The Socialization Deception

Informative

Taken from http://www.crosswalk.com/family/homeschool/high-school/the-socialization-deception.html?ps=0

If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it a thousand times—that age-old question asked of every homeschooler by every homeschool skeptic: “What about socialization?”

Whether asked by genuinely concerned and well-meaning relatives or posed by our most ardent critics, the question has become so routine that many homeschoolers are able to answer it without a moment’s thought. But for years, we’ve been answering this question the wrong way.

“Well,” the standard answer goes, “our kids go to soccer practice once a week, our youngest daughter takes music lessons, our son is in 4-H and Boy Scouts, the oldest two are part of the church youth group, and they all have lots of friends around the neighborhood. They get plenty of socialization.”

Question answered, critic silenced. We feel good. Vindicated. “You can’t get us with that question,” we think to ourselves. “Just look at all the socialization my kids get!”

However good it may feel to give this answer, it amounts to little more than an “Oh yeah?” response. “What do you mean my kids don’t get enough socialization? Just look at everything they’re involved in!”

Is this the best answer we can give? And is it possible we’re compromising our own values and allowing the world’s thinking to become our own?     (more…)

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Duons: Parallel Gene Code Defies Evolution

Classroom Help, Technology

Taken from http://www.icr.org/article/7870/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook

Researchers have just characterized a new, previously hidden genetic code embedded within the same sections of genes that code for proteins—utterly defying all naturalistic explanations for its existence.1

In addition to supplying many different types of genetic code that regulate function, the genome also provides highly complex coded templates for making a wide diversity of functional RNA molecules and proteins.

Protein-coding genes—those containing the key information to make proteins—hold the most-studied type of genetic code. Some of the most important chunks of code in genes are the exons, which specify the actual template for protein sequences.

In exons, three consecutive DNA letters form what is called a codon, and each codon corresponds to a specific amino acid in a protein. Long sets of codons in genes contain the protein-making information that ends up being translated into entire proteins that may be hundreds of amino acids in length.

Before this study, scientists were aware that the protein-coding regions of genes had mysterious signals other than codons that told the cell machinery how to regulate and process the RNA transcripts (copies of genes) prior to making the protein. Researchers originally thought that these regulatory codes and the protein template codes containing the codons operated independently of each other.

In reality, the new results showed that these codes actually work both separately and together. While one set of codons specifies the order of amino acids for a protein, the very same sequence of DNA letters also specifies where necessary cellular machinery (transcription factors) are to bind to the gene to make the RNA transcript that codes for a protein. As a result of this new discovery, these dual-function code sites in exons have been labeled “duons.” Scientists just last year reported that transcription factors clamped onto some exons inside genes but did not understand this dual code system until now.2

The human mind struggles to comprehend the overall complexity of the genetic code—especially the emerging evidence showing that some genes have sections that can be read both forward and backward.3 Some genes overlap parts of other genes in the genome, and now it has been revealed that many genes have areas that contain dual codes within the very same sequence.1,4

Even the most advanced computer programmers can’t come close to matching the genetic code’s incredible information density and bewildering complexity. An all-powerful Creator appears to be the only explanation for this astounding amount of seemingly infinite bioengineering in the genome.

References

  1. Stergachis, A. B. et al. 2013. Exonic Transcription Factor Binding Directs Codon Choice and Affects Protein Evolution. Science. 342 (6164): 1367-1372.
  2. Neph, S. et al. 2012. An expansive human regulatory lexicon encoded in transcription factor footprints. Nature. 489 (7414): 83-90.
  3. Tomkins, J. Bewildering Pseudogene Functions Both Forwards and Backwards. Creation Science Update. Posted on icr.org June 14, 2013, accessed December 19, 2013.
  4. Sanna, C. R., W. H. Li, and L. Zhang. 2008. Overlapping genes in the human and mouse genomes. BMC Genomics. 9: 169.

*Dr. Tomkins is Research Associate at the Institute for Creation Research and received his Ph.D. in genetics from Clemson University.

Article posted on January 6, 2014.

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ABC’s OF HOMESCHOOL

Classroom Help, Informative, Parenting

Taken from http://katharinetrauger.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/abcs-of-homeschool-2/
Written by Kathy Trauger

Hello, Friends!

This week I must devote entirely to several speaking chores. So I thought you would enjoy viewing the introductions to my presentations. Here they are in their approximate final draft. Enjoy!

Raising children is like a boat race:

  • You never feel ready
  • You always feel watched
  • It’s hard to change your mind
  • Disasters can happen

Too often, a bad beginning can cause a disastrous ending.

What can we do to ensure we are even in the right boat?

Since we are SO FAR from the shore, what are some boat safety rules?

A. We can examine our attitudes. Many begin this race badly, with a bad attitude when they board the good ship homeschool.

Sometimes people begin home schooling because of a bad teacher experience. Often these parents are angry and the thrust of their actions is intended as a javelin thrust into some teacher or educational system.

They just want to rock the boat . . . .

We all need to get used to the fact that the State Institutions are failing everywhere. It is not personal. It just is a cosmic failure, such as comes every time we build a cosmic house of cards.

Those who begin for this reason, alone, often stop just as dramatically as they began, when they, for some reason, decide putting their child in a State Institution is not really such a bad idea, after all.

Some parents begin because the child is failing. Whether he is unable to learn, or simply untaught where he is, the parent decides to take the plunge because of embarrassment or natural protective instincts toward the child. This reason also fails the parent quickly, because soon as the child homeschools, he does better.

Amazing!

The parents allow this progress to lull them into a false sense of security. They opt for State Institutionalization for their beloved child, after all, thinking the problems were a false alarm.

They change boats in the middle of the race, and slow the progress of both methods.

The third reason is more stable. These people do not become quitters as easily.

They are the ones who begin because they see the rightness, the necessity of it. They see God’s commands to teach our own children. They see the State Institutions growing constantly more hostile to morality.

They see ketchup as a vegetable and “two mommies” as a norm, or even a goal.

These frightening observations rivet them and they realize homeschooling as a part of being a family, homeschooling as a part of the decision to have children,
homeschooling even as a part of the decision to marry.

It’s just the natural, normal result, for them, of being alive and desiring to succeed.

And they do.

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