Posted on 08/06/2018 10:22:05 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion
A best-selling expert on education shows how to make the school system work for your child.
Our K–12 school system is an artificial product of market forces. It isn’t a good fit for all―or even most―students. It prioritizes a single way of understanding the world over all others, pushes children into a rigid set of grades with little regard for individual maturity, and slaps “disability” labels over differences in learning style.
Caught in this system, far too many young learners end up discouraged, disconnected, and unhappy. And when they struggle, school pressures parents, with overwhelming force, into “fixing” their children rather than questioning the system.
With boldness, experience, and humor, Susan Wise Bauer turns conventional wisdom on its head: When a serious problem arises at school, the fault is more likely to lie with the school, or the educational system itself, than with the child.
In five illuminating sections, Bauer teaches parents how to flex the K–12 system, rather than the child. She closely analyzes the traditional school structure, gives trenchant criticisms of its weaknesses, and offers a wealth of advice for parents of children whose difficulties may stem from struggling with learning differences, maturity differences, toxic classroom environments, and even from giftedness (not as much of a “gift” as you might think!).
As the author of the classic book on home-schooling, The Well-Trained Mind, Bauer knows how children learn and how schools work. Her advice here is comprehensive and anecdotal, including material drawn from experience with her own four children and more than twenty years of educational consulting and university teaching.
The author does not however jump instantly to “you must homeschool,” but rather she discusses very credibly IMHO the way parents should proceed assuming first that they do NOT homeschool. And she is clear that not everyone CAN homeschool. But.
She concludes with some very cogent-seeming advice on how to proceed if you DO. She is emphatic that homeschooling is a lot easier (at least for some) than dealing with homework. Because that child you are teaching is not already exhausted and time-pressured in the morning as s/he is when bedtime looms. And so much more can be covered in four hours of home schooling tutoring than in a school day in a classroom.
The other book is a more radical critique of education, as exemplified by its title The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money by Bryan Caplan
Caplan makes the point that education credentials confer prestige in society - not exactly news. But he makes a cogent argument that that is predominantly what schools do. He adduces statistics which, he says, indicate that the split between education’s role in enabling students to understand things and get things done, on the one hand, and education’s role revealing the character and preexisting intelligence of the former student is (his best guess, he does not pretend exactitude) 20/80.
He makes the point that getting a GED credential as an adult does not have the same effect on prestige as graduating from high school as a teen. Reason being, in his telling, that to a large extent education functions as a hazing ritual - and if you bail out of it, you are marked as a quitter (“Hazing” is my word, not his - but). Same with college, in the sense that in both cases the premium for getting the degree by finishing the last year is disproportionate to that for finishing the junior, or sophomore, or freshman year. He makes the point that Khan Academy and its competitors can teach you pretty much whatever you want to learn - but, like the GED for high school, “that and a dollar will get you a cup of coffee . . . ."
He makes the further point that the prestige of the sheepskin is persistent - that even after a graduate has been in the workforce for years, the holder of the sheepskin is remunerated better than a better performer who does NOT have a degree.
I see his critique as being directed at society, not at schools. We don’t value vocational education. His perspective is that college is a good deal for a good college student, but if the student is average in high school he might struggle and drop out of college - in debt. If his youngest turns out not to be a good student, he plans to direct him into vocational training.
Ping.
Our K–12 school system is an artificial product of market forces.
K-12 is an artificial design by government bureaucrats. It uses the Bismarkian model of education. It wasn’t used until late in the 20th century.
It is most emphatically *not* the product of market forces.
The education system really started going downhill after the federal government started issuing mandates to go with their money, and the NEA took control of teachers.
I hold forth that schools started going downhill after they banned rifle-competition sports.
I haven’t read these particular books, but I am familiar with both Susan Bauer and Bryan Caplan and have a lot of respect for both of them.
While everyone is hyped up to ‘fix’ schooling...I’ve come to a different thinking on the topic. I think you’ve got at least five different categories of kids, and the idea of constructing one single school or path to resolve all problems...won’t work.
You have one group which are the self-starters and you could just hand them projects and books, and they would be prepared by age 12, on their own, to take the end-of-school completion test. That’s probably 10-percent of all kids and what I would call the gifted group.
Then you have the kids that you can identify by the 5th grade as zero-interest types. You would be best by the 8th grade to shuffle them off to some apprentice/skill type school for two years and get them on the path to employment. That’s probably 35-percent of all kids.
Then you have the kids who need lab-type experiments, hands-on schooling, real math work....who are future scientists and engineers. They probably make up 25-percent.
Then you have the trouble and issues kids. It doesn’t matter what you offer for schooling...they will oppose it. That’s probably 10-percent of the group.
Then finally, you come to the group who need true mentor-type teachers to bring them along and keep them focused. They make up the final 20-percent.
K-12 quality depends on where you live.
Mine in MN was great at cranking out future unemployables.
If I hadn’t embraced Science and Engineering on my own, I would have joined their ranks.
Interesting post. I started homeschooling soon after realizing it was taking us longer to get through homework than a whole home school day would take.
Plus, the teacher was pressuring us to put our son on Ritalin. I found lots of breaks and activity (like jumping on the trampoline) was what he needed.
It was a real challenge at first as we butted heads a lot. He refused to see me as teacher. Somehow he came to see the material as the teacher and I was more the monitor. His attitude out of public school became SO much better.
So, long story short, he went on to excel in college and is doing well in life 20 years later. His siblings all chose to homeschool. All have different styles - one prefers textbooks, one audio/visual and one does virtual school. I love how we can customize school to the kids.
Many children, imprisoned until 16 in a system they recognized as inadequate and failing them, left the schools and became labeled--by the very society and bureaucracies which failed them--as "dropouts." How sad!!
The bright spot is that a percentage of those same labeled youth became entrepreneurs and have succeeded in living productive lives whose achievements far outweigh the careers of the pitifully inadequate politicians, teachers, principals, superintendents and "educational" bureaucracies who created the problem in the first place!
“K-12 is an artificial design by government bureaucrats. It uses the Bismarkian model of education. It wasn’t used until late in the 20th century.”
The “best” public schools use the model of the best private schools of a century ago.
Schools are pretty much obsolete for educational purposes.
Their main purpose nowadays mainly is child care paid for mainly by other people other than the parents.
It is silly to work for nothing for 13 to 17 years at a cost to the taxpayers of about $170,000/child when it only takes about 26 man-weeks to build a house.
The school I attended, and the schools my children attended, were not at all like the descriptions I read of current schools. When and why did things go wrong?
The purpose of public education since the 1830’s was and is to make reliable workers out of young people.
Textile mill owners 190 years ago were very upset that they would train people to work and then the workers would quit when they had enough money to pay their expenses.
“dealing with homework”
The purpose of homework should be to reinforce what was learned.
It should not be stressful since stress blocks learning almost 100%.
For third graders, probably 15 minutes is enough. By high school, about an hour is all that should ever be required.
another excellent book to read is *Better Late than Early by Drs. Moore and Moore.
Homneschool and ARTH ping.
Try again.....
Another excellent book to read is *Better Late than Early* by Drs. Moore and Moore.
Proofreading is my friend.
Proofreading is my friend.
Proofreading is my friend.
Proofreading is my friend.
In the 2 campus day-Classical model school I have enrolled my son a Bauer book is required reading for parents.
I can think of one contributor and one major change:
James Earl Carter and the creation of the Department of Education, essentially nationalizing education.
Good points. Bauer scares the crap out of me, always has, with the emphasis on quantity of learning. I’m pretty bright and she makes me feel dumb. I was a good homeschooling mom for 20 years and she makes me feel wholly inadequate. As do most families on her forum. She probably was the driving force to get me half on the unschooling track! I applaud what she has done for homeschooling. I had some private school classical education and I’m grateful, so I get all the jokes on Frasier, but seriously: you can go overboard.
And I do tell my sons that college, sometimes, is just the broomstick of the wicked witch of the west. It’s all about getting that sheepskin, not necessarily what you pick up there.
I would be interested in reading Bauer’s book if I had more time.
You did great! And yes, a trampoline bout between subjects is awesome. And during some subjects. I too designed each homeschooled child’s curriculum to him. Some went deep, some did the minimum. And it is hard to “be the teacher.” Lots and lots of just reading aloud helps get it all started.
Short fun read...and powerful.
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