Pearl Family 3: Living on Snake Oil, Charcoal and Plexus

[JermajestyDuggar]

I’m liberal and where I live is also liberal. So my kids go to school in what fundies would consider an evil liberal brainwashing center. Last year my son’s elementary teacher was a married gay man with kids. There are multiple same sex parents in the neighborhood. They get Christian holidays off like Good Friday but they also get Jewish holidays off. There is very much a separation of church and state in their school. So I haven’t actually run into anything I disagree with yet when it comes to their school. Maybe some of their policies in high school will bother me. I could see that possibility. Like rules I think are silly. The rules that usually bother me are the dress codes for high school. But I think it’s pretty lax here. I’ve seen plenty of kids wear clothing that would have gotten us dress coded in the 90s. I’m honestly fine with girls wearing short shorts or half shirts to school. As long as all the private parts are covered, I don’t care. I hate how sexist dress codes usually are. 

[GuineaPigCourtship]

I've heard - but am not a lawyer and have no first hand experience - that homeschooling can be used as leverage to get a larger share of custody.  He may have wanted the kids in public school to avoid that situation.

[Smee]

19 hours ago, JDuggs said:

My kids went to public school and are in their 20s. Maybe I’m too far removed from it to remember anything in particular, but what are some examples of things that you didn’t agree with that your kids were taught at school?

Nothing too egregious, occasionally there's a bit of history that celebrates colonial figures more than I'd like, or they'll come home spouting common 'health' myths their teacher said that are really just fatphobic diet culture or clever marketing. The most recent thing that pissed me off was when all of the grade 5 girls were given free samples of period underwear (great!) and when they gave it to them, they kept them all back after assembly. My daughter and her classmates were then apparently told not to talk to the boys about why they had been held back, and if asked, to say that they were in trouble for something social media related. I'm not cool with a) telling kids to lie, or b) treating natural bodily functions (that they don't even have yet!!) as some taboo secret.

I also get annoyed by stuff like "improving" descriptions in your creative writing by adding adjectives and adverbs and avoiding the word "said". (I'm a published author and have worked with books all my life, so I imagine this is how my dad, a geneticist, felt about me doing 'blue eye colour/brown eye colour' Punnett squares in high school science.) On the overall balance of things, public schooling has been great for my kids, but there are bound to be little things that crop up every now and then where a teacher says something I disagree with - teachers are human too, and we can't all agree on everything.

[JermajestyDuggar]

2 hours ago, Smee said:

Nothing too egregious, occasionally there's a bit of history that celebrates colonial figures more than I'd like, or they'll come home spouting common 'health' myths their teacher said that are really just fatphobic diet culture or clever marketing. The most recent thing that pissed me off was when all of the grade 5 girls were given free samples of period underwear (great!) and when they gave it to them, they kept them all back after assembly. My daughter and her classmates were then apparently told not to talk to the boys about why they had been held back, and if asked, to say that they were in trouble for something social media related. I'm not cool with a) telling kids to lie, or b) treating natural bodily functions (that they don't even have yet!!) as some taboo secret.

I also get annoyed by stuff like "improving" descriptions in your creative writing by adding adjectives and adverbs and avoiding the word "said". (I'm a published author and have worked with books all my life, so I imagine this is how my dad, a geneticist, felt about me doing 'blue eye colour/brown eye colour' Punnett squares in high school science.) On the overall balance of things, public schooling has been great for my kids, but there are bound to be little things that crop up every now and then where a teacher says something I disagree with - teachers are human too, and we can't all agree on everything.

Oh my boys know about periods. I remember when my oldest was in preschool and ran to my husband because there was dynamite in the bathroom trash can. Yep, it was a red used tampon he saw 🤪 We had to explain that’s not an explosive, it’s just mommy’s blood and everything’s fine. 

[FiveAcres]

4 hours ago, Smee said:

Nothing too egregious, occasionally there's a bit of history that celebrates colonial figures more than I'd like, or they'll come home spouting common 'health' myths their teacher said that are really just fatphobic diet culture or clever marketing. The most recent thing that pissed me off was when all of the grade 5 girls were given free samples of period underwear (great!) and when they gave it to them, they kept them all back after assembly. My daughter and her classmates were then apparently told not to talk to the boys about why they had been held back, and if asked, to say that they were in trouble for something social media related. I'm not cool with a) telling kids to lie, or b) treating natural bodily functions (that they don't even have yet!!) as some taboo secret.

I also get annoyed by stuff like "improving" descriptions in your creative writing by adding adjectives and adverbs and avoiding the word "said". (I'm a published author and have worked with books all my life, so I imagine this is how my dad, a geneticist, felt about me doing 'blue eye colour/brown eye colour' Punnett squares in high school science.) On the overall balance of things, public schooling has been great for my kids, but there are bound to be little things that crop up every now and then where a teacher says something I disagree with - teachers are human too, and we can't all agree on everything.

The Punnett squares for things like eye color can be very annoying: where do hazel eyes (like my mother's) fit? However, by the time I was introduced to the blue eye / brown eye thing I was already reading science biology articles and knew that things were always likely to be more complicated than what was being presented in class.

[Ozlsn]

11 hours ago, Smee said:

I also get annoyed by stuff like "improving" descriptions in your creative writing by adding adjectives and adverbs and avoiding the word "said".

To be fair this probably at least partly stems from kids not using any other words and is an attempt to get them to think more broadly (and yes this can also go overboard, she passionately emoted while waving her arms as if to draw the feelings in the sky. Why yes, I have been reading the Bulwer-Lytton contest winners.) 

11 hours ago, Smee said:

I imagine this is how my dad, a geneticist, felt about me doing 'blue eye colour/brown eye colour' Punnett squares in high school science.)

Blood groups are so much better. Still more complicated than that but at least the basic is pretty correct. Although definitely do not use student's blood for testing (1. Blood rule, 2. Yeah, family secrets are a thing).

9 hours ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

I remember when my oldest was in preschool and ran to my husband because there was dynamite in the bathroom trash can.

That is hilarious! I had to open all my bags and stuff once at the airport because the bag tested positive to explosives (best guess was test  cross-reacting with something) and when they started opening the box of tampons I was standing there going "OK if those are explosive can you tell me because I kind of need to know.." The security guys kind of giggled and eventually decided it was a false positive test.

[Howl]

Whatever the results were for the recent scan...if it was showing the cancer shrinking to nothing, they'd be shouting the good news from the rooftops, right? 

My recent experiences with MRI were that the results were read by the radiologist and posted in the patient portal within a day or two and I assume other scans would be equally speedy. 

Shalom posted an Instragram story: "Microbiom[e] plays a role in healing from cancer"  

[JermajestyDuggar]

What was it wrapped in Sho? 💨