At least it's not the Migratory Bird Act but with chemicals
I'm desperately trying to get our school year planned before it actually starts. I'm ready to be done with this whole process and have some time to move on to other things. But I have to say, businesses which are supposed to support education don't always make it easy for us homeschoolers to do our job.
It irks me more than a little bit, because we often have to justify the education that we give to our children to other people, often those involved in education. There is an assumption by many that the education that homeschoolers offer their children is inferior to what traditional schools can offer. Frankly, this is a lot of hooey, not because the education offered in traditional schools is bad, but because a homeschooled education is just as good.
And that just as good comes with quite a bit of effort behind it. More than once, I have come across businesses which are more than happy to sell to schools, but trying to get them to sell to individuals is next to impossible. This means that after butting my head against a wall that is not moving, I have to spend time finding other ways to get what I need.
This was my experience this afternoon as I continue to work on our chemistry preparations. I found a great middle school chemistry program. It's free, it has great instruction and hand-outs, and it has supply lists with suggestions for where you can get what you need. I think my children are really going to enjoy it and learn a lot. Plus, it is going to give them a great foundation so that they don't have to spend years convinced that they can't do chemistry. I still have a few things to do to be ready to start school, and one of those things is to order the supplies that we need. I have some supplies from having multiple high school students do chemistry, but there are some other things that are specific to this program, particularly chemicals in order to do the experiments.
Since the program had listed a science supply center complete with order numbers, I happily did the easy things and just put them in my cart as I went along. Then, when adding in my fourth bottle of chemicals, I noticed a little announcement down on the bottom of the page. Since these are dangerous chemicals (one of them could be a mild skin irritant), they will only sell them to accredited schools, museums, or science programs. I then spent far more time poking around the web site looking to see if there was a work-around, but there didn't seem to be. One of my faults is that I don't like to be told no, so then I spent time writing an email to them explaining the problem and asking how they could help me. I have zero expectations that this will cause them to smack their collective foreheads and realize the idiocy of their rules. To get really dangerous chemicals, all I have to do is go to the store where I can easily pick up the items necessary to make poison gas. (Don't worry, I have no plans on making poison gas, even accidentally.) It did lead me to wonder, though, if this was the Migratory Bird Act all over again.
Unless you have been reading here for a very long time, this reference might be more than a little baffling. You can read my post about it, but essentially, because we are a homeschool and not a public school, we could not bring home any bird specimens from the Field Museum when we were part of the Harris Loan Box program. I even wrote to the Department of Natural Resources to see if they could help. I assume they couldn't because I never even received a reply back. So, was this ban on selling chemicals to non-accredited schools another slap in the face to homeschoolers because we were different? I didn't actually know.
Hello World Wide Web. It took hardly any searching to find a homeschool-friendly science supply store. Holding my breath for a moment, I typed in the first chemical I needed into the search bar. Lo and behold, there it was! No warning they couldn't sell it to me and they had a wider range of amounts with a lower cost. It turns out they carry everything I need. Guess which store is getting my business?
It's a happy ending to my little story, but this bias against homeschools and private schools still rankles.
It irks me more than a little bit, because we often have to justify the education that we give to our children to other people, often those involved in education. There is an assumption by many that the education that homeschoolers offer their children is inferior to what traditional schools can offer. Frankly, this is a lot of hooey, not because the education offered in traditional schools is bad, but because a homeschooled education is just as good.
And that just as good comes with quite a bit of effort behind it. More than once, I have come across businesses which are more than happy to sell to schools, but trying to get them to sell to individuals is next to impossible. This means that after butting my head against a wall that is not moving, I have to spend time finding other ways to get what I need.
This was my experience this afternoon as I continue to work on our chemistry preparations. I found a great middle school chemistry program. It's free, it has great instruction and hand-outs, and it has supply lists with suggestions for where you can get what you need. I think my children are really going to enjoy it and learn a lot. Plus, it is going to give them a great foundation so that they don't have to spend years convinced that they can't do chemistry. I still have a few things to do to be ready to start school, and one of those things is to order the supplies that we need. I have some supplies from having multiple high school students do chemistry, but there are some other things that are specific to this program, particularly chemicals in order to do the experiments.
Since the program had listed a science supply center complete with order numbers, I happily did the easy things and just put them in my cart as I went along. Then, when adding in my fourth bottle of chemicals, I noticed a little announcement down on the bottom of the page. Since these are dangerous chemicals (one of them could be a mild skin irritant), they will only sell them to accredited schools, museums, or science programs. I then spent far more time poking around the web site looking to see if there was a work-around, but there didn't seem to be. One of my faults is that I don't like to be told no, so then I spent time writing an email to them explaining the problem and asking how they could help me. I have zero expectations that this will cause them to smack their collective foreheads and realize the idiocy of their rules. To get really dangerous chemicals, all I have to do is go to the store where I can easily pick up the items necessary to make poison gas. (Don't worry, I have no plans on making poison gas, even accidentally.) It did lead me to wonder, though, if this was the Migratory Bird Act all over again.
Unless you have been reading here for a very long time, this reference might be more than a little baffling. You can read my post about it, but essentially, because we are a homeschool and not a public school, we could not bring home any bird specimens from the Field Museum when we were part of the Harris Loan Box program. I even wrote to the Department of Natural Resources to see if they could help. I assume they couldn't because I never even received a reply back. So, was this ban on selling chemicals to non-accredited schools another slap in the face to homeschoolers because we were different? I didn't actually know.
Hello World Wide Web. It took hardly any searching to find a homeschool-friendly science supply store. Holding my breath for a moment, I typed in the first chemical I needed into the search bar. Lo and behold, there it was! No warning they couldn't sell it to me and they had a wider range of amounts with a lower cost. It turns out they carry everything I need. Guess which store is getting my business?
It's a happy ending to my little story, but this bias against homeschools and private schools still rankles.
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