9/25/22 Here's my hypothesis. I think that information is divided into "need to know" and "want to know." Also that with the right quality of information you can get everything you need. Knowing more than that, you can potentially pursue what is enjoyable, fun, and good for you. The first, needs, gives you life and liberty, the second gives you the pursuit of happiness. I think that once we hit a point of no return in terms of offering a free education for what all humans genuinely need to know, everything is going to change, and people will then be able to actively pursue what makes them happy. This is essentially why I am funneling as much information as possible into the site.
Compulsory education violates the 13th amendment rights of US citizens, namely children, that are not considered US citizens under the law but are legally considered property Constitutional Amendments 11-27
When it comes right down to it, the education system in the United States, and possibly other countries, is fundamentally Communist and has been for at least 30 years. The American public education system produces people who have been taught what to think, how to think, and why to think, but stripped them of the ability to come up with any original thoughts or ideas of their own. Ironically so because the only way to maintain a Capitalist democracy is to ensure the citizens are educated enough to be free of mind, understand national issues, have high morale, think for themselves with creativity and imagination, maintain their individuality, and enjoy learning; if the USSR set this up it was a master stroke of evil genius. I think the biggest red flag was that we learned not a goddamn thing about the USSR during the entire time I was in school. Not a single thing. I will be digging up their history with great interest in the next few years now, stay tuned y'all. Personally, watching Blade Runner and V is for Vendetta gave me flashbacks to public school and dealing with authority figures in my area, so yeah, it's a problem. We are only seeing the fruits of uneducated and groupthinking citizenry now but it has been a long time coming. In fact, most Boomers are also fundamentally Communist. So is most religion. So when I say "fuck the educational system," "fuck religion," and "ok, Boomer," what I really mean is "fuck Communism, give me freedom." By casual or rigorous observation, you and I can easily infer that the real purpose of the US educational system is to make students despise learning and to function as a daycare so their parents can work all day and prop up the stagnating economy. In fact, what it actually is is a glorified prison, and a perpetual Stanford Prison Experiment. In fact I don't think the people who made Great Teacher Onizuka had any idea that they were making a very realistic version of the school system I went through as a Millenial brat (minus Great Teacher Onizuka. Yes, really. It's so spot on it's scary.). It's also arguable whether Jim Benton had any idea It's Happy Bunny Life. Get One. is an exact mirror of the American public education system when he was writing it but anyone who's gone through it will know exactly what I'm talking about if/when they read it. My purpose with this section is the exact opposite. I want to get you hungry for information, and I don't know about you, but I'm starving for it. I feel like Major Payne in that one scene where he's hunting rats. Hungry.
4/22/21 UNDER CONSTRUCTION: This now contains all of the information that I learned in K-12 as a Millenial. More, in fact. It is not sufficient for meeting homeschooling requirements because the public schooling I received was a joke, but it is more condensed and way more informative than what I had. Disclaimer: I have absolutely no credentials in education. Use your own big brain when trying to teach yourself or others and don't blame me if you or your kid don't meet educational standards in your area because it varies from place to place and because again - I have no credentials. Just ten plus years' worth of sifting through thousands of books to find good ones plus some (okay, more than some) experience tutoring younguns and classmates and babysitting. My goal with this section is to get you just as smitten with each of these subjects as I am. The more I worked on it the more fascinating it all became until essentially I was bit by the bug to learn, really learn, all of them. I hope for that for you as well. 5/23/23 Okay this now has college level information, at least some 101s. I wouldn't call it well rounded, but my public school education wasn't either. However, the sad truth is that despite the fact this is most useful for homeschooling and for public school teachers, homeschool and education regulations from state to state vary wildly and are usually arbitrary and stupid. The emphasis of rote memorization of math over practical realistic applications for math as case in point. And I can't really change them. Parents and teachers and education administrators have to give a damn, and too few of them do. No, it's usually a "let's grow children like vegetables in a veggie patch" attitude, and when the schooling starts it's just dumping the kids in a chum bucket. I can't fix this on my own. Maybe help?
A message to good teachers: Better idea 4/24/22 (see older idea crossed out at end of this): We are currently facing an epidemic of three kinds. An epidemic of covid-19, an epidemic of evil, and an epidemic of ignorance. With these things in mind a moon shot for education and eradication of ignorance worldwide might just do the trick to help end all three. I said worldwide because this never was just about America but about the fight of democracy, the notion that humans have rights, and the victory of freedom over slavery. So each one teach one, but you better know your shit, because in my experience misinformation is often worse than no information at all. Also, the might of nations or lack thereof depends on three variables. Education, virtue, safety. You want to see better conditions where you're at then put more effort into promoting any or all of these. Also it is mostly teachers that can fix the major issues in the system so DO IT because who else can?! Actually change the system from the inside out. I've heard thousands of teachers complaining about the system but how many of these are currently in politics? I rest my case. Are you tired of working in a system that destroys young minds, creates a hatred of learning and independent thought, and crushes the human spirit? I implore you: cut your losses. Quit. Our educational system is a failure and does nothing but traumatize kids. Hell, I learned more in one year of intensive reading of library books than I did in twelve in public school. Don't be part of the problem. Take what you learned from being a teacher and put everything you really want to teach kids online, on a website like this one on Neocities, or on a blog. Teach people how to homeschool in the best way possible. Assist people in your hometown with homeschooling as a tutor and as a teacher for homeschool groups and charge a fair price. It's an idea. You'll earn more money that way too.
7/16/22 Note to all teachers in the US: were you aware that in the early 2000s Israel already had metal detectors in many of its schools? Yes, for youth, not just colleges. And were you aware that Israeli citizens are basically all veterans and therefore the teachers and security guards in these schools were probably veterans? This might not be relevant but Israeli schools also don't censor the kids' freedom of speech or religion, especially with regards to burqas as like a large chunk of Israel's population is Muslim. Couple things to bring up at your next board meeting.
Image source: that is Markiplier, from Youtube, which please watch.
CLEP Tests administered for a fee (currently seems to be about $89 per course) by Collegeboard, the grifting low-quality-teaching guys that also administer AP and SAT tests. By the way, AP is useless, don't bother, just learn the material on your own or in a college 101 class. CLEP tests are done to determine if you need to take a college 101 course. Pass one, and in many if not most colleges you won't need to take the course, saving you a lot of money. So study at home and study hard. Then, if possible, you could finish up an undergrad in a community college, and work hard for scholarships in a higher ed program. Wa la. Let's hope you avoid crushing student debt. Also note: trade schools are underrated for a steady career and paycheck because we seem to be low on skilled trade professionals in the US.
Suggestion: Please try to find at least two other sources to learn whatever you learn from here in order to compare and contrast and think of things on your own. I don't want to be some kind of dogmatic "authority" or pretend to be The Source of Pure Truth.
Undo some damage from public school
Guide to understanding homeschool laws
To find specific homeschooling laws, government practices, and educational standards in your state, see: State departments of education
Instructables' Teachers Section
Studying Tricks Hopefully this makes it easier for you to learn anything cause learning itself is tough
Condensed Version of Big Brain Time K-12 Homeschooling or Supplemental Resources, Summarized
Fun Also known as recess and playtime. Neglected and extremely important.
Engineering UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Medical Science UNDER CONSTRUCTION
OpenCulture Free online courses, usually offered as MOOCs; high school and 101 level courses
MIT OpenCourseWare - college courses online for free. Generally speaking, the best quality I could find online. Requires a major time commitment. I HIGHLY recommend also buying the recommended textbooks, reading them, and doing all of the homework problems in the courses.
Yale OpenCourseWare - more college courses online for free, from Yale. I don't know if these are better, worse, or just different from MIT's.
MIT Open Learning Library Seems to have some good info but also is behind a subscription wall.
Open Syllabus Project This website lists some of the most commonly assigned textbooks in colleges today, saving you the trouble of figuring out what is considered "101"
PBS Now, no matter where you are in the world, if I understand this correctly you can watch basically anything from PBS, anytime, for $60 (yearly membership fee). If it doesn't work, beef up privacy protocols on your computer, such as by using Tor and Privoxy or by using a Raspberry Pi and Pi Hole plus a whole bunch of stuff as listed in Computer Science (see link above) and pretend you have a zip code in Brooklyn, like these. Or, use one of the many free proxies and pretend you live in one of their zip codes. I hope that works, and if it doesn't let me know on this site's Discord server. When I was growing up we just caught PBS with bunny ears as one of the channels that were picked up because we couldn't afford cable. Now, it seems like you can grab PBS like most people grab Netflix: User 1, Parasite 1, Parasite 2, etc. 5/23/23 Check at your local library to see if they've got documentary PBS DVDs. They're fantastic.
PBS Learn At Home resources PBS PreK-12 learning resources This is PBS's version of homeschooling resources. I don't know if it's any good, but it's PBS, check it out, see if it's worth the time. From a cursory glance through these resources I would guess they are good supplementary learning materials but definitely not sufficient framework for education. Too much filler, but sometimes filler is entertaining.
5/23/23 Either some, or many libraries also have The Great Courses series DVDs. They are at college level and are just as grueling to learn from; taking notes while watching them can help a lot. Highly recommend.
Note for teachers in K-12: it has been mentioned that teachers often lose their cool because so much time is spent on discipline and so little on teaching. There is a very simple way around this: understand that your students are being held as prisoners in a chair, in a room, in a building against their will despite having never committed a crime, and proceed accordingly. Let me spell it out for you morons: explain to them why they should bother learning what you're teaching, and if it's utterly useless, just quit, you buffoon. Here's another helpful hint: don't violate the terms of the Geneva Convention. Geneva Convention Protocols More details, particularly part II, part 2 Wow, imagine, so easy.
This is intended either for parents who homeschool or for 18+ folks because there is sex ed and crude language in here and I don't want people to get their panties in a twist. If you're a parent look it over and make the decision if your kids are mature enough to read this stuff. If something is listed as "helpful for homeschooling" then that means it is intro-level and you should start there. It doesn't mean it's easy. In fact all of this material is high school to college level because the common misconception that children are too dumb to understand this stuff is just plain wrong. In fact it's the most dangerous and delusional belief of all educators, be they homeschoolers or teachers: children can and will grasp "difficult scientific principles" and other tough stuff, and usually faster than adults - why? I don't know, but I've seen it over and over again. My goal with this subsection of the website is to provide a viable alternative to K-12 that anyone can get through with a maximum of 3 years study time. It is possible because everything taught in public school is watered down so much that it mainly functions to waste time. Don't believe me? Give these resources a try. You can find a lot of them at your local library or from cheap bookstores. Hopefully these resources can also help you to CLEP out aka test out of/automatically pass college courses, saving you time, money, and sanity. I have not yet made this stuff conform to the guidelines of the US (crap) educational system to help homeschoolers meet educational "standards," and it won't yet help you pass high school exams, the SAT or ACT with flying colors, but I am working on it & will let you know when it does. Getting there. 9/11/22 pretty close. However, it is sufficient for anyone who wants to learn subjects for real after wasting 12 years staring at the wall. Technically speaking, and truthfully speaking, public school is slavery, and anyone who thinks this Tips and Tricks for Teachers kind of stuff is normal is deluded. Why? Because the only thing keeping students in school is legal requirements, and they're not getting paid for their work, yet teachers demand total obedience out of social custom and a knowledge the students can't leave. Attendance at school is nothing more than a gilded prison. Abuse is rampant. Many of the administrators and teachers are abuse- or politics-motivated ghouls looking to boost their own social standing and make themselves feel big by making children feel small. And do they have any idea what they're teaching? Doubtful, given how low wages are for teachers and how powerful the teacher's union is. Finally, literally everything in school is taught using school textbooks as a backbone, and those textbooks are pretty much worthless. Plus they're a sick system. Issendai article. Homeschool is the way.
The ideal way to go through this stuff is as follows: I'll assume you have basic literacy and know how to read and write. If you are a voracious reader and talk to friends on Discord or text, then reading and writing will be natural to you. So start with Adulting, Art, Science, Fun, and Math. These are the basics for everything else; art is in there to ensure you aren't bored but also because in my own experience and that of some teachers I know, people learn better when they're learning art as well as hardcore STEM stuff (nope, there isn't enough evidence to suggest it matters, but it is what Leonardo da Vinci did). Then follow this route: Adulting (including Social Studies), Science, Art, and Math -> Physics -> Chemistry -> Biology -> Earth Sciences and Astronomy. Add other stuff on top of that at each step as needed. It helps you understand all of it better. And don't forget to rest, relax, play around. Life's short. If you are a parent that works full-time, know that kids are totally capable of self-study in order to homeschool. In fact it's the only way they'll learn anything in adult life and in college anyway so better they start while they're young. You should know that I am also teaching myself these topics in depth as I am writing this, so it's not just some "fling content at the people and hope they like it" thing. 12/11/24 Here's another idea for you to ponder if you're an adult learner. Chances are very good that you have at some point said to yourself "what the heck? I never learned anything I needed to know in school! It should have these courses, and these, and these, and that's what kids need to learn!" Good. You now know what you can study yourself. Thing is, lots of this kind of stuff is stuff you only think you'll need to know but there needs to be a whole bunch of people actually putting it to the test through trial and error to see what really does help. And a lot of it is individual, except for one thing: ethics. Of all the disciplines out there that one can ruin or fix your life the fastest; reduce or increase the drama and bullshit. And that's the one thing I think will be the toughest thing to teach and to learn. How can you teach someone to be truly virtuous and have a conscience without just creating a yes-man? How can you teach yourself and others to want to do the right thing all the time no matter what? I don't think it's impossible, but it's definitely hard.
It is possible that the "Must Know High School" by McGraw-Hill series of books, the "Handy Answer Book" series, and the "Cartoon Guide To" series by Larry Gonick are all worth working through, but I can't get access to all of these at this time. If you manage it, let me know what you think. Also, the Great Books series is expensive and is the original source material a lot of textbooks basically copied and diluted.
Where to find these resources: Try your public library first. If it sucks, see if you can finagle a library card a couple of towns over, and also get familiar with both inter-library loan and ebooks from your local library. Ebooks from libraries are slowly but surely improving in terms of usability. One priceless tip someone recently told me is to read the original source material for whatever subject you are trying to study. 1/25/24 Bet you've looked for a specific topic to learn before or just high quality information and went "what the heck?! it's all crap!" when you put your search query into a search engine or a library catalog or even browsed a bookstore. Well, a lot of unscrupulous individuals and publishing companies lately have been doing the sociopath of late, the whole "hey I can get passive income by churning out books or blogs that sell or affiliate market whether or not they are good, and then all I gotta do is rake in the dough while the idiots get ripped off by me." Thus it flooded the market and the Internet. There are a couple of workarounds. 1. Seek out people who self-publish stuff like ebooks and promote that kind of thing. 2. Experiment a little to see which publishers and authors tend to publish good things and then seek out more by those people. Anness Publishing is the best publisher I know, and it went out of business but the books still circulate, thank heaven. Like other publishing companies, you often have to seek for each individual imprint under the umbrella of the larger book label when searching for books made by the publisher on say, Walmart.com or some other bookseller, or the stream of books dries up prematurely. Here's their publisher imprint list page. Harper-Collins is another formerly good one though they have been sucking lately. Author-wise, depends on the topic. If they made one they will probably make another that is good. For instance, Theodore Gray made some great Chemistry books, if he publishes another, great. Authors also sometimes write under pseudonyms.
MAXIMIZING YOUR BENEFIT FROM YOUR PUBLIC LIBRARY - SECTION ADDED 12/5/24
FREE BOOKS ONLINE
FREE BOOKS - POTENTIAL
FREE ONLINE RESOURCES
NON FREE ONLINE RESOURCES
NON FREE BOOKS
Everyone reading this is (I hope) 18 or older. And here's the thing. If you are ignorant and make dumb, even harmful, mistakes if you're 18 or younger, that's okay. It's chalked up to lack of life experience and people are justifiably lenient. But if you're over that age it is no longer cute to be ignorant. In fact, it is your duty and the only right thing to do, to improve your overall level of education every single year from the age of 18 on up, in order to prevent mass disasters like what we're living through as well as smaller scale disasters in your immediate sphere of influence. The current paradigm/belief that you learn everything you need to in K-12 or college and then that's it, you're done learning because you're smart enough to be a well-educated citizen that knows how to do adulting, is utter b.s. In fact, it's clear now that if we do not mandate well-rounded adult continuing education for every citizen that has a right to vote via self-study or some other method, every year, our civilization is doomed. Until then the only way to solve this problem on an individual level is to add to the solutions instead of the problems: somehow obtain a well-rounded education every year, any way you can, from now on.
10/25/24 Some additional thoughts about the educational system
12/5/22 This site no longer accepts donations.
11/6/22 NEW Self-Study Curriculum 1 I started making one of these for myself and figured might as well just put it here as an example curriculum. My advice: know thyself. Know what you are capable of learning in a given semester, quarter, or year, and plan your studies accordingly. If you are a parent of homeschoolers, the same general guideline applies: know your pupils.
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