Four boys under nine and homeschooling. Wow!

The secret of home-schooling, however, is that you don’t have to be a master teacher to do it well. Energy, dedication, and good materials are what you need. Your competition, meanwhile, is a system that by design and necessity seeks the median. Public (and many private) school students have to move along in all subjects at a similar pace, and in the same order. Outliers — the talkative, the energetic, the gifted, the struggling — are labeled and interventions (counseling, special classrooms, tutoring, medication) prescribed. The goal is not a full realization of the child’s potential, but rather the system’s smooth functioning.

While I can understand the reasoning of a factory-like model in the public school system -- there are a lot of kids to render after all -- one hopes that a more Socratic mentorship model (maybe without some of the teacher with "benefits" aspects, though that exists in the public schools too) might be a better educational experience for your kids.

I also appreciate that the writer, "Tony Woodlief" has "...a willingness to walk away from home-schooling itself if a better alternative emerges." If it isn't just a personal jihad against public schools with your own children as the hostages, homeschooling needs to be based on results. And if you can't get the results you are looking for; find alternatives. Even if you don't like them. It's not about you.

A tip of the hat to Instapundit

Sad but true.

According to a conservative estimate of six hours of school five days a week for nine months of the year, Bolduc faces an estimated 14,400 hours trapped in an endless succession of nearly identical, suffocating classrooms.

This nightmarish but undeniably real scenario does not take into account additional time spent on homework, extracurricular responsibilities, or college, sources said.

"I can't wait until school is over," said the 3-foot-tall tragic figure, who would not have been able, if asked, to contemplate the amount of time between now and summer, let alone the years and years of tedium to follow.

Too, too funny... hey I suffered through it. Now it's your turn.

According to this Yahoo survey 66% of Americans have considered starting their own business (though this is down from 72% who reported considering it as of last year). Interestingly over half think it is something to do later in life and that, for all, the most poplular reason was to do it is to do work you love; the second most popular response being to be your own boss.

We like both around here. Though perhaps being my own boss overstates my title in my particular venture!

A nice piece from Mickey Kaus.

NYC schools chief Joel Klein called for a single national testing standard. Groff, a crowd favorite, made the conventional local elected officials' objection that you need flexibiity, one size doesn't fit all, "what works" in County X might not work in County Y. And he was booed! Loudly. By Democratic education wonks. Wow.

It's been a long time coming.

eBay is adjusting fees again, emphasizing fixed-priced auctions. No one seems to have a clue how to fix eBay, either inside the company or outside. They seem to have bled out as much talent as Yahoo and, other than their profit margin, it was never a sexy business to begin with; it is unclear if or how they will go about getting some of that talent and momentum back.

Furthermore, eBay sellers, always a cranky bunch, and despite eBay's best efforts, are not satisfied. Perhaps because eBay's best efforts are insufficient or perhaps because eBay sellers cannot be satisfied. eBay remains a great platform with millions of users, transactions, lots of $$$ and extremely open (if overly complex) APIs that allow for a lot of 3rd party interaction. But what do I know. I mostly shop on Amazon.

Shockingly, a San Francisco government plan to coddle a group that makes the officials running the city go all warm and fuzzy has not quite lived up to expectations. 

  "The law was set up with good intentions, to allow artists to have a place to live and work, so that they didn't have to rent a separate studio," said Paul Lord, a city planner who helped write the ordinance. "But it was very hard to enforce."

You say good intentions, I say... uh, something else. But, don't worry. What San Francisco has given, San Francisco will re-extract. With pliers if necessary.

In 1999, the San Francisco Examiner reported that as a result of the live-work rules, the city was not eligible to collect an estimated $8 million in fees.

  Personally I am quite fond of artists. And I like live-work lofts. We specialize in that around here. I just don't understand why they get special treatment. There are plenty of doctor's who can't afford to live in the city either. Maybe we can give them a hand (but let's not). 

On August 8, the same three judges reversed their prior ruling (with a reasonable exception in the event of child abuse) and have allowed that parents have a legitimate right to homeschool their children. Although no doubt the judges simply followed the law, the massive outcry by parents, the Govenator, and AG, and many others, perhaps helped point them to additional data in making their decision.

A set-back to the teacher's union and a victory for 160,000 children and their parents. Hooray for us.

There are now a record number of no-employee businesses in the US. 20.7 million according to the US Census) bringing in revenue of $970 billion in 2006. A nice graph of growth from 1997 at Small Business Trends.

Of course, some of these are on life-support, some are just tax dodges, but most are likely to be mom & pop, solo-businesses, consultancies, and many many are work from home.

As more people opt to work from home there is both a proliferation of scams and commensurate bad advice on how to address it. Such as this article in the Seattle Times:

Those who say you can earn a living working at home with your personal computer are engaging in wishful thinking, or they're trying to sucker you into a pyramid scheme in which you spend your day e-mailing similar offers to other potential suckers. These "jobs" are nothing but a racket. Be careful.

An annoying overstatement, but it does pay to be careful and know who is offering the position and their reputation.

The FTC has lots of articles on how to avoid work at home scams. The Better Business Bureau is also a good place to check out the credibility of an organization. And, I would be remiss if I did not mention our own website, FoundValue, where we are attempting to put together a valuable resource for home-based work of all kinds (including some of the unpaid but work-like activities such as homeschooling).

What's work? Well, I usually think of it as something you do for which you are paid. But in this study of European vs. American work and productivity conflates paid work with unpaid home-based work (of course, we mostly focus on paid home-based work in these parts) to show that Europeans are not as lazy as we like to paint them.

The statistics we usually see focus on jobs that people get paid for, and by that measure Americans do indeed toil much more than Europeans. But that measure overlooks all the cooking, cleaning, lawn mowing, and other home-based labor that most people do.

In the US we spend more time in the market, getting paid, while Europeans spend more time at home. But, not only do they take those four week summer vacations, they are busy producing... flowers, croissants and well polished countertops.

It is true that, if you spend a day a week earning enough money to afford the car and gas and childcare you need to get to work, you could be just as well off if earned 20% less but did not need a car, gas or childcare. There are plenty of other satisfactions to be had from work, of course, expertise, accomplishment, social interactions, etc., that may or may not be met by working at home. 

However, comparing paid work with unpaid work seems weak. In some cases one does serve as a direct substitute for the other (firing your housekeeper and cleaning your own toilets for example). But where do you stop? We each have only 24 hours a day (unless I'm missing something) and you either are making money or not. Some gamers pay people in developing countries to do the scut work to collect trinkets and experience points for online multiplayer games. Should I count the time I spend in World of Warcraft (if I had time to play WoW) collecting the trinkets myself as equivalent to the hours someone else spends digging ditches? Or do I add a point to the lazy column for me?

I know which way my wife will score it.