Posted on 09/03/2003 8:29:31 AM PDT by Damocles
Home is no place for school
Wed Sep 3, 6:49 AM ET
By Dennis L. Evans
The popularity of home schooling, while not significant in terms of the number of children involved, is attracting growing attention from the media, which create the impression that a "movement" is underway. Movement or not, there are compelling reasons to oppose home teaching both for the sake of the children involved and for society.
Home schooling is an extension of the misguided notion that "anyone can teach." That notion is simply wrong. Recently, some of our best and brightest college graduates, responding to the altruistic call to "Teach for America," failed as teachers because they lacked training. Good teaching is a complex act that involves more than simply loving children. Research on student achievement overwhelmingly supports the "common-sense" logic that the most important factor affecting student learning is teacher competency. While some parents may be competent to teach very young children, that competence will wane in more advanced grades as the content and complexity increases.
But schools serve important functions far beyond academic learning. Attending school is an important element in the development of the "whole child." Schools, particularly public schools, are the one place where "all of the children of all of the people come together." Can there be anything more important to each child and thus to our democratic society than to develop virtues and values such as respect for others, the ability to communicate and collaborate and an openness to diversity and new ideas? Such virtues and values cannot be accessed on the Internet.
The isolation implicit in home teaching is anathema to socialization and citizenship. It is a rejection of community and makes the home-schooler the captive of the orthodoxies of the parents.
One of the strengths of our educational system is the wide range of legitimate forms of public, private or parochial schooling available for parental choice.
With that in mind, those contemplating home teaching might heed the words of the Roman educator, Quintilian (A.D. 95). In opposing home schooling, he wrote, "It is one thing to shun schools entirely, another to choose from them."
Dennis L. Evans directs doctoral programs in education leadership at the University of California, Irvine.
LOL! Then why is PUBLIC SCHOOL failing?
You're assuming that socialist educrats like Mr. Evans have the same measure of "success" as you do. Public schools aren't "failing" if they are doing exactly what they were intended to do...
Sometimes it is the hardest lessons from which we learn the most. Unfortunately, your sister-in-law was denied an education.
How did the human race ever survive without so-called "experts" like this Evans chap?
The isolation implicit in home teaching is anathema to socialization and citizenship. It is a rejection of community and makes the home-schooler the captive of the orthodoxies of the parents.
You're absolutely right that this is about indoctrination. Clearly Evans believes that home-schooling makes the child not captive to the orthodoxies of the government, and that this is most dangerous.
So violence is sometime acceptable? You make little sense.
You believe, as the French liberals due
Your argument was due long time ago. Instead you call me liberal.
That is liberal logic.
And what is conservative logic? Whatever your logic is, it is not conservative. You are rabid pacifist when your rights are trampled, when your people are enslaved, when your women are raped. You are not conservative. You are not man. My people were enslaved for 400 years; liberty is not question of "social policy" but of life and death.
at is why I laughed out loud that you would bother to inter act with me in the first place.
I am not afraid of beligerant ignorance. But I can understand why most other people would not care to interact with you in first place.
If you are so uninterested in American history that you rely only on the gubmint's version of history, what really is the use?
You accuse me of laziness for following so-called government line, you are always quick to insult, but you offer no competitive interpretation and you refuse to respond to argument. It is very sad.
So long as you believe violence is a fair means to achieve an end, you have no business commenting on the American 'constituion.'
There are only two good wars in American history, the first and second wars of independence.
Are you saying by this that first and second wars of independence (whatever second war is, I don't know) were not violent? Or did they not have any ends in mind, you know, random nihilistic violence? And you suggest America should not have fought second world war? After battleships sunk at Pearl Harbor, America should have made surrender to Japan? You say you are conservative? Ha! Ralph Nader is Ronald Reagan next to you.
I liked those books!
Just MHO
I absolutely agree re L. Frank Baum. A little off the wall in addition to his regular Oz books are his American Fairy Tales. Also, several excellent authors picked up the series after Baum's untimely death - Ruth Plumly Thompson wrote the most, but Jack Snow and John R. Neill wrote a couple also. Gruelle's books are adorable, and for a similar (but quirkier) illustrator, anything written or illustrated by Peter Newell (who did amazing offbeat illustrations for Alice in Wonderland).
I have always loved Edward Eager - The Thyme Garden and Half Magic are my favorites.
Betsy-Tacy is a little too pedestrian for me (although they are charming little books, I tended to enjoy the "boy's" adventure stories more as a child. They are very nostalgic pictures of the old rural (upper?) Midwest in the 1890s. The Wilder books are more exciting (prairie fires, floods, bears, Indians), other books in the same vein (family life around the turn of the century) are the One-of-a-Kind Family stories (a close knit Jewish family in Lower East Side New York, or it may be Brooklyn, can't remember), the Melendy family books, and the Moffat family books.
I wonder if she wouldn't like Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. I got hooked on those around age 7 or 8, started with the short stories and moved on to the long novels (The Hound of the Baskervilles is still my favorite - what a thriller). If she likes Doyle (and he is good, clear incisive writer with a gift for dialogue) she can move on to his historical novels. He wrote Holmes to make money - he wrote his historical novels for love. The very best is probably The White Company, about a mercenary company of English archers in the 14th century Spanish wars.
Oh - and Robert Louis Stevenson, got to read Treasure Island. Best pirate story ever written (and Howard Pyle is the best illustrator of it.) If she is interested in Scotland, she should read Kidnapped, very exciting story of kidnapping, murder and derring-do in 18th century Scotland. There is a sequel to Kidnapped, called Catriona in England and David Balfour in America, but it is more of an adult novel of political/legal intrigue and manners and would probably not interest a child (I read it as a kid but didn't appreciate it until I was 22 and in law school.)
And Lenski's Small books were among the first I ever read.
Sorry about All-of-a-Kind Family - brain fade - :-)
Jane Austen is of course marvellous - Persuasion is my favorite. For a quirky little bit of writers-writing-about-writers, Kipling wrote a couple of short stories about a Jane Austen fan club in the trenches in WWI . . . all mixed up with a London Masonic lodge that opened its doors to soldiers on leave . . . he also wrote a wonderful poem about Jane Austen in heaven, here.
If she likes Austen, you might have her give Anthony Trollope a shot -- he is the mid to late 19th century equivalent. A grouchy old bear of a man with a heart of gold and brilliant powers of observation. I would start her with The Warden and move on to Barchester Towers and Framley Parsonage. Like Austen, he's interested in society and manners and human interaction . . . he additionally adds intrigue in the Church of England as one of his perennial topics. Bishop Proudie and his horrible, horrible wife are amazingly drawn -- the encounter between Mrs. Proudie and the egregious Stanhope family (especially the daughter Contessa Vesey Neroni) is a comic masterpiece.
Of course we've read Little Women -- I have the copy my great-grandmother gave to my mother, with precious old fashioned illustrations by Clara M. Burd -- but some of her others, like Eight Cousins, An Old Fashioned Girl, and Under the Lilacs are great stories too.
I think of Noel Streatfeild in the same category as Carolyn Haywood -- she wrote a couple of stories about children in London during the Blitz and I think she also wrote another Thursday's Child about an orphan girl living on a canal boat in England. She is out of fashion but she really writes well. Her "Shoes" books ("Dancing Shoes", "Theater Shoes", "Skating Shoes") delve into the nuts and bolts of theatrical and performance work and outline very well the stresses and strains of competition, auditions, etc. And they are realistic - not every child succeeds in the way he or she expects, and often the one who isn't expected to do well blossoms out in an unexpected way (the girl who can't dance discovers she can act - the girl who takes up skating for her health finds an unexpected talent in technical figures - and so forth). The prima donnas almost always have their comeuppance - I imagine those books have occasionally discouraged a child from behaving like a spoiled brat.
If she likes The Man in the Iron Mask she ought to enjoy Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel
I'll look for Elswyth Thane. I'm a Dorothy Sayers fan myself.
I'm a conservative Episcopalian too - Trollope had it easy he would burst a blood vessel if he could see the state his church is in now - his big conflict was between the old-fashioned "high but not Oxford Movement" churchmen and the Evangelical "low churchmen". (Trollope hated Evangelicals with a passion, not because of their doctrine but because of the way they forced their views on others, especially Sabbath observance. Many of his villains, from Mr. Slope, Bishop Proudie's slimy chaplain, to the Reverend Emilius (who is a bigamist and a murderer IIRC) are Evangelicals.)
I just finished re-reading The Last Chronicle of Barset which contains Trollope's most finished psychological study - Mr. Crawley the perpetual curate of Hogglestock - probably based to some degree on Trollope's father but with a happy ending that his father never obtained . . . but you have to read the other Barsetshire novels first because the last one ties up many loose ends from the other books and you'll be all at sea wondering just who Dean Arabin and the Archdeacon and Mr. Harding are . . . I am most impressed with the Archdeacon (a good friend and a bad enemy) but Mr. Harding is the man I would most like to know, and Mr. Crawley would be the man to study Latin, Greek, and Hebrew under . . . but you would have to be quick!
As Catriona Drummond umwhile Macgregor said to David Balfour in the middle of that novel, "My torture! Look at the sun!" The hour is late and I'll have to head off for bed -- good night all.
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