I'm not that familiar with California, but wouldn't northern california be north of sacramento? At least looking at a map of cali I assume southern cali is the LA metro area down to Mexico, central if from north of the LA metro area to sacramento, and north is from sacramento to oregon.

Knowing human nature, I'd say forever and for always.

Or, what if their account is hacked (who knew 123456 is a poor password !?) by a rival/enemy/etc. who then precedes to post to their account, knowing that it will result in punishment for them.

That's true. But, the family member/friend might know the inmates password (or might share an account with them) and be posting without their knowledge. I have teenage daughters, and despite my frequent warnings, they share their passwords with their friends, and vice versa. So the inmate would be punished for something they have no control over.

Nevermind. Who would have thought the article would actually have useful information? "Some inmates ask their families to access their online accounts for them, while many access the Internet themselves through a contraband cell phone (possession of which is yet another Level 1 offense)." Having the inmates be punished for something someone does on the outside seems ridiculous. Though, the prison authorities probably don't know whether it was done by someone on the outside or by a contraband device, so they appear to be assuming that it must be happening via a contraband device.

How in the world are they posting to facebook? Are they using smuggled in devices, or are they using devices provided by the prison system? If the later, why don't they just block access to facebook at a level where the inmates can't override it?

I agree with your basic premise, though you might want to specify "actual modern spoken languages" ;-) In college I studied languages like Middle Egyptian, Neo-Babylonian, Aramaic, etc. It turns out that it is difficult to find real people who speak those languages.

True, it is hyperbole. But based on the prison portrayals I've seen in movies and on TV, my experience in public school says that it isn't far off. You might have been raised in a nice community where that wasn't the case. Not all of us are so lucky.

This. So much this. The only thing public school non-curriculum learning prepares you for is how to get along in prison.

Based on my years of experience in public schools, being properly socialized involves a lot of bullying, threatening, trying to breath in a smoke filled bathroom, etc. Thank fully the real world outside of public schools is nothing like that. The only thing I can think of that public school is properly socializing people for is prison.

I haven't actually seen stats on that, but I do know that my home schooled daughter out-scored her public schooled friends by a significant margin on the college entrance exams. I'm not even sure if even one of her public schooled friends scored high enough to even get into a community college ;-)

In case it went over your head, the analogy is prison = public school. From my personal experience in the public school system, I couldn't agree more. Fellow students = thugs, teachers = guards, principal = warden, cafeteria workers = cafeteria workers.

I have met homeschoolers who have the socialization issues you mention (though having also met their parents I wonder if its actually genetic). But, I've met far more homeschoolers who are properly socialized. People who meet our children often express amazement that they are home schooled since they have the same prejudiced that you are expressing and our children clearly don't fit to their preconceived stereotype. Our eldest daughter elected to attend public school her Junior year (you can read more about her experiences in another post I made below) she was so outgoing and popular that when the yearbook came out she had more photos (and even a half page article about her life!) than almost all her friends put together. The teachers loved her too since they finally had a student who was not apathetic and was willing to answer questions using complete sentences (and actually knew the answers!).

Oh, and I hate to reply to myself, but one other shocking thing was she took a science class and was shocked to learn that her fellow 11th graders didn't know what plate tectonics were. Even with a public school education, how can you possible get to 11th grade without knowing what plate tectonics are? It's not like we live in Texas or some other southern state.

Take this anecdote for what it's worth, but my daughter has been home schooled or attended home school co-ops ever since Kindergarten (Ironically the reason we began to home school her was because of the principal of her elementary school - on the last day of kindergarten he gave a speech in which he pointed out that our children would spend much of their awake hours in the school and so it would be from the school that they would learn their values. I had never thought about it like that, but I clearly remember my years on public school and my wife and I agreed that we didn't want that for our daughter.) Anyway, Junior year of high school she decides that she wants to try public high school. That is fine with us so she starts attending in the fall. By the end of December she had decided to drop out. Here were her findings:

1. The students at public school are apathetic. The teachers were delighted with my daughter since she invariably knew the answers, would raise her hand, and would answer in full sentences. The other students would give as short of answers as possible and had to be prodded. This absolutely shocked her.

2. One day during morning announcements one of the guidance counselors said that she had handouts for some sort of career event coming up and to come by the office to pick one up. My daughter did so. Well it was a shocking experience for both her and the counselor. The counselor informed her that she hadn't actually printed out any of the handouts since in all the years she had been making similar announcements, not one student had ever stopped by to pick one up.

3. She learned that teen pregnancy is much more rampant that she had expected.

By the way, this wasn't some hick high school, but a large school in the suburbs of a large city. The students going here are mainly middle to upper class students.

A side note, even though she only attended one semester, when the year book came out she had more pictures (and even a half page article about her!) in it than any of her friends that attended the full year. She is very out going and vivacious and her fellow students and teachers really liked her, so it wasn't really a surprise. I was mainly surprised that I was so surprised at how apathetic the students are.