Posted on 11/27/2006 7:04:44 AM PST by meandog
Schools With Good Teachers Are Best-Suited to Shape Young Minds
There's nothing like having the right person with the right experience, skills and tools to accomplish a specific task. Certain jobs are best left to the pros, such as, formal education.
There are few homeowners who can tackle every aspect of home repair. A few of us might know carpentry, plumbing and, let’s say, cementing. Others may know about electrical work, tiling and roofing. But hardly anyone can do it all.
Same goes for cars. Not many people have the skills and knowledge to perform all repairs on the family car. Even if they do, they probably don’t own the proper tools. Heck, some people have their hands full just knowing how to drive.
So, why would some parents assume they know enough about every academic subject to home-school their children? You would think that they might leave this -- the shaping of their children’s minds, careers, and futures -- to trained professionals. That is, to those who have worked steadily at their profession for 10, 20, 30 years! Teachers!
Experienced Pros
There’s nothing like having the right person with the right experience, skills and tools to accomplish a specific task. Whether it is window-washing, bricklaying or designing a space station. Certain jobs are best left to the pros. Formal education is one of those jobs.
Of course there are circumstances that might make it necessary for parents to teach their children at home. For example, if the child is severely handicapped and cannot be transported safely to a school, or is bedridden with a serious disease, or lives in such a remote area that attending a public school is near impossible.
Well-Meaning Amateurs
The number of parents who could easily send their children to public school but opt for home-schooling instead is on the increase. Several organizations have popped up on the Web to serve these wannabe teachers. These organizations are even running ads on prime time television. After viewing one advertisement, I searched a home school Web site. This site contains some statements that REALLY irritate me!
“It’s not as difficult as it looks.”
The “it” is meant to be “teaching.” Let’s face it, teaching children is difficult even for experienced professionals. Wannabes have no idea.
“What about socialization? Forget about it!”
Forget about interacting with others? Are they nuts? Socialization is an important component of getting along in life. You cannot teach it. Children should have the opportunity to interact with others their own age. Without allowing their children to mingle, trade ideas and thoughts with others, these parents are creating social misfits.
If this Web site encouraged home-schooled children to join after-school clubs at the local school, or participate in sports or other community activities, then I might feel different. Maine state laws, for example, require local school districts to allow home-schooled students to participate in their athletic programs. For this Web site to declare, “forget about it,” is bad advice.
When I worked for Wal-Mart more than 20 years ago, Sam Walton once told me: “I can teach Wal-Mart associates how to use a computer, calculator, and how to operate like retailers. But I can’t teach them how to be a teammate when they have never been part of any team.”
“Visit our online bookstore.”
Buying a history, science or math book does not mean an adult can automatically instruct others about the book’s content.
Gullible Parents
Another Web site asks for donations and posts newspaper articles pertaining to problems occurring in public schools.
It’s obvious to me that these organizations are in it for the money. They are involved in the education of children mostly in the hope of profiting at the hands of well-meaning but gullible parents.
This includes parents who home-school their children for reasons that may be linked to religious convictions. One Web site that I visited stated that the best way to combat our nation’s “ungodly” public schools was to remove students from them and teach them at home or at a Christian school.
I’m certainly not opposed to religious schools, or to anyone standing up for what they believe in. I admire anyone who has the strength to stand up against the majority. But in this case, pulling children out of a school is not the best way to fight the laws that govern our education system. No battle has ever been won by retreating!
No Training
Don’t most parents have a tough enough job teaching their children social, disciplinary and behavioral skills? They would be wise to help their children and themselves by leaving the responsibility of teaching math, science, art, writing, history, geography and other subjects to those who are knowledgeable, trained and motivated to do the best job possible.
(Dave Arnold, a member of the Illinois Education Association, is head custodian at Brownstown Elementary School in Southern Illinois.)
Okay, a large subset...
why does every study show that homeschoolers do so much better on standardized tests (on average) than their peers in public school?
They don't if the comparison sample is correctly done.
Yes, the correct NEA way - tweak the variables nine ways to Sunday until you find the exact criteria that allows public school kids to show better results than home schooled children.
Adjust annually.
I am a public school teacher and allow me to say: Bullschmidt. Homeschool. If there is a particular area in which you are weak, supplement with tutors or something. Even if, at 18, they were doing worse academically then public school kids, they are undoubtedly better off psychologically. They can take a few remedial classes at community college to buff up wherever a parent may have not caught up and be ready for college soon enough. And best of all, they will have spent their formative years being molded by YOU instead of liberals and all the little neighborhood brats.
Fortunately where we are (upstate SC) you don't see much of that in school. However my daughter gets plenty of revisionist crap at the local community college. But, the professors don't have to make a big effort with it, as the textbooks have been all "adjusted" to reflect the proper leftist and multicultural talking points.
Oh wow. It's difficult to know where to start a response to this article.
First, in an ideal world, a professionally trained, dedicated teacher would probably do a decent job teaching the topic such as history, math, grammar, literature. The problem is, we don't live in an ideal world. Some teachers are teachers, not because they are dedicated to the education of children or youth, but because they saw it as an flexible profession which has union-protected benefits and lots of days off. Then there are the teachers who are required to teach out of their majors--the math teacher is assigned to tackle science problem. Now add into the mix the fact that most teachers, dedicated or not, spend a huge part of their instruction time just trying to keep order in their classrooms or doing district paperwork and tests. Include the problem of dumbing down the textbooks and curriculum to be "inclusive" and the education fad of putting all types of kids together regardless of their levels of achievement. Then factor in the social pressure among teachers not to make each other look bad by being seens as a much better teacher than the average teacher. You then have a situation in public education where it is nearly impossible for that professional to teach to his or her full ability.
The argument on socialization also falls flat. What public education teaches is not socialization so much as socialism. It teaches group think, often punishes individual initiative, and saddles motivated students with the onerous task of carrying unmotivated team members on their backs or suffering the consequences of a lower group grade. That type of socialization does not create Nobel Prize winners, entrepreneurs or statesmen. It does produce willing union members, more teachers and other types who want to have someone else give them the orders and will guarantee payment of their wages regardless of their contribution to the overall health of their employer.
The writer discounts the power of knowledge in the public hands nowadays. What politically-correct textbook can stand up to the internet in terms of current information and availability of contrary opinions with which to educate thinking? What kid doesn't learn better with hands-on experience and immediate one-to-one teaching during that experience, compared to a group project where the kids are to "teach each other"? A motivated home school teacher can find almost anything needed to teach a child more effectively than public school experiments which pass for teaching today.
I don't denigrate anyone's choice of public, private, homeschooling or a mixture of each, but every choice requires diligence by the parent, whether finding the best homeschooling opportunities, or monitoring the abuses of public education, or ensuring that private schools toe the mark. It's a big job for the parents to be involved in their childrens' education whatever way they choose to go and if some want the job to be fulltime at home, go for it. My kids had public education, then charter school education which combined homeschooling with distance and on-site learning.
This custodian is merely spouting the union line and showing his ignorance in the process.
How about let's say the correct word Brainiac, masonry.
It sounds like you are interested in homeschooling.
The NEA should really try to make it a little tougher to make fun of them.
There are so many answers to your question that I could write a book on the subject. Here's the short version:
1) You can get terrific resources (textbooks, DVDs, software) that will allow your child to master the subject on their own
2) use online courses/online tutors
3) send child to class anywhere for the subject
4) hire private tutor or use homeschool co-op
That attitude is all over the place in public schools ... even down to the secretary/administrative support positions. They are never interested in economies or streamlining the work ... someone might be out of a job as a result. So they continue in the same inefficient manner, while crying for more money everywhere.
I speak from first-hand experience ... Mr. RightFight is in his 38th year of teaching in a public high school. And ... we homeschooled our own kids through middle school. In addition, I worked for his public high school for four years in an administrative support position.
Cementing??????
If home schooling is so bad, why do the vast majority of students shine? Huh?
I might be more inclined to agree if the union that represents said ostensibly trained professionals had caught that punctuation error before it made it onto a live web page.
In the early eighties we had many teachers in Birmingham, who had bought teaching degrees without attending classes and were tenured. There were so many that the school board could not fire them without shutting down the system for years. Nothing was ever done except close down the college that sold those degrees. I would have said "worthless degrees", except the felon teachers continued to be paid to teach, and most have retired with fat retirements. My sons had some of these criminals for teachers. The people could not speak English very well and were terrible excuses for teachers. There were at lot of parents who were better educated than these clowns, and would have been able to home school at a much higher level.
In it is this quote:
Stop Vouchers/Block Federal Charter School Legislation. Help close achievement gaps by blocking ineffective measures that divert public resources to private, religious, or homeschool K-12 uses. Ensure that the federal government doesn't undermine states' rights to determine charter school policies (whether to permit charter schools and under what circumstances). Block any efforts to use federal funds for private charter schools.
LOL - "...close achievement gaps..."
Your source for those stats is ?
Yes, I fully appreciate the intent of the homeschooling movement and it will result in America being a third world country of haves and have-nots; one which creates a large population of peasants and makes the best nation God ever created ripe for revolution and eventual communism.
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