 1976).

Paths of Learning (Archives include myriad, quasi-infinite progressive educational links with commentary!) is published and sponsored by The Foundation for Educational Renewal.

Dr. Thomas Armstrong caught the attention of the alternative education community with his 1987 book IN THEIR OWN WAY (Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc. 1987) and is a proponent of the multiple intelligence approach to learning.

Other references:

Home School Advisor provides Myriad resources.
The Tutor/Mentor Village
Grace Llewelyn'sTeenage Liberation Handbook and Not Back to School Camp
A viable life-style option exists ''on the road'' in a motor-home in any or every state.
''And the Skylark Sings with Me: Adventures in Homeschooling and Community-Based Education''
Educational Heretics Press
HomeSchool World
Linda Dobson suggests reading ''A Warning to Students of All Ages,'' an eloquent, perceptive, albeit abstruse and lengthy, diatribe, which explains that compulsory and coercive schooling is the primary reason people do not yearn to learn; schools are further culpable because their goal is to train students to be consumers of commodities and serve business rather than to experience joy and develop creativity. Dobson's THE ART OF EDUCATION page includes excerpts from her book of that title. Her Declaration of Educational Independence needs a consequent Revolutionary War. Compare this with the original.
National Home Education Network
JOHN HOLT'S BOOKSTORE
Home Schooling Guides and References
Resources: Fischler Graduate School of Education and Human Services Nova Southeastern University
Current and Choice Books on Homeschooling
The About Network
The Well-Trained Mind
Alliance for the Separation of School and State
Wondertree Foundation for Natural Learning
Texas Resources.
Houston Unschoolers' Group (HUG)
Arizona Families for Home Education (AFHE)
THE LEARNING REVOLUTION from the Learning Web.
College for Home Scholars. Patrick Henry College.
The HomeSchool Central Mall
The Coalition for Community Schools
Taking Children Seriously
Nobel Prize Winners Hate School (Learn in Freedom)
Support Educational Freedom.
Tesseract School is in Eagan Minnesota. Tesseract's Arizona affiliates are mentioned in a REASON ON-LINE article about the advantages of school choice.
Unschooling.com is bursting with information on how to create a learning environment that nourishes the whole family!

Ivan Illich's writings reminded Merrill of a 1987 exposure to a comment made by Raymond Moore, that the traditional school is a socialistic system, an observation poignantly stated by Jacob G. Hornberger (''Children are Property of the State''). In this respect, America 2003 is no different from Russia 1953. Merrill continues to express his concerns in messages such as #1 and #2> to the Coalition for Self Learning. Rich Gibson of the San Diego State University Education Department echoes Illich's concern:

. . . . One in four people in the US are directly connected to schools: school workers, students, parents. Many others are linked in other ways. School now is not merely school, but the point of origin for health care, food, and daytime shelter for many people. . . . . schools are also huge markets (consider the bus purchases, architectural and building costs, salaries, and potential for corruption), . . . warehouse children, as tax supported day care . . companies whose workers are on the job, . . . . work that cause the present day adults in a family to see their children an average of 20 hours less a week than they did in 1979. . . . .

Evidence that ''schools are something else,'' mentioned above, is found and amplified in Scientific American's ''Exploding the Self-Esteem Myth,'' which reveals ''Boosting students' self-esteem has become a national preoccupation -- but it does little to improve grades or discourage bad behavior,'' as do many education establishment ruses.

As an example of an apparent cause of the comparative excessive cost
of education in America, this appeared in an Associated Press
release dated September 12, 1996 ("Report Urges Overhaul of Teacher
Recruiting, Training, Rewards" by Deb Riechmann, AP Education
Writer):

     For every four classroom teachers, there are nearly six other
     school employees in the United States compared with other
     countries where the teaching staff makes up 60 percent to 80
     percent of public education employees.

The government is eroding many constitutional provisions, particularly the 10th Amendment (See Jefferson quote above.):

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

The big problem with NCLB, though, remains that its intent is the opposite of what it claims. Former assistant secretary of education, Chester E. Finn, Jr., once said, "The public education system as we know it has proved that it cannot reform itself. It is an ossified government monopoly."

Corroboration is found in Gary Ratner's review of a book, In Defense of Our Children: When Politics, Profit and Education Collide, by Elaine M. Garan.

Eric Johnson comments on the anti-freedom disposition of public education. The Maple River Education Coalition is similarly concerned. ''A Case Against Compulsion'' by Mary K. Novello, Ed.D, Adjunct Fellow, Washington Institute March 1998, appears consistent with concern about the socialistic, work-project nature of the education system:

. . . Do children need school or does the school bureaucracy need children in order to justify its existence? . .

A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body. - - - - -John Stuart Mill, English Philosopher

. Juanita Doyon designs anti-test buttons, which reflect her attitudes expressed in her book, Not With Our Kids You Don't,

as does this link. Juanita ran for the position of Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Susan Ohanian also protests eloquently and denounces ''No Child Left Behind'' (NCLB) with buttons and cartoons.

Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum decries loss of local control and provides a wealth of additional information in the Education Reporter.
(Waldorf)Youth Initiative High School
Learning Orientations.
Uncle Eric Books

Medallion School Partners Provide Quality Educational Enrichment Services To Children, Families, and Schools.
Creative Educational Systems' Arts-in-Education Learning Center online
Shickshantar, the People's Institute for Rethinking Education and Development.
Center for Education Reform
World's leading source of Education News
Unschoolers Unlimited
Teen Ink, a monthly print magazine and a book series written by teens for teens.
A to Z Home's Cool Homeschooling Web Site by Ann Zeise has myriad links arranged as a virtual encyclopaedia.
Why We HomeSchool explains why so many homeschool.
Porter Sargent Publishing
Lew Rockwell, protagonist for free enterprise.
PUBLIC SCHOOLS, PUBLIC MENACE.
School information for public, private and charter schools nationwide.
Welcome to NCES. (National Center for Educational Studies) Students' Classroom helps you find a library anywhere in the country.
Talking Letters
Vermonters for Better Education
LeapFrog Enterprises, Inc.
Home Education Newsletter Exchange
Nova Classical School
Accelerated Achievement home school curriculum.
NoIndoctrination.org is a charitable and educational 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
Jewish Home Educators' Network
KidsClick! Library System
Yahooligans, the webguide for kids.
Safe Kids
Count On Math Activities
Educational Toys' Survey
The Global Schoolhouse
Natural Child Project
Education in a Box
Science IQ; Fascinating science links to explore.
Animated Atlas history and geography.
Purple Math Friendly algebra help!
FIRE: Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
Parent-Directed Education
Russ Andrews Web Education.
The Association of American Educators (AAE) is a viable option to educratic unions.