ccuthbert

Pro, I posted the topic on this board because Stefan mentioned evolution and I was hoping he would explore the topic to challenge his position. I chose the science forum bc it is a science question, not a religious one. I don't think that religion is relevant. This is a matter of science, the author I cited challenges the darwin myth based on science, and I agree with him. Darwin's science is incorrect, as many scientists agree. Friendly right here on this thread agreed that darwin was wrong, with the excuse that darwin didn't know about dna. (?!?) I noticed on a podcast this week, Stefan again mentioned evolution, saying that if you read the bible and not Richard Dawkins you are not being intellectually rigorous. How about if you read Dawkins and none of the scientists who challenge Darwin's myth? I contend that also is not being intellectually rigorous. I'll bet he doesn't even realize that there are scientific challenges to the Darwin myth, which is worse. But then, Stefan shows an interesting mixture of unorthodox and extremely orthodox thinking. For example, he gets that gov't school sucks, but he doesn't get all the reasons why, so he bribes his daughter, bosses her to swim, and says how she just has to be reading by the age of 5. (eye roll, sounds a lot like gov't school to me.) He gets that medical care market is thoroughly distorted, but doesn't get that one of the results is that main stream medicine does not cure disease, and gets surgery and chemo. I guess we all have our bug-a-boos. I'm just always surprised when an unconventional thinker can be so conventional.

LovePrevails, GOOD FOR YOU. This bribery thing is way out of hand and I am appalled that Stefan would recommend it. UGH. It's a good sign that he is taking what you posted into consideration. Stigskog, parents can instill good hygeine habits in their children not only by modeling them but by doing them together as a normal routine. In our house, we lived our lives together rather than in parallel the way it seems that most families do. We woke up together, ate, read and played together, and went to bed together. The children followed our lead and didn't question things like bathing, brushing teeth or bedtime. They viewed them as an unremarkable and necessary part of the daily routine, almost like breathing. Of course, when they get older f'getaboutit. They eat junk food and stay up all night watching garbage on TV and I wonder how THAT ever happened, as I drink my veggie juice and read books--you know those archaic things made of paper with funny writing on them... ;-) But they do brush their teeth, I have to say. ps I can't get over this. Throwing candy at a kid to get her to use a toilet? This is so disgusting, treating her like an animal to be trained. He might as well be throwing a fish to a seal.

"Richard Dawkins thinks that the eye evolved step by step through a series of intermediate stages. But even the 'light-sensitive spot' that Dawkins takes as his starting point is a multicell organ, each of whose cells makes the complexity of a motorcycle or television look paltry in comparison. Dawkins merely adds complex systems to complex systems and calls that an explanation. Behe comments: 'This can be compared to answering the question how is a stereo system made? with the words, by plugging a set of speakers into an amplifier and adding a cd player, radio receiver and tape deck.'" --David Pratt The video clip above does not address any of the complexity on a biochemical level of processing of light to vision. There are many vastly complex systems and behavior that are difficult to explain by random mutation. If one peruses a molecular biology text, one is overwhelmed by it. There are many cellular process even in single cell organisms where one missing protein would make the whole system inoperative, yet how could such complexity arise from a series of random mutations? And speaking of complexity... "An astonishing example of seemingly 'impossible' design, which has quite rightly been much cited by recent 'creationist' writers, is the bombardier beetle Brachinus, which is now known to be equipped for its defense with a miniature liquid fuel rocket engine. Stored hydroquinone fuel and hydrogen peroxide oxidizer are suddenly mixed in a tail end combustion chamber where they react explosively to generate a jet of steam and boiling water ejected through a trainable nozzle at any threatening predator. Another example of an extraordinary 'natural' weapon...: the 'nemotacysts' (stinging cells) of cnidarians (hydroids, jellyfish, sea anemones and relatives). In each of these cells lies a barbed microharpoon on a coiled up tether which is violently ejected if a nearby "trigger" is touched; these microharpoons inject a poison so potent that some jellyfish... maybe fatal for a swimmer to encounter. Far more astounding than the design of these weapons themselves is the fact that some other organisms command the skill to steal these deadly spring-guns from cnidarians in order to make use of them for their own defense! “Two quite unrelated creatures are known to perform this hardly credible feat. One is the flatworm Microstoma which gets them from the small freshwater polyp Hydra. Since it has no hands, it is obliged to eat the Hydra for the purpose--though it must find its flavor repulsive, since it would rather starve than live on an all-Hydra diet. It somehow deactivates the triggers so as to keep the cells from firing; then in its stomach, somehow keeps them from being digested, and passes them through to stomach wall to wandering cells that carry them it its outer skin, where they are installed, and finally furnished with new triggers grown by the new owner. (I could hardly blame you if you refused to believe a word of this.) The other deft thieves are the marine nudibranchs (sea slugs) such as Aeolidia which attack sea anemones and jellyfish to obtain their nematocysts and install them on their own backs--or alternatively to hoard them in special sacs for the purpose of spewing them en masse into the mouth of an attacker." --Alexander Mebane Another problem is that random mutation appears to be a subtractive process rather than additive. These are very difficult concepts to reason through. The glib type of answers as from Dawkins do not address the crucial questions. The fact is that darwin did not propose an answer to the question of how species arise. Tinkering around with darwinism is not going to give us an answer and only shows that the theory was never a theory at all.

DD just graduated from college with a science degree. when she was in physics a couple of years ago, she would always go to the prof's office after exams to see the answer sheet and copy any probs she got wrong. She said one day doing this, the prof kept looking at her, looking at her exam, back at her and clearly couldn't figure out why she was there. You see, she had gotten an A on the test. Apparently, it was unheard of for an A student to try to correct her errors... Have to agree with both Nerburg and dsayers comments above...

Several strawman agruments here. It seems we have yet another "settled science." There are many scientists who challenge the big bang "theory" based on plasma theory. They would no doubt be insulted to hear anyone accusing them of "believing" in something else, since science is not about believing. If you are unfamiliar with their ideas, which I assume you are though I don't know, then how can you say they are not "based on something so objective"? You might want start with the two books recommended here before you criticize.

J, maybe it was productive for the caller, I certainly don't know, but it was insulting, nevertheless. Frankly, the morphing of his show into a voyeuristic, psuedo-psychology session (and often times into a men's lonely hearts session, ugh) I find both appalling and totally uninteresting. If these people need help from him, so be it, but I don't want to listen to it and i turn it off immediately. Talking about interesting ideas, such as exploring the weak points of orthodox science, or new historical information, or better ways of organizing our society, or new tech, or I could go on for a long time, are all preferable. "Someone done me wrong" just doesn't interest me, nor does "it's all my mother's fault." About bringing up evolution out of context (or something), the caller said that Stefan had mentioned evolution and that's why he wanted to discuss it--why shouldn't he bring it up? I have noticed a couple of times Stefan saying something about evolution, too, one time triggering this thread. I think he has a sort of pop grasp on the topic, very conventional, and I think he's wrong. Do I need to talk about my childhood to continue posting here? Got one word for that, f'getaboutit.

I never bought into the big bang "theory." How it can be called a theory at all is beyond me. Have you read The Electric Sky by Don Scott?

Well, Stefan's Feb 13 podcast where he treated the caller who wanted to challenge the evolution orthodoxy with avante garde theories about extraterrestirals was one of the most disgusting interchanges I've witnessed. "You have crazy ideas, you must have been abused as a child. Instead of discussing evolution, let's discuss YOU." ST, the "incremental steps" or (should we say randome point mutations?) seem to create changes within a species, what has been termed microevolution. There is a leap to a new species that is not supported by random point mutation for two reasons that I can think of off the top of my head: 1. the mutations are lost in the gene pool, as you mentioned and 2. point mutation can't create complex systems changes. It seems to me that large changes (saltation) are required for a new species to "evolve." About the grains, read these few paragraphs by Lloyde Pye at http://newbeing.org/NB_Pye.html "Nearly all domesticated plants are believed to have appeared between 10,000 and 5,000 years ago, with different groups coming to different parts of the world at different times. Initially, in the so-called Fertile Crescent of modern Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, came wheat, barley and legumes, among other varieties. Later on, in the Far East, came wheat, millet, rice and yams. Later still, in the New World, came maize (corn), peppers, beans, squash, tomatoes and potatoes. "Many have "wild" predecessors that were apparently a starting point for the domesticated variety, but others--like many common vegetables--have no obvious precursors. But for those that do, such as wild grasses, grains and cereals, how they turned into wheat, barley, millet, rice, etc. is a profound mystery. "No botanist can conclusively explain how wild plants gave rise to domesticated ones. The emphasis here is on "conclusively." Botanists have no trouble hypothesising elaborate scenarios in which Neolithic (New Stone Age) farmers somehow figured out how to hybridise wild grasses, grains and cereals, not unlike Gregor Mendel when he cross-bred pea plants to figure out the mechanics of genetic inheritance. It all sounds so simple and so logical, almost no one outside scientific circles ever examines it closely. "Gregor Mendel never bred his pea plants to be anything other than pea plants. He created short ones, tall ones and different- coloured ones, but they were always pea plants that produced peas. (Pea plants are a domesticated species, too, but that is irrelevant to the point to be made here.) On the other hand, those New Stone Age farmers who were fresh out of their caves and only just beginning to turn soil for the first time (as the "official" scenario goes), somehow managed to transform the wild grasses, grains and cereals growing around them into their domesticated "cousins." Is that possible? Only through a course in miracles! "Actually, it requires countless miracles within two large categories of miracles. The first was that the wild grasses and grains and cereals were useless to humans. The seeds and grains were maddeningly small, like pepper flakes or salt crystals, which put them beyond the grasping and handling capacity of human fingers. They were also hard, like tiny nutshells, making it impossible to convert them to anything edible. Lastly, their chemistry was suited to nourishing animals, not humans. "So wild varieties were entirely too small, entirely too tough and nutritionally inappropriate for humans. They needed to be greatly expanded in size, greatly softened in texture and overhauled at the molecular level--which would be an imposing challenge for modern botanists, much less Neolithic farmers. "Despite the seeming impossibility of meeting those daunting objectives, modern botanists are confident the first sodbusters had all they needed to do it: time and patience. Over hundreds of generations of selective crossbreeding, they consciously directed the genetic transformation of the few dozen that would turn out to be most useful to humans. And how did they do it? By the astounding feat of doubling, tripling and quadrupling the number of chromosomes in the wild varieties! In a few cases, they did better than that. Domestic wheat and oats were elevated from an ancestor with seven chromosomes to their current 42--an expansion by a factor of six. Sugar cane was expanded from a 10-chromosome ancestor to the 80-chromosome monster it is today--a factor of eight. The chromosomes of others, like bananas and apples, were only multiplied by factors of two or three, while peanuts, potatoes, tobacco and cotton, among others, were expanded by factors of four. This is not as astounding as it sounds, because many wild flowering plants and trees have multiple chromosome sets." He goes on to talk about the mystery of angiosperms and then domesticated animals. Lots of question... Here's another thing that has bothered me for a long time. Biologists say that when a population becomes small, lethal recessive genes will be expressed leading to extinction. Ok, but what about on the other end of the time line. Would not the emergence of a new species presuppose a small population? If so, wouldn't lethal recessive genes lead to extinction? If the new species is not a small population, how did that happen if one depends upon the theory of random point mutations driving evolution?

Here's the deal. I posited that Darwin was wrong. That means that his incremental changes over many years lead to new species is wrong. That is his myth. I did NOT say that there is no evolution. The idea of evolution pre-dates Darwin. His myth was proposing a mechanism and that mechanism has been shown to be incomplete and incorrect. Further, many scientist have known that Darwin was wrong including from the very beginning all the way to today, yet this "theory" is taught as gospel and over the years it hasn't been unknown for a dissenter to be busted by the thought police. These days, scientists come up with alternative "theories" that imply Darwin was wrong, then cover themselves by insisting that Darwin was right. These things should make us suspicious. I propose that Darwin caught on bc he had a PR machine behind him--kind of like global warming. Friendly can say all day that Darwin was wrong and Darwin was right and don't you know ANYTHING? but that doesn't really address the argument. I mentioned an excellent pamphlet that discusses why darwin was wrong and posted a paragraph from it to try to cut off the religion v science squabble. Religious belief should be irrelevant in this debate. To the extent that it isn't should also make us suspicious. If you don't want to buy the cheap pamphlet (I have no affiliation with it) point your search engine to "darwin was wrong" and I'm sure you'll find many weeks worth of reading. It's fascinating and it would be nice to discuss that instead of going back and forth on how great darwin was. Here are three things to think about: 1. st434u's comment on drosophila experiments, 2. the development of grains as a food source and 3. development of complex structures such as eyes and wings.

wesley said: "You on the other hand are calling his posts "mentally defective" which I would consider an insult." Clarification: I was saying that his post implies that I am mentally defective.

Stefan talked about this on his guest host spot posted on Jan 31 2014 on his youtube channel. Anyone interested should read The Self Respecting Child by Alison Stallibrass, published in 1989. This book has been a staple among homeschoolers for years. It is well worth reading. Stallibrass talked about a similar situation in a park in England, where parents were barred from entering the children's play area which resulted in the incidents of accidents among the children dramatically declining.

Friendly, *sigh* yet another mentally defective comment. frankly, i skim your posts trying to avoid the insults... didn't make it this time.

dsayers, the fact is that gov't today dominates the sciences. that's what i'm talking about--the state of science today. That's why i used the word scientism. You seems to be referring to some ideal of science. (Are you a platonist?) I don't see how I have anything to "withdraw." Friendly, "I can't agree with you because you missed the point about approximation to reality..." I did not. I dismissed your point. You might just as well be rah, rah Lamark for the same reason. Instead I'm guessing that you would prefer to throw Lamarck out. Darwin, good, Lamarck bad. Hmmm, I wonder why... Btw, I'm also wondering why you think that when I write in disagreement of your posts, you assume that I'm mentally defective.

Self-Excavator, this is what I think of when i use the word scientism, as you offered above... "To indicate the improper usage of science or scientific claims. This usage applies equally in contexts where science might not apply, such as when the topic is perceived to be beyond the scope of scientific inquiry, and in contexts where there is insufficient empirical evidence to justify a scientific conclusion. It includes an excessive deference to claims made by scientists or an uncritical eagerness to accept any result described as scientific." [emphasis mine] dsayers, No apology necessary. ;-) Ok, I look at science v religion this way. In the US today, there is a science bureaucracy (like the church hierarchy) that determines what is researched through govt grants, determines what is a theory through university faculty, peer review, journal editorial boards. etc., and in this way essentially determines what is considered scientific. Then you have schools (seminaries) where some people learn the "language" of science (latin) but the vast majority of the population is so dumbed down by iatrogenic schooling that they can't understand that language. The scientists are revered for being intellectuals (priests) and their pronouncements (revealed truth) are accepted as a matter of course by the general population. Even scientists in other fields blindly follow the experts and are actively discouraged from crossing over. There's plenty of corruption--for example, science by press release, threats against researchers who challenge the orthodoxy, holding back promising young scientists in post-doc slavery, theft of students' thesis work by profs etc. If you want to think of it as an analogy, i suppose you could, but i look at it as the shared characteristics of large, bureaucratic institutions. People in large groups mostly suck. About peer review, that's a tough one. When if functions well, it seems the best way of vetting experimental results and new ideas. However, it's is a double edge sword, entrenching old ideas in spite of mounting evidence and shutting off whole lines of inquiry from needed funds. I don't have an answer for how to improve it on an institutional level, but we must all recognize and be on guard for its short comings. After all, scientific truth is not defined by popularity or majority vote or the approval of wizened old profs. so I should have said that Darwin was wrong but he was a really nice guy??? My original post said that he was wrong, you admit he was wrong, so again, I don't understand what you were going on about... Can't we just agree to agree? "Every scientific theory is wrong because they're not about the truth, they are about ever increasing approximation to a measured reality. Sometimes a new idea greatly decreases the margin of error to those approximations, or someone finds out about a previously unknown reality." And sometimes the "theory" is just plain wrong, should be thrown out but the politics of the times won't allow it. Darwinism ain't the only one, that's for sure... ps, just thought i'd mention that even though this is not a long post, it took me a really long time to write. I just don't have the time to do this on a regular basis. I will try to get to that outline this weekend, but it will take a lot more of my time...

Ok, friendly, now I'm really confused. You agree that Darwin was wrong. So what have you been going on about all this time???? Right, and nobody said that. so... your point? dsayers, why don't you get together with friendly, here. He apparently knows that darwin was wrong. ;-) Darwin's "theory" should not be called a theory because it doesn't fit the definition: a coherent group of tested general propositions that can be used as principles of explanation and prediction for a class of phenomena. His assertion that small changes that arise due to natural selection over many generations produce new species, aka microevolution creates macroevolution, has not been supported by evidence, which is why punctuated equilibrium has been proposed. And, his propositions have not been predictive. If anything, it should be called an hypothesis. There is no bureaucracy in science? What are all those buildings in DC, then, the thousands of university departments with tenured profs, the hundreds of journals, the grant proposal and grant vetting machines, the peer review process, the gov't agencies that pick "theories" to publicize? There is a common understanding that the older generation must die out for new ideas to be accepted. Your model of how science works is nothing like what i've witnessed or read about...

It meant that i interpreted some of the back and forth to be less than cordial. i am not ignoring anything, i'm just not able to post regularly. Btw, i didn't call science religions. I equated scientism with religion. Modern science has gone down the wrong path in several areas. Due to its heavily bureaucratic nature, changing direction is difficult. So yes, this is one "theory" that I call a myth. Not sure what's wrong with that... I will try to devote the time to outlining arguments against darwinism later this week. Punctuated equilibrium was an attempt to rescue darwinism, btw, and it shows where darwin was wrong. Oh, i dunno, would you? Maybe someone on the forum would like to read it...

Here was my unschooling plan: Tasmlab, I think you don't get it--which is fine since it's your family and your decision. But unless your unschooling plan looks like mine above, it ain't unschooling. Just saying...

Certainly an absence of name calling. It also would be nice if more people could envision a scientific challenge to the orthodoxy. Rather than repeat that of course Darwin was right, it would have been better if people looked into Mebanes' essay before commenting. Anyway, a few people do realize that the intelligent design proponents have very valid and serious questions about darwin's myth. One does not have to espouse intelligent design to question Darwinism. It is a logical fallacy to discredit all ideas from religious people simply because they are religious—appropriately called the genetic fallacy. ;-) I was introduced to Mebane's essay probably about 15 years ago by an objectivist md. We had a objectivist discussion group in my city and this md presented his ideas on why darwin was wrong to about 12 of us. Not one of us disagreed with what he said. I don't know about the others in the room but as for me, I had always scratched my head over darwin, realizing, when? in high school? that his myth did not answer the question of how species arise. There has never been any experimental support for darwin, and it's not without lack of trying. My bs antennae have been active over the years aimed at the Darwinism since there have been lies in support of the myth: the peppered moth controversy, the lining up of fossils to show ordered evolutionary progression, etc. Piltdown man is always in the back of my mind when I consider Darwinist arguments. I myself can't verify the “fossil record.” Who among us can? How do we know it is being represented accurately? It seems to me that many of us default to accepting “scientific arguments” wherever used. If an “expert” says something is so, we defer. I think this is very dangerous and being used against us. We need to bear in mind that just about all aspects of our lives have been politicized. All kinds of decision we should by right be making for ourselves have been taken away and given to “experts” to make base on efficiency and science. But what if the science isn't right? How do we verify it? It seems to me that it is becoming increasingly difficult to even question it. Tptb don't have to punish us for questioning the orthodoxy, we help them by punishing each other. “You don't believe in Darwin???? (rolls eyes) What, are you born again or something?” Thanks for reading. I hope we can continue cordially.

Well, as the thrower of this bomb, i was at first glad to see a lot of posts in my abscence, but after reading the them I was sad to see not much movement in the conversation. I would like to point out that if people re-read my post, I think it is pretty clear by my quoting Mebane that I was not referring to Darwin's hypothesis (theory, NOT) as a myth by resorting to any argument based in religion. Here is an example of the psyops, or as Rand referred to it, a packaged deal. It is assumed that if one believes in darwin's myth, then one is scientific and anti-religion. Further, it is assumed that if one does not believe darwin's myth, then one is religious and anti-science. Gee, guess what? There are other possibilities. The truth of it is that many scientifically minded people who have examined darwin's myth have realized that it does not hold up. I have looked at the science and i have determined that darwin's theory is not scientically supported. Note I have not said that I "believe" he is right or wrong. It is my assessment that it is incorrect. No religion here, not of the ancient Hebrew variety, nor of the modern american scientism variety. The people who think that Gould's punctuated equilibrium hypothesis is supportive of darwin's natural selection hypothesis may be listening to Gould's propaganda overlay to his science. Nobody in mainstream science can come right out and say darwin was wrong without serious ramifications. That is because modern science is a creature of the gov't and as such politicized--not uncommon in the history of mankind. There is scientific evidence that evolution occurred, but there's no absolute certainty. There is no hard scientific evidence that species arise as the result of small changes through natural selection over many years. That is darwin's myth--not evolution, but the method--that has never been supported by evidence nor by experiment. Scientists at the time of Origin pointed out that the title of the book was incorrect, because he did not demostrate how species arise. He described changes in a species over time, yes, but emergence of species, no. If you are interested in scientific arguments against darwin then go back to my first post and fork over the bucks to read Mebane's essay. It is well worth it.

Just thought I'd throw a bomb in the room. Stefan said at the beginning of his Karl Marx vid: "Darwin had an explanation for where we came from that was quite credible and remains quite credible to this day..." I couldn't disagree more. Darwin's myth was never credible and I venture to say a large % of scientists realize this but are not willing to say so. However, many famous scientists have said so, including Stephan Jay Gould, Niles Eldredge and David Raup. Yet the charade goes on, fueled by politics--what else is new? There is a very interesting pamphlet called "Darwin's Creation Myth" by Alexander Mebane that can be bought here. Lest you rabid atheists start going on about Bible-thumpers, here is the prefatory note to this pamphlet: "A recent catalogue of 'anti-evolution' writings reveals the rather dismaying fact that, historically, almost 90% of such publications have based their arguments on the axiom that reliable information is to be found in the creation-myths of the ancient Hebrews. Let me make clear at once that this essay is not in that category! Today, no mind that has not been warped by childhood 'imprinting' could find anything to take seriously in those naive and self-contradictory old fables, whose absurdity became evident to unbiased minds some two centuries earlier than that of the later, more plausible creation-myth of Darwin. The ingenuous hopes of countless imprintees cannot wish away the fact that the multiply-punctured credibility of those old fables is simply not capable of ever being re-inflated. Although we stand (and have stood for more than a century) in dire need of a creation-myth more rationally defensible than that of Darwin, it is fatuous to hope to find one in the legends of primitive peoples." Anyway, Stefan, if you read this, it would be great for you to find and interview an expert in this field who can enlighten you and your listeners. Darwin was wrong, was always considered wrong by credible scientists including at the time of the publication of Origin, admitted fatal flaws in his "theory," yet the charade has been continued all these years. It's part of the propaganda efforts of the farmers to maintain their position over us livestock. Seems a topic right up your alley.

dokkou, we never gave our children allowance either. I am totally against the practice. I know it's almost universal and that we were unusual in this, but hey, there are a lot of things that make us unusual. I didn't want to pay our children for doing chores around that house that were their responsibility as part of our household. To me, paying your child to clean up his own mess is sending a very bad message. Worse is paying a child for nothing, which seems far more common in the US. Are we surprised that we have so many people who believe they are owed a living? If our children wanted pocket money, they had two choices, just like everyone else: 1. work, 2. gifts. Some how they survived. ;-)

Stephenscorzo, the socialization boogeyman is just that, a boogeyman. What does the word really mean, anyway? The only way I've ever heard it used is to denigrate homeschoolers. The implication is that without gov't school, we'd all be wild animals, at each others' throats. The fact is that gov't school does not provide the environment for healthy social development. What young children need is not other children to play with (from whom they will pick up just about nothing but bad habits) but the example of adults in everyday life. This is not to say that you shouldn't find playmates or have friends and playdays, just that those things are not the key to socialization. When my husband first brought up homeschooling, I told him I couldn't do it bc I didn't want my children to hate me. Everybody hates their teachers, right? Then I started researching homeschooling. John Holt, Daniel Greenberg, the Moores, JT Gatto, Growing without Schooling. I read everything I could get my hands on. I realized that I didn't have to fill the role of a gov't school teacher at home. I could be mom and let my children be children. Maybe if your wife could come to that same realization, her anxiety about homeschooling would disappear.

I have to second LovePrevails response--DO NOT DO THIS, and read Punished by Rewards. Contrary to our conditioned response to the idea that unschooling means uneducated, undisciplined, unprepared, lazy, etc, unschooling is none of this. Think of it as aided discovery. Daniel Greenberg of Sudbury Valley School fame noted that when some one wants to learn something, he will find the way to do it. Therefore, if your son wants to go to college (god forbid) he'll do what it takes to get there. For example, we unschooled with our children. My daughter will be graduating with her degree in chemistry in two weeks with a gpa of 3.8. Somehow, unschooling didn't stop her from aquiring the basics--quite the contrary. Stupid school stuff didn't waste her precious time, so that she was able to concentrate on what she needed to learn. You might benefit from reading Greenberg's books. PS, I always thought it odd that a parent would pay for grades. Grades themselves are arbitrary bribes. Clearly they don't cause the desired response from many children. Instead of recognizing this and abandoning the ridiculous system, the parent doubles down with money.

IMVHO, two of the most important parenting books ever written. The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff The Self-Respecting Child by Alison Stallibrass

And that's NOT manipulative?????