Contact your Congress critters to let them know that you are tired of high gas prices.
Posted on 07/01/2008 10:40:58 AM PDT by wintertime
verga,
This is the **second** time I will explain this to you. I am the mother of 4 children. I homeschooled 3.
So?...Who is looking foolish here? This has been explained to your previously. The other Freepers know that I have 4 children and homeschooled 3. I am certain that they are sitting at their keyboards scratching their heads.
Oh...By the way,.. Since you are a professional teacher I know that you would never use these debating tactics with your immature and unsophisticated students.
>> How does one explain me? My parents actively discouraged me from going to college and could have cared less about how any of us did in school as long as we did our chores. Not only that, I suffered various means of abuse that are not appropriate for discussion.
As with all generalizations, there are exceptions. You appear to be the exception that proves the rule. Congratulations to you on successfully overcoming.
I’m not a psychologist or sociologist — I cannot tell you why most kids with bad parents do poorly in school, but some persevere and succeed. Perhaps you have some personal fortitude that others do not. Perhaps you were divinely led. Perhaps a little of both.
>> So, in my case, it wasn’t about parenting, it was about teachers - teachers that were more or less paid to like me. Good thing isn’t it?
True enough.
H
Yes, yes,...I have seen these reports in the lay press. And...I **BELIVE** them! ( I do. I really do!)
But...What is **really** going on here? How much learning is actually occurring in the institutional school, and how much would be considered the parent's and child's **own** “homeschooling” or “afterschooling”.
I think this is an important question to ask and answer. Why? Answer: Because if the true learning is occurring because of the institutionalized child's “afterschooling” ( homeschooling) then no amount of tinkering or money will improve test scores in a **typical** government school.
The answer then, for dysfunctional families, is a KIPP environment which attempts to recreate at school the environment that would normally be found in a functional family that values education.
If, as many government school defenders point out, it is the parent's fault that the child is not learning, then **PLEASE** stop doing the same thing over and over in the government school. I would think the solution would be to look to charter and private schools that are having success with disadvantaged kids and try to figure out what they are doing right. How are these successful school compensating for the dysfunctional family?
Give schools back to the local school boards. It worked well when that was the case.
....which goes back to a point I made earlier about 'the cult of the child.' It is up to the adults in a child's life to guide them into a broad based education because we know as adults that we never know what we might need. And maybe...just maybe... the adults know what they are doing when they expect a 14 year old to learn algebra.
This thrust of the article wasn't about the “adults” it was about the **government**.
**Government** does **not** know better than the parents whether a particular child need algebra or not!
**Government** does **not** know better than the parents whether an individual child needs for more years of incarceration, confined behind a narrow desk, in the bowels of a prison-like government institution!
Begin the process of privatizing the government schools. Let parents, teachers, and principals decide these issues **privately** without the threat of government force.
Oh...And...Please remember that government force **means** police action ( with real guns with real bullets on the hips.)
Contact your Congress critters to let them know that you are tired of high gas prices.
I think what you see is rather a synergistic effect: the children are more prepared to learn, they understand that those funny symbols on the page mean something, when they learn to decode the symbols they have a larger working vocabulary to associate with the symbols, and due to being read to, talked to, and doing things they have a stronger foundation to build more knowledge upon. Learning doesn't occur in a vacuum.
If, as many government school defenders point out, it is the parent's fault that the child is not learning, then **PLEASE** stop doing the same thing over and over in the government school. I would think the solution would be to look to charter and private schools that are having success with disadvantaged kids and try to figure out what they are doing right. How are these successful school compensating for the dysfunctional family?
There is research on that point, too, but what the research shows is rather opposed to what you would like to see happen.
For those children, early intervention is important - children learn most of their language skills in the early years, and in those dysfunctional families, the skills are not being taught. This is why, for some children, high quality early childhood education has been shown to be essential. That doesn't mean that YOUR children need to be in school from the age of 2 or 3 years old, but it does mean that the children of an 18 year old single mother with substance abuse problems could very likely benefit immensely.
Programs such as KIPP are very successful because they basically fill every waking hour of the child's life with school related activities and support. (I'll note that KIPP also requires that the parents support the school activities, so that program requires more parental involvement than "regular" schools.)
Teachers in the KIPP schools work longer school days, and IIRC must be available to the students by cell phone until 9 or 10 pm, and also KIPP schools operate on Saturdays and most of the summer. I suspect that most of the KIPP teachers are young and unmarried, because they work very long days, which parents of young children might not be able to do.
Also, most teachers would need to be paid much more to work long hours 6 days per week and much of the summer.
Research, and the success of programs such as KIPP, shows that many of these children can achieve much more than they do, but it requires a lot more time and effort to overcome the disadvantages of their home lives, and normally time and effort must be compensated with money...therefore it costs more to help these children learn.
Unfortunately, most of these children by definition live in poor areas with lower tax bases, and frequently there isn't as much money available for their educations, and sometimes (as in D.C.) the money available goes to graft and corruption rather than to the education of these children...in more affluent areas, the more politically astute and involved parents would put a stop to at least some of that, but in ghetto areas, they don't.
I wish.
I was never allowed to work when I was in HS, except of course for all of the cleaning and most of the cooking, even when my mother didn't work. Once she did go back to work I was also expected to run her ceramic classes when she didn't feel like doing it and cover for her at her job at a ceramic wholesaler when she decided to go visit her parents in Florida. She still got the paycheck.
My 30th class reunion is in September --- and I didn't attend public school (neither did my mother)
You think that the 27 year old, substance-abusing, high school dropout single mother of one of my 9th graders knows whether or not her child needs algebra?
Do you think that child would be better off being homeschooled?
Maybe her mom will put her in a private school. Yeah, that's it....
As I have addressed with you before (and you have yet to respond to), Almost 70% of African Americans come from single parent homes, who is going to teach them?
It is fortunate that you are wealthy enough to be able to afford, but not everyone has that luxury
In addition there are plenty of additional reasons to send Children to public schools
1) Looking for signs of abuse or neglect
2) Monitoring Health and immunizations.
3) Insuring that students meet minimum standards educationally
4) Opportunities for specialized/advanced education that might not be available to home schoolers ie certain languages, College level dual enrollment, woodworking and metal working classes.
5) Clubs such as TSA, Drama, Fine arts.
Well said.
This post has been reported to the moderator, for containing out right lies
I have a friend going through getting her GED, I was totally unaware of this. I will be informing her of this.
I've been trying to help her out with quizzing, etc, but there is much of the stuff that even I don't know, especially when it comes to math and science.
Ok! I will call.
Yep. Now, it’s all about catering to the individual child and his/her special needs.
Kid can’t understand basic Algebra and we’re supposed to think she’s smart, lol.
You nailed it with *undisciplined*
Well said.
I think and have always thought that high school age students should decide their education path, with parental involvement. I know I wouldn’t allow my own kids to quit school at 14 unless there was some serious underlying reason. And when parents are really involved, we wouldn’t see too many quitting school at 14 anyway. They can always go back to school when they come to their senses or find an area they’re interested in, etc.
This is one of the reasons I support tracks/levels.
When I was 14, I had no idea what I wanted to do and hated school other than the social part of school :) When I was 15, I knew what I didn’t want to be or do, thus school/learning became important to me.
There’s tons of classes in high and college that serve me little today, other than pure enjoyment or analytical thinking skills ;) And then there are those classes, like Geometry, that I thought were useless as a 14 yr old and realize just how important they are today.
I’m all for allowing kids (and their parents) to dictate their schooling. Hey, if a 14 yr old freshmen wants to drop out, let him/her. Legally. It’s up to the parents to guide that kid not to drop out. And even if the kid did drop out, could realize the importance of an education.
Isn’t everything and anything another reason to homeschool?
**Government** does **not** know better than the parents whether an individual child needs for (Do you mean "four"?) more years of incarceration,confined behind a narrow desk, in the bowels of a prison-like government institution!
In addition, a more educated way to phrase the first statement would be, "...than the parents whether or not a particular child needs algebra." The original word order is not, however, a blatant, terribly offensive error.
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