"Straight to the Point: Home Schooling is the Answer"

What are your dreams now and in the future? More importantly, what responsibilities do you have in making those dreams a reality? We all have dreams that never come true. The only reason they do not is because we do not take responsibility. I think we are stuck on Martin Luther King's, "I Have a Dream" speech, there were more speeches on how to reach those dreams, some how we forget them.

Let's focus on responsibility and not the dream (we have enough of those). Currently, the Black parents in a certain county Florida have a class action lawsuit pending. I am the spearhead for this lawsuit, as a result of my struggling child that was in the Pinellas County school system. The lawsuit says that the county's school system is not educating our children. Under the Florida State Constitution, Article IX, Section I states that, "every student must be given a quality education". The lawsuit may have some impact on a system that is lowering our standards and creating an uninformed work force. Public education has done its job and will continue to do it as long as we allow it. Article IX Section I of Florida's Constitution is just a smoke screen as is most other comparable documents. What we should have done was to place a lawsuit against the parents of our children. As a matter of fact, that is essentially what we did to ourselves. After studying the history of public education, which most of us do not, my wife and I decided to stop dreaming of what tomorrow can become, and took steps into our own hands as to what we want it to be. The biggest problem we have as parents is ourselves. When are we going to take responsibility? We are experts when it comes to excuses. That is what we allowed public education to do to us. So we eliminated the excuses and gave the school system the required thirty day notice to start educating our children, as it should be. Now we are home schooling all 6 of our children, who range in age from 3 - 16.

Here are some of the ideas we would like to share with the readers regarding our home schooling program:

1. With the curriculum we decided to teach the opposite of what the failing public "fool" system teaches. We wanted our children to actually learn not the rote memory process that we learned. Along with the three R's we have implemented more hands on experience, like asking questions and making mistakes more acceptable. Our ultimate goal is to teach them to love themselves, and once they accomplish this, they can then love others. We pursue the truth in all of our subject matter and welcome criticism.

2. Our communities suffer from the lack of knowledge not money or anything else. If we have knowledge then we can do ALL things, such as: supporting quality black businesses, events, organizations, and churches that are benefiting are communities; owning a business as opposed to getting a JOB = JUST OVER BROKE; interviewing business owners and professionals in our community so we can develop strategies of economic empowerment. We have developed business opportunities within our own family structure. Our children should not have to get a job outside their homes and/or their communities. We should take responsibility and become the employers so that we can teach them to empower themselves as well. In these areas past generations have failed our children but now we need to take responsibility, correct it and move forward.

3. Lastly, we created a speakers bureau, which involves different peoples from different careers, nationalities and beliefs to come in and give classes to our children so that they can get exposed to different viewpoints. We also expose them to the black owned bookstores because these bookstores must be supported. The reason we utilize the black owned bookstores is because they have a wider range of reading materials that pertain to our goals and objectives. These books teach our children their rich heritage and culture dating back to when Europe was still in the "dark ages".

In conclusion, all of the excuses in the world are not going to help our children. It is time to take responsibility for ourselves and our children and create leaders, business owners, etc. so that our communities can grow and move toward a better future.