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Didn't think I was being cryptic and apologize if I seemed so.

I prefer hard standardized testing in classes to IQ tests. I don't think the standardized tests should make up the only component in a grade, but certainly the majority. I believe in flunking students and do so with frequency. And I believe that at least K-12 the tests should be on content regardless of topic.

Emotional, non-emotional, shomotional. Emotions have nothing to do with it. With my eldest stepson I "did not know nothing." And I did not have a battle plan for preparing him to succeed and be happy. So he partied and such and then had to catch up in his 20's and 30's for what he had lost.

The younger stepson (five years younger) ran into a McVey with a plan which included music lessons, intense exposure to different types of intellectual stimulus, a slight nudge toward something athletic (he surprised me and became a lineman) and above all an air of commitment by myself and my wife to the idea that his job was to be a student and our job was to supervise his growth. Worked much better. Nowadays I note that there is a ton of research that supports this approach--most of which is hated by the educational establishment.

The posted article is too long for me to go through it with a fine tooth comb. I generally agree with what I read--and I read it all--but would emphasize something more than the author did and that is what I would call the "defeat of the soft middle." Most of my students fall into the area in secondary school where they do not test high enough or low enough to get special attention or they are not sufficiently "troubled" to get extra help. They drift and usually their parents have few clues as to what should be happening and is not. These are the students who would benefit the most by home-schooling, even if it was not the best available.

I don't have much of an opinion of the public school system one way or another. We pump in to these schools students who spend far more time watching TV than they do going to class. They do malls, video games, hang-out and spin from relationship to relationship before they are prepared to do so. They often have two or three "fathers" or "mothers." They have a range of half-sisters and half-brothers because every one remarries and starts another families. Their lives are chaotic and self-centered and, given the lack of structure, even feral. Then we ask teachers to somehow or another make it right.

Meanwhile many schools of education are beyond horrible. Invariably the weakest students in my classes come from our ed department. And then they go out to teach. It is appalling, but most of them seem to me to be pretty dedicated, even if, as the article points out, they have been criminally instructed in what constitutes educational methodology.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to expound.

McVey