Homeschoolers head to national robot contest

A group of homeschoolers from Oklahoma City have qualified to compete in a national robotics contest to be held in April, according to NewsOK.

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• Robot Building for Beginners: Technology in Action by David Cook
• I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

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The BEST Robotics National Championship is an annual event that pits student groups from at least 15 participating states against each other in a contest to see who can build the best functioning robot.

The championship features both homeschoolers and students from public and private schools. Last year, a group of Missouri homeschoolers took the top award.

The Oklahoma City group includes 30 students from grades six to 12. The group won second place in a regional competition held in Arkansas, qualifying for the national event to be held in Orlando, Fla.

The task this year was to create a robot that could sort golf balls from Easter eggs.

For more information about the BEST championship, or about starting a competition in your area, go to the BEST website, http://best.eng.auburn.edu/.

Your child might be a homeschool candidate if ...

If you are thinking about homeschooling but aren't sure yet if you want to take the plunge, there are some things to bear in mind. Above all else, homeschooled kids are unique, special, bright -- and sometimes scary smart. Here's a list that might help you decide if homeschooling is the right thing for your child. Your child might be a candidate for homeschool if ... When you watch "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," you catch him saying things like, "Ah yes, the Chronicles of St. Anselm," or "Alexandretta? Highly doubtful." He determines how much milk to pour into his cereal by calculating the ratio of Cheerios' nutritive values to his anticipated playtime energy needs in Joules. He not only understands Einstein's Theory of Relativity, but is working on a video documentary that will, quote, "blow the lid off the Einstein conspiracy." He can recite the names of all American presidents in order of height. For his third grade English essay he chose to write a 30-page report on the whimsy of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" -- in Middle English. He has nearly perfected his gourmet recipe for Beef Wellington a la Peanut Butter for chemistry class. He has ever explained that leaving the lid off the blender while making a milk shake was not an accident, but merely a test of chaos theory. The family pet has ever been an unwilling participant in your child's study of genetics. He has built a working flux capacitor into the family minivan. The United Nations has designated your child as ambassador to outer space, just in case. Light bedtime reading for your child is a chapter out of "Moby Dick." He laughs at the jokes in Shakespeare. He knows the last digit of pi. The messy piles of toys and clothes in his bedroom are actually a map of the molecular structure of a new element he calls "Madeitupium."

Homeschooling a fragile right

Earlier this week, President Obama gave a speech calling for more money for education and "innovation." He seemed to be focusing mostly on college tuition and programs, but homeschoolers may fairly ask, what about us? If you're looking for education innovation for pre-college children, it's unlikely to come from the union-ruled public school system. Homeschooling is itself a much-needed antidote to public schools' failures. But instead of backing homeschoolers, government at all levels either ignores the opportunities provided by homeschooling or even sometimes goes out of its way to put up barriers to parents who won't condemn their children to educational failure. In 2008, a California appellate court ruled that parents without teachers' credentials cannot legally educate their own children. Only the resulting outcry forced the judges to reconsider their opinion. But arguing that the court should uphold its previous ridiculous ruling was the California Teachers Association. Surprised? At the federal level, the National Education Association opposes homeschooling. While our homeschooling rights in California may sometimes hang by a thread, we can still be thankful that we don't live in Europe or other parts of the world. Many supposedly democratic countries in the EU have outlawed homeschooling altogether. In Sweden, authorities recently jailed Christer Johansson, father of 9-year-old Domenic, for taking his son home overnight from his state facility without official approval. The reason the boy is being kept separate from his family? Aside from letting the boy live with a couple of cavities and not following the Swedish government's vaccination schedule, the main complaint authorities have is that Domenic's parents were discovered homeschooling him. Now they only get to see their son for one hour every five weeks, and they can call him on the phone for 15 minutes every two weeks. The case is being appealed to the European Court of Human Rights. In New Zealand, Gerno and Andrea Schöneich are awaiting a decision on their application for asylum. The Schoneichs fled two years ago from Germany, where they faced fines, jail time and the threat of losing their children because they homeschooled. Germany continues to harass, threaten and jail homeschoolers who don't have the resources to leave the country. Homeschooling is also illegal in: Argentina, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Croatia, Greece, Netherlands and Spain. While homeschooling in America isn't currently threatened, we can't take for granted that it won't be, particularly when teachers unions hold such sway nationally and in state houses across the country. We parents owe it to our children to always be vigilant and make our voices heard. After all, our children are worth fighting for.

Homeschoolers make mark in science

People who are unfamiliar with homeschooling often have a long list of assumptions, most of them negative, about families who choose to educate their children at home. Among these is a belief that homeschoolers can never achieve in something as complicated as any sort of science. While science is probably one of the harder subjects for a parent to teach without school facilities, such as technical equipment and a dedicated lab space, it's doable, and some homeschoolers have gone on to make their marks in the sciences. Take two homeschoolers as cases in point: Francis Collins and Erik Demaine. The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief Collins is the former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, which mapped out the human genome--the genetic structure of human DNA--and provided groundbreaking and crucial information for medical researchers worldwide. An evangelical Christian, Collins wrote an influential book called The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. He was appointed by President Obama in 2009 to be director of the National Institutes of Health. (Source: NHGRI, Genome.gov.) Demaine became the youngest professor ever at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when he joined the staff at the age of 20. Demaine's youth was spent traveling the country with his father, who was a goldsmith and glassblower. Not only is Demaine a genius in mathematics, he has used his artistic talents to create an entirely new way of teaching. He is considered the leading theoretician in origami mathematics, which is now being used as a way to present complex mathematical concepts in architecture, molecular biology, robotics and other disciplines. In 2008, he had a show of his creations at the Museum of Modern Art, and many of his pieces are now part of the permanent display. (Source: ErikDemaine.org.) There's no telling for sure where these two men would be if they had been forced into public schooling. Through no ill intention (usually) of the teachers, public education seems designed to thwart exactly the kind of imagination that makes for leaders in science and other fields. As homeschooling parents, we need to always remember to be encouraging and never be afraid to let our children explore new ideas, because you never know where they might lead.