Posted on 04/01/2024 12:19:31 PM PDT by T Ruth
On a spring night in 2022, Ross Hill was trying to get several of his children—he has eight—tucked into bed for the night.
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“They were in tears because they didn’t want to go to school the next day,” said Mr. Hill, a 38-year-old teacher from Florence, South Carolina (pop: 39,958).
Whether he knew it at the time or not, Mr. Hill’s family was part of a trend in the United States. A surprising number of children are miserable at school, research shows, and it’s a trend that began before the pandemic.
For example, a 2020 Yale study that surveyed some 21,000 high school students across 50 states prior to the pandemic found that 75 percent of children had negative feelings toward school.
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The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), which analyzed both pre- and post-pandemic data, discovered something even darker: a correlation between school attendance and youth suicide incidence.
“The findings of this study suggest that youth suicides are closely tied with in-person school attendance,” researchers of the December 2022 study concluded. “We show that suicides among 12-to-18-year-olds are highest during months of the school year and lowest during summer months.”
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Microschools are independent learning institutions that operate outside of traditional school systems. Often described as “outsourced homeschooling,” they tend to be less bureaucratic than traditional schools, which often emphasize standardized testing and fixed curricula. This makes microschools more agile, flexible, and adaptive, proponents say, allowing them to tailor education to students.
When Mr. Hill first learned about microschools he was intrigued. Then he became excited. He saw his skill set as a good match for what other “edupreneurs” were doing, and he began to explore the business model.
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Last August, with the help of a $10,000 private grant, he launched Mariner Learning Collaborative.
***
(Excerpt) Read more at theepochtimes.com ...
Ping.
Looks interesting. Anything that’s an alternative to quasi-monopoly government schools.
Negative feelings toward school? You’re putting me on....
I think just about every teacher I know homeschool their own kids.
Or private school.
That is why we HS’ed both are kids....back in the 80’s
Look into Hillsdale primary/secondary school, folks.
Don’t like math? Just kill yourself.
I sort of wish this could remain a secret. Not that I wish ill on any parents who truly care about their own children. However, “a little leaven” ...
Anyway, homeschooling in many different forms is the BRIGHT future of education in the USA.
bkmk
I read maybe 15 years ago a report of a study of which profession is the most apt to have its kids outside of the Public School System- homeschool, private, or parochial. It was public school teachers.
Same here for 4 - 70s into the 90s. My daughter is homeschooling her three boys. The 13 y.o. has a regular correspondence with an engineering association and the 4 yo. is voluble and articulate at an adult level except for what he is articulate about. The 9 yo is a reader. There is no TV in the house and the boys are not allowed access to the computer or to cell phones except one that only makes phone calls.
HOME EDUCATION.
Try BJU Press. It’s right there in SC.
The older I get, the more I wish my genius Mother with a high school diploma, an artist, a historian, the most well-read person I’ve ever met, had home schooled me.
Srednik
“We show that suicides among 12-to-18-year-olds are highest during months of the school year and lowest during summer months.”
I learned to read and to type from my mother.
It is a little more then that.
Kids are often not taught foundational learning in elementary school.
Maths, reading, spelling, basic science. The reading is a big thing. The percentage of kids who are not literate is rather astounding.
American kids start school ahead of most of the world. By fourth grade they have fallen so far behind that there is no catching up without major intervention which they do not get.
When they arrive in high school there is no way they can do the work. They are made to feel as if this is their fault and they are failures. This works very well with boys. They will then kill themselves.
So yes - home schooling is the right thing no matter how inconvenient that is for the parents.
Back when CDs were the New Thing I got a deal in my mailbox for a set of 60 classical music CDs and a CD player. I sent for it and used it as a Christmas gift for my then 9 year old daughter. She has her favorites, Mahler and Chopin, even now and there is classical music on at her home a lot. All three boys love it. That was her intro to music. My then 5 y.o. son was making noises on an old army bugle. He grew up playing trumpet and English horn.
Too many kids care too much what others think and have not had enough emphasis given to them to believe in themselves and not care what other kids think. That emphasis must go with positive reinforcement from parents and family as well, and it is too often lacking in broken or dysfunctional families.
Thank you for raising good kids.
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