"Finance lessons for Home Schoolers" or maybe not...

Our new Kiplinger's magazine surprised me by having an article geared toward homeschooling families. The title is "Finance lessons for Home Schoolers". It starts well:

Quote:

Once considered a fringe group, parents who home-school their children aren't such rarities anymore. Families looking for an alternative to schools with too few challenges or too many distractions, or for a way to tailor the curriculum to a child's needs, have swelled the ranks of home-schooled kids.

Its a decent article in some ways-- it explains many of the practicalities of home schooling, and never questions the decision to homeschool, or compares it to public school. Unfortunately there are some errors that surprise me in such a reputable magazine. They say that:

Quote:

In Virginia, for example, most home schoolers must get state approval of curricula for core subjects, such as math.

WRONG!
And, they recommend:

Quote:

Consider tapping your Coverdell education savings account to pay for supplies and othe expenses.

I'm not a tax accountant (or attorney? who would you ask about this?), but as far as I can tell with the help of Google, home schooling expenses aren't eligible expenses for Coverdell ESAs. I think you could use one to pay for a distance learning program, but I wouldn't try to use it to buy a microscope. Actually, I wouldn't do anything with a Coverdell education savings account before I talked to some kind of expert. Apparently someone at Kiplinger's agrees with me-- this recommendation is not in their online version of the article.

Since the 2 things I checked were wrong, I wouldn't take any advice from the article without looking a bit further into it.

I think their cost estimates might be a bit high, but my oldest is 6, so what do I know? All things considered, exactly how much you spend to homeschool your kids seems to have as much to do with the crowd you run with as anything else. What constitutes a "reasonable" charge varies a lot from one family to the next. I tend to think that people who expected to send to their kids to private school will find a way to spend a lot on their kids' education.

I'm happy to see a mainstream magazine writing positive articles FOR homeschoolers instead of just ABOUT homeschoolers, but better error checking doesn't seem like too much to ask.

Dr. Phil and homeschooling...

For quite a while, I've been seeing solicitations for homeschoolers to appear on the Dr. Phil show on various homeschooling message boards. I rarely watch Dr. Phil because too often his topics are inappropriate for young kids. Actually, I'm not sure his show is really appropriate for anyone, take Monday's show, for example--I didn't watch it, but here's the blurb from DrPhil.com:

The Dr. Phil House: House of Hatred

Dr. Phil starts a groundbreaking social experiment. Six individuals from different walks of life, with different judgments and prejudices will live under the same roof, in an attempt to break down the walls of hatred and intolerance. Gary, 26, is a white supremacist who hates all people of other races. B., 58, is an African-American woman who thinks all white people are "ignorant sociopaths." Staci, 22, is a thin woman who thinks obese people are "disgusting blobs" and not people at all. John, 24, is over 600 pounds and hates skinny people. Christina, 22, believes all homosexuals are sinners. Tessa, 19, is a lesbian who hates straight people. Dr. Phil puts them to the test with assignments that force them to work together with their adversary. It doesn’t take long for hostility to break out, sending Dr. Phil over to the house, saying, “This has got to stop.” Will these guests learn acceptance, or turn on each other?

Why on earth would this be worth an hour of my time?

But for reasons that are beyond me, Dr. Phil has a large audience. He's a best-selling author and seems to be using his fame to make his wife a celebrity. Apparently she's speaking at a Women of Faith Conference beginning October 27-- the same day that the Dr. Phil Show was originally set to show what is reported to be an attack show on homeschooling. Considering that conservative Christianity and homeschooling are often related, I can't help but wonder if the show was rescheduled to avoid putting his wife in an awkward position.

Here's the thing it took me far too long to understand: television networks DO NOT sell commercial time so they can afford to put on TV shows, television networks put on TV shows so they can sell ad time. What this means is that Dr. Phil makes his money by luring viewers, to sell access to their eyeballs during the commercial breaks. He doesn't need to maintain a good reputation among his professional peers, or behave ethically, or even offer good advice, he just needs to put together a show people like to watch, and avoid offending any large groups. Apparently the easiest way to do that is to appeal people's baser tastes while attacking unpopular minorities.

Once I had my lightbulb moment about advertising and the media, it suddenly became clear why most mainstream parenting magazines are pointless. They offer just enough content to entice subscribers, while carefully avoiding taking a stand on, well, anything. Circumcision, breast-feeding, sleep-training, discipline, you can count on one thing, they will cheerfully tell you that whatever you do is just fine. Because they've got a barrel, the advertisers have a shotgun, and we're the fish.