Author: hsoi

Working homeschooled kids

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Oldest expressed interest in getting a job.

Hallelujah! 🙂

Since he is a minor, all sorts of child labor laws come into play. I found this summary of Texas and Federal law at the Texas Workforce Commission’s website.

Here’s one part that I’m not sure about:

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) a child 14 or 15 years of age may not work during school hours…

We homeschool. In Texas, the legal status of homeschool is a private school. So, what does “school hours” mean? My guess is the normal hours of operation for the public school system in the district in which we reside (I sent an email to HSLDA). But why must it be this way? One of the benefits of homeschooling is flexible scheduling. It allows us to better organize our family life. It can give an employer a work resource at a time when they might need the help (e.g. lunch rush), instead of only getting a glut of teenager help from 3-7 PM every day. Furthermore, that glut limits the number of teenage employees that can be had as there’s only so much work and wages to go around at that time of day.

I understand the intent of child labor laws, including the history of how they came about. The intentions are good. It is evident the laws are constructed around traditional notions of institutionalized schooling. Given the dramatic rise of homeschooling in the past some years, it makes sense to revise and modernize our laws to improve how homeschooling is legally regarded (e.g. HoNDA).

Updated: Well, maybe this will work out, at least here in Texas.

HSLDA sent me a summary of Texas child labor laws.

Q: Can a child work during public school hours?

A: Texas has no prohibition against a child working during public school hours.

I requested clarification regarding how Federal law would work in here. Since the Federal law does not specify what “during school hours” means, Texas law trumps in this case.

So it seems if Oldest was to be hired, he could work the lunch rush. So long as of course things didn’t conflict with his schooling, which we wouldn’t allow anyway.

Nevertheless, I could see employers not wanting to hire in such a situation. First, they may be unaware of the laws. In that case, best I can say is for Oldest to walk into the job application process prepared with paperwork showing the laws and legal take on things, because I’m sure an employer would contact the TWC but they may also be unaware. Second, an employer may just want to avoid the potential appearance of the situation. To see a child working mid-day will be strange to a lot of people, which could prompt phone calls to CPS or TWC, and an employer may just not want to deal with the hassle…. or it could count against Oldest in some way.

We’ll see how it all plays out.

A savage hypocracy

/ hsoi

(Yes I know it’s “hypocrisy”).

From Breda:

Now, I’m in favor of gay marriage* and I’m proud of those who participated in what has been called the “Big Gay March” in our Capitol this past weekend. I believe everyone should be free to marry the person who they love, regardless of gender. But by clinging to identity politics and asking for the passage of hate crime legislation in the same breath as “equal rights” the gay community is only separating itself further from the mainstream they are asking to be welcomed into. It causes people who are anti-gay marriage to believe (and perhaps rightly so) that “equal” won’t be equal at all, that special groups will get special treatment or privileges under the law.

South Park did a great take on this. Unfortunately I can’t embed it here, please go click and watch (and you’ll see where I got “hypocracy”). Or if you want to read:

If somebody kills somebody, it’s a crime, but if someone kills somebody of a different color, it’s a hate crime. And we think that that is a savage hypocrisy, because all crimes are hate crimes. If a man beats another man because that man was sleeping with his wife, is that not a hate crime? If a person vandalizes a government building, is it not because of his hate for the government? The motivation for a crime shouldn’t affect the sentencing. It is time to stop splitting people into groups. All hate crime laws do is support the ideas that blacks are different from whites, that homosexuals need to be treated differently from non-homos. That we aren’t the same. But instead we should all be treated the same, with the same laws and the same punishments for the same crimes.

In many regards as well, this is working against simplification. This just builds up a lot and creates more problems than it’s good-intentions ever solve.

Harley Davidson kills Buell

/ hsoi

Wow. Harley-Davidson kills the Buell line.

From Erik Buell (if the YouTube video is pulled, you should be able to also view it on the Buell website).

Watching that hurts. You can hear the sadness in the man’s voice. 😦

Hopefully there will be a way for things to carry on. Maybe in a different form, maybe under a different name, but the same people and passion driving the development.

Ride on, brother.

Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others.

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From SayUncle I discover this little gem from the Brady Campaign. You see, a pastor in Kentucky, Ken Pagano, gave up 30 years in the pulpit so he could focus on issues of the Second Amendment and church-security. So what does Paul Helmke say about that?

As for Mr. Pagano, Mr. Helmke said, “Maybe he should be more concerned about the Fifth Commandment than the Second Amendment.”…

That Commandment is that you shall not murder, often mis-translated as kill. So Mr. Helmke, what are you saying about us?

People have “this idea” that Christians have to turn the other cheek?  Where in Heaven’s name did they get that?

Oh, right… from Jesus Christ:

You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

Nobody ever said emulating Christ would be easy, least of all the man himself….

Casting stones, Paul?

Maybe you should do a small bit of research and learn about how Christianity actually views such matters.

The title of this post? It comes from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm. For this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility.

Interview with Forrest Morgan, part 2

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Ikigai has posted part 2 of the Forrest Morgan interview.

When I was reading part 1 of the interview, a lot of it hit home. Again, Mr. Morgan’s answers to questions in part 2 hit home.

Continue reading →

Getting a little nostalgic

/ hsoi

Wandering around YouTube last night I stumble upon this video:

The song they are singing is Arirang (아리랑), the most popular Korean folk song.

I remember growing up and hearing my mother and other relatives singing this song. Even in watching the video, seeing Halabugi (the grandpa, the “old man” in the video)… wearing that white tank top, and I thought of my own Halabugi and how he’d often just be wearing a white tank top.

It’s hard to explain… but just watching the video made me smile, made me remember my grandparents, and brought a bit of a tear to my eye both a sad one and a happy one.

Fiddle with twitter

/ hsoi

I’m just not into Twitter, only because it doesn’t have a place for me. I mean, only 140 characters? You’re killing me! 😉

Nevertheless, I do have a Twitter account. I mainly snagged it to ensure I got “hsoi” and no one else squatted on it. A few weeks ago I set it up via twitterfeed.com to hook the blog to the twitter account to post when my blog updated.

Now it seems WordPress.com can do it automatically.

So I’m going to try switching to it.

Obviously another terrorist

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So we had a 6-year-old Cub Scout suspended from school because he brought camping gear on school grounds. Zero tolerance.

Now we have a 17-year-old Eagle Scout suspended for 20 days because he had a 2 inch knife in his car. Why did he have a knife in his car?

Matthew Whalen, a senior at Lansingburgh Senior High School, says he follows the Boy Scout motto and is always prepared, stocking his car with a sleeping bag, water, a ready-to-eat meal — and the knife, which was given to him by his grandfather, a police chief in a nearby town.

He lives in upstate New York, so getting caught out in the snow is a real possibility. So he keeps things in his car, ready in case of emergency. Good for him.

And so why is this all being done? Because they have to apply policy. Because they have to make an example out of him.

Whalen said he does not know why the 15 days were added, but he said a school district employee told him it was because the school wanted to apply its policies consistently.

“I’ve been told by someone who works for the district that they had to do it, because if someone else had a knife and they saw that I didn’t get a suspension, that it would look bad for the school.”

What looks bad isn’t Matthew Whalen. What looks bad are stupid school administrators making asinine rules. I thought schools taught critical thinking… but I guess they don’t need to apply it.

Interview with Forrest Morgan

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There are lots of books on martial arts, most being “how to” and not always worth a darn. While I certainly do read some of those books, what I find myself more drawn too are martial arts books on a more esoteric or philosophical level. Good books in that realm are harder to find. One of them is Living the Martial Way: A Manual for the Way a Modern Warrior Should Think by Forrest Morgan.

Ikigai has an interview with Mr. Morgan. Part 1 is up. It contains some background information, and I found a few things striking a chord with me. It sounds so much like my own relationship with Kuk Sool Won.

Continue reading →