Kids - Woodbridge,VA

I will dare you.... right here and now... to try walking in someone else's shoes for a month.

Go get 3 jobs that pay minimum wage. Work 18 hours a day.

Do it for a month.

Now, tell me how much less you love your children because you have to work 3 jobs.
Now, tell me how you spend your time that you can squeeze in with your children.
Now, tell me if your children should be taken away because you have to trust that their homework is being taken care of during their afterschool care.
Now, tell me if it's a choice between tutoring and food which one you choose to buy for your kids. Tell me if you choose necessary medicine or rent.

It's not BETTER parenting, having the time each and every single day to spend with your kids. It's LUCKIER parenting.

Each and every single one of us could get screwed and end up in poverty. Lose everything we've worked for and have to start from scratch. Trust funds can be mismanaged, a spouse can die, homes repossessed, credit scores tanked, divorce, medical catastrophe, markets plummet, insurance companies go under. It can happen to ANYONE. Anyone can end up working 3 jobs just to live in a crackerbox apartment trying to be able to feed their kids.

I get to homeschool because I'm LUCKY. Not because I work hard and plan well (I do), but because I'm durn lucky. Not because I'm a better parent. I've made a couple hundred k a year, and I've been homeless (both before kids). I was the SAME PERSON in both scenarios. I'm the same person now, that I was then. Working hard, planning well, and doing the best that I could with what I had.

While I agree with you that society has become so "open" that there is no sense of modesty anymore, I disagree with your implication that underpriviliged parents should "just stay involved". Somehow I think you misinterpretted the blog.

I am currently working with two school districts whose populations are generally hovering around the poverty line. Observationally... much easier said than done. Many of these parents are working multiple jobs AND caring for their elderly family members. They aren't "absent" b/c the kids are with them, but they are not "enriching" their children either. Extracurriculars? Those cost money, which these parents don't have.

Homework is meant to reinforce skills, but it shouldn't be used to penalize children who are already behind. In many schools in this area, teachers assign homework to students and "check it", but the completion isn't factored into grades at the elementary level.

Just a suggested read... "A Framework for Understanding Poverty". I read this in graduate school and it entirely changed the way I view children living in generational poverty (different than situational) and let me better understand where education "fits" into their world.

As for scantily-clad tweens... I still live by my grandmother's advice, which is to always "leave a little to the imagination"!

If I wanted to create a society where children are completely brainwashed into being hyper-consumers, self-centered and inappropriately "matured" - I would set up what we have RIGHT NOW.

Do good kids still come out of this society? Yes, absolutely. But it is getting more and more difficult for them imho.

Ditto Riley. 100%

Also... having "manners" is not about what a person looks like or what influences they have or political tendencies or how conservative or liberal a parent is or how they are dressed.

Cultural norms & how it is/is not accepted, existed in every era and generation and period in history.
It is not a finite thing.
And it is different in every culture even within an over-riding culture, and in its niche cultures.
People acculturate... or not, at different rates.

However, each 'society'... has its norms, and laws, and behavioral 'rules' on what is civility or not. Then what is against the law or not. Then what is appropriate or not. Then what is 'normal' or not.

Then, there are individual perspectives... and the legacy of how a person themselves were raised... and how they interpret that and then continue that in their own lives, or not. About what is civility/mannered, or not. For their own family.

There are umbrella influences and micro-influences in everyday life.
Of which, we as 'adults' and 'parents' discern that and what is taught to our kids. So that, they become responsible and well adjusted and 'good'... kids and as they become, adults themselves.

Again, Ditto Riley J. as well.
:)

Society, civilization, family constructs, cultural constructs and Ethos... always, ebbs and flows.
It is NOT finite nor static nor engraved in stone.

Then there is the individual at-will and free-will influences.
Even if we teach our kids everything by the book... and all 'proper' and nice.... it does not mean, the kids' themselves, 'become' that way.
Each individual... becomes, their own entity.

No one, lives in a vacuum.
Thus, everyday experiences, is a teaching moment... and to learn to DISCERN their behavior, and their "manners" or not.
Not everyone, has the ability to self-reflect.
History, displays this.
Each era.

No, I think homework shouldn't count because there is NO EVIDENCE that assigning homework benefits children in ANY WAY at all prior to high school. The evidence for high school is very unclear and there may or may not be a benefit.