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.)
"...are the most arrogant lots you'll ever find, in always knowing what's best in educating their children, and in the end do their kids a disservice."
You just described every public school teacher my daughter has had. It's just one of the reasons she will never attend another public school.
Exactly! And that is why we have to break the NEA monopoly!
Exactly! And that is why we have to break the NEA monopoly!
Perhaps your cousin attended public school and therefore was never taught math in a way that stuck with him?
I too struggled mightily with Algebra in H.S.
Years later, I took college Algebra and had a wonderful teacher. I made an A. I worked HARD for that A!
3-4-5 triangles .... 100 miles apart.
Correctomundo...but in my class you would have gotten a zero for cheating by the providing solution when the question wasn't directed to you.
Ping for later.
Impressed! Should have cubed the parameters...dang!
If they start out in the same place then the answer is a hundred miles (twice a 345 triangle's hypotenuse *10 miles). If they start X miles apart then we get to demonstrate some algebra :0)
This actually is done a lot. People form co-ops. They take their children to classes in the community. Sometimes the parents will learn something, then teach it to their children.
I wouldn't know where to start with this: it reads like an informal position paper full of talking points meant to be "mimeographed" and sent to circulate among "the faculty". Even the points he makes about some of the drawbacks of homeschooling, he doesn't even make in quite the right way: he cannot be objective about the possible strengths and weaknesses of both public school ed and homeschooling, because he is only talking about a representative and defender of one of them, public school ed. Socialization is indeed a problem, but not in the way he discusses it: while public school might expose a kid to a long relationship between him and autocratic, impersonal teachers, AND at the same time, bullying, impossible-to-deal-with peers and the social structures of inclusion/exclusion, and hence, get you ready for "real life", the homeschooling environment might tend to foster too sloppy a relationship with the teaching parents, and relationships with parents are fraught with enough complication already. If only Public School teachers had lived up to "in loco parentis"! As another poster put it, "give me HALF of what it costs taxpayers (13K/yr.) to keep a kid in public school, and I will run rings around them". Of course things will never get that far, but indeed, think of what a parent interested in homeschooling could do with that kind of subsidy....first, though, the battle has to be fought for school choice and vouchers,etc.
And of course, one of the reasons homeschooling has not evolved as quickly or as dramatically as it might have is because the parents are doing it on their own, with no outside help from "the taxpayers" (i.e., THEMSELVES, who are already paying for OTHER people's kids in public schools. Nothing will change without revolt---large numbers across the country putting pressure on "lawmakers" to expand the structures of American education, or face the consequences of tax revolt. Who could organize something like this?
Let me follow the logic here --
P1) Dad went to public school.
P2) After instruction by "trained professionals" this person, that later proved a high baseline intelligence by passing the Bar, could not pull higher than a "C" in algebra.
C) Therefore, his children will be better at Dad in math if they get the same "professional training" that Dad did.
Yep, you're a publik skool teacher alright.
If dad has a weakness in math, that's what live tutors, computer based math courses, and co-ops are for.
He does'nt need an "education major", which from my recollection were the dumbest collection of students on my college campus, to teach his kids algebra.
Who knows? Maybe his kids will beat Dad's "C" after they get proper instruction.
True. I have three immediate family members either teaching or in administration. It seems the bureaucracy is overwhelming. From what I can tell, NCLB has created a system of test taking and test teaching. The test scores are all that matters - gotta keep the money coming. Can't have charter schools - they take away enrollment and funding from the public school.
Public Schools epitomize the worst of liberal government policy.
My niece now attends public school (8th grade) after years in private. She is lumped into classes with slower students and is WAY ahead of her class in math. The teacher has my niece spending her time in math class going around helping the other students! She SHOULD be in honors math or 9th or 10th grade math. I don't even know if her school has an honors program. Back in the day, our classes were divided into 3 levels. Smart kids weren't stuck in math or reading classes with slow kids. You were allowed to progress if you showed potential.
"This NEA jerk just did to homeschooling parents what Kerry did to the military with his recent remarks ......"
I was homeschooled, and I'm in the military. . .
OH NOES!!!!1111one1eleven
I remember when I walked into the USAF recruiter's office, being homeschooled (my parents couldn't afford an acredited program, so we just used the books and I got a GED) made me a high-school dropout. It's amazing what a difference 72 credits of college makes for. I acquired the first 20 credits of that college during the last few years of being homeschooled.
Then the problem was the teachers...your parents should have gone to the school board (few ever do) and demanded that they be reprimanded and, if that didn't work, fired!
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