“This man is a PhD and his eldest son was doing calculus by the time he was 16.”
Yes, Calculus is generally a ‘black and white’ topic. That’s my point.
Not all topics are. I admit it - I was very fortunate to go to a first rate high school. It was a private school that my dad worked at (and still does after 40 years). I didn’t have the ‘basic’ high school education. I had teachers who challenged me - one literally ambushed me in the hallway and harangued me about writing better papers. I had a Latin teacher who insisted I stay for a half hour after class for a mentoring session. And then there was the english teacher who would make a two paragraph writing assignment the most technical and tedious task imagineable. None of these ‘pushing’ the student activities can occur, if a kid is on auto-pilot, and the parent isn’t highly skilled in every single subject (to a layman, my history papers looked fine - but not to Dr. Cooper). At some point, you need to be pushed to your limit (by an expert in the field)...this is why athletic teams have coaches.
You mentioned the Naval Academy. My high school experience prepared me for West Point, but I could see classmates who had been straight A students struggle. They struggled because they had been at the ‘top of their class’ and allowed to do independent study/do nothing classes for the last two years of high school. They should have been pushed harder - it would have better prepared them for West Point (fully 1/3 of my class washed out over four years). ‘Doing it on their own’ definitely did not work out for them - and these were very smart people.
I do not think I have done my kids a disservice either. Again, I am lucky. My school district is not a hell-hole or liberal nightmare. There is some propaganda, sure...but I try to deflect it when the kids get home. And there are opportunities - my daughter is taking a marketing class this year, and will take a business class next year, for example. Heck, I remember my step-son learned how to injection mold...the entire process from plastic pellet to toy, and learned about the pricing structures of manufacturing and importing plastic goods.
I’m sorry, but here I stand as a West Point graduate, a graduate of a prestigious private high school, and a licensed engineer...and I am not even close to being qualified to teach all the higher level classes...and I could never in a million years offer up business and marketing classes or insight in plastics production.
I am not opposed to homeschooling - especially if the public alternative is terrible. I regularly tell my kids that they are lucky...and that their reading level is above that of the teachers in the neighboring school district - and I mean it! If I lived in that district, I would move (which I did). Barring that, I would consider home school, because it was the better alternative. But, in my current situation, the school can do a better job than me...and I’m not too proud to admit it.
Excellent response, thank you lacrew.
I would simply submit for your thought...
regarding “pushing” the student: IMHO, this is something that a parent should be doing all the time, in every aspect of life. Many parents do not insist on things being done right or to the best of one’s ability if one can do better than merely “acceptable”. The whole point of homeschooling, why it works better, is when a parent knows when their child is giving it their all and when they are not, and refuses to accept less than 100%, including chores, manners, sports, being prepared, having a plan, etc.
My stepson was in public school and was blowing off work. The teacher contacted me and my wife and I quickly realized that he was abusing the “honor” system. He was a good kid and we took his word that he was keeping up. The teacher told us she had a standard approach to this, having him keep a work diary of the work in all his classes and having parents and teacher initial it every day. I started by sitting him down and being blunt, pushing the point until I saw that he was really affected by what I was saying. Then every day I took the time to rake him over the coals on every class. After a few weeks, he started to actually enjoy getting things done, being prepared, and matching the higher bar I set for him. He suggested after a few weeks that he could prepare ahead of sitting down with me and write out everything that happened in class, which I approved without saying duh, about time, I just said yes, that sounds like a good idea. I was merciless, like a lawyer on cross-examination and a drill sergeant all rolled into one. I especially liked grilling him, open book, on readings, which, of course, I had not read. You read that book ? Tell me about it. The next marking period grades were all A’s, one B, and it had gotten down to simply me having to have him make a 5 minute report to me and he was all ready with it. I could even skip a day or two a week and he would file two complete reports. He was on the ball. Once people get the idea that they are NOT going to get out of the grilling, and the grilling is real pressure-cooker that devolves into a dressing down if there was a lack of preparation, they get a mental mule-switch on their brain earlier in the day that makes them prepare. Then, if the interviewer acknowledges each successfully prepared point, that becomes the proverbial “carrot” companion of the stick.
What’s the secret to the interview ? Even where you have not the foggiest idea of the interviewee’s detailed specialty ? Simply ask them to explain things to you - an open ended question and then they talk. A question like - what projects did you work on last year ? Then, work backwards from the most recent one - describe for me what you did on the project, specifically. If you’ve got some life experience, you will quickly see whether a person is shooting out consistent answers or givin’ it the ol’ Ralph Kramden. They can’t use the excuse that it’s from years ago, they can’t gloss over their whole year and say it was just a minor project.
If I can’t explain to you what I worked on last month, in laymen’s terms, and have you get the general idea, then I really don’t know the subject - and the interview is over (there are a few other factors that make this technique work well for everyone, such as the possiblity of complete customization to suit a particular interviewee).
A good manager does not have to understand the details of what their staff does. I’ve had a few such bosses - I had to come up with solutions, explain them in laymen’s terms to get approval, then do the project on time and budget - and have the result achieve what I forecasted. I was pleasantly amazed at their comfort and skill in managing me, project after project, having no desire or time to get into any details other than the critical points I gave them. They allowed me to achieve more ROI on “legitimate” projects than most managers who were hands on.
To the extent that the teacher is required over and above books and reading, the implication is that the teacher is adding in concepts or perspectives not contained in the books. Once the “subtleties” the teacher is “adding” become too large a percentage of the course, and we’re not learning a physical task like flying a plane or hitting a baseball, IMHO, we have a problem with the course readings. Is the teacher there for a sounding board, etc. ? That’s ok to a point, but the goal of the student is to be able to go on after the class and further their own knowledge and abilities in the field of study. They certainly do not want to have to go back to school every time something new comes up. The idea of a lecture is so preposterous it’s actually amusing if you think about it - the script could just be printed out. The only possible use of a teacher is when questions can be asked. And I don’t know about you, but I can read faster than people can talk and still have their words discernable. Somehow the teaching industry wants us to believe that if we just read we won’t do any thinking, whereas if we have a teacher teaching us, they will ask provocative questions and get us to think.
Bottom line, after school, if we have decent jobs, we have a task (sometimes with me it’s literally been a big book) flopped on our desk and we have two choices: do it, or pack up. No one to “help”. New language that I never had in college. New tools that I’ve never used before. New chemical reactions that I’ve never done before. Figure it out, they say. If we’re the person who needs boss person to teach us each little step to take, we are going nowhere in our careers unless we have some other talent, like politics. Certainly, if it takes our boss longer to work with us than it would for him to just do the job himself, he’s going to get tired of our “services” quickly, realizing that we’re overusing his “mentoring” and not simply doing our homework.
Regarding marketing and injection molding, these are, IMHO, not for education, but for specific profession or job education and training. Basic business, P&L, balance sheet, should be part of general education, because everyone is an investor. But general education is learning to think, learning literature, science and math, etc.
Turning out students who are cogs in the wheel is why new world order took over our education sytem to begin with (see below link):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Education_Board#Criticism