Education has become very, very feminized. Increasingly, the solution to teacher alienation from normal boyNESS is medication.
It’s a chemical holocaust, and now men simply don’t want to go to college. Sure, sure...all men are rapists, all women will end up as rape victims cuz we’re soooo dastardly.
NO THANKS.
Schoolmaster used to be as honorable a calling as schoolmistress. Sometimes boys need a man around to keep them under control.
I just was telling my girls (12) about how boys are just being boys when they act up in class, goof off in the playground, etc. One of their boy classmates even brags about how he has ADD. I told them that maybe he does, or maybe he just uses it as an excuse to screw around.
Although the ones who act up the most are raised with no dad in the home.
Education has been feminized. Its all about feelings and a false sense of accomplishment. The boys were always better in school than the girls when I grew up.
Until I got to college.
After I met the teacher I realized that she just wasn't that good of a teacher and consequently, my son got bored.
Both the school counselor and my (now ex-)wife were insisting on getting him started on Ritalin, but I wouldn't budge. I refused.
He's 25 now and that was the only time the subject ever came up. And after comparing notes with other parents over the years I realized that those teachers ill-equipped to handle boys would rather just medicate them. Makes their jobs easier.
Boy is that the truth. That very thing is what led to my decision to homeschool. I have a wonderful, very bright teen, who is very energetic and athletic. He was much more so in elementary school. He was fidgity and talkative in kindergarten and 1st grade. His 1st grade teacher hounded us to put him on Ritalin. She and grew increasingly snitty about it.
I wasn't about to do that. So I opted to pull him out just to see how it would go. We decided to give it a 6 month "trial" period. And we've been at it now for 8 years and love it.
In those early years, we did school differently. We did 10-15 minutes on, 5 minutes off (lots of breaks). We used a hands-on approach after I discovered he was a kinesthetic learner. He would jump on a trampoline and spell his spelling words. Walk around the room reading a book, etc.
He is a high school freshman now. He goes to homeschool school 2 full days a week and does the other 3 at home. He has no problem sitting still in a classroom, concentrating, taking notes. He works and his customers and managers speak highly of him. He tests well and makes good grades. He is the first one up every morning, he runs, makes his own breakfast and gets the rest of us up LOL.
So all those big "problems" in elementary school, were a combination of normal-boy energy, personality and different learning style. I was in tears so many times when he was in public school because this teacher had me nearly convinced he wasn't normal.
I believe there was a time that teachers would be able to teach more to a child's learning style, but my friends who are teachers say things have changed. The classes are too big and the material they have to cover is too vast to deal with each child individually. The past several years have been the worst as they have to "teach to the test".
My kids take standardized tests every 3 years and I have never taught to fit the test - yet they do fine.
Anyway, your post really struck a chord with me!