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.)
And maybe he does. If his belief makes him feel better, why attempt to disabuse him of it?
Robert Heinlein is famously quoted on the topic of teaching a pig to sing...but to my way of thinking, that task doesn't hold a candle to changing a Ph.D.'s mind.
Excellent reply.
Yep. Every so often I get a wild hair and think about running for the local school board so that I can 'make a difference'. Then, I realize that most of the population really doesn't care, and the children of the people that *do* care, likely will excel regardless of what type education they pick.
"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."
We absolutely must have school choice, that is an imperative for education in the 21st century.
We hosted an exchange student who went to our local public high school. In history he studied WWII, however, his book never mentioned FDR except as the father of the New Deal, which was touted for saving humanity from the evil scourge of capitalistic excess. It never mentioned Harry Truman at all. There were, however, pages and pages about Rosie the Riveter and the origins of feminism. One was left with the impression that women on the homefront won WWII, and all those soldiers were superfluous.
Having a student in the public school was a great reminder of why I homeschool. We won't host again. If that's the level of education the schools offer, I won't subject another student to it.
I wonder if this is why home schooled kids regularly run rings around their public screwl counterparts academically.
Teachers should be put into the unemployment line and made to get real jobs. I.e. shovelling horse poop. They sure as hell spout enough Bull poop already.
That's a real problem. My daughter was struggling with math in public school while her teacher would allow those kids who got their math done early to turn on the class television to MTV as a reward. Considering the fact that my daughter also has super-hearing, it was nearly impossible for her to learn math in that class. My other daughter faced an American history teacher with a doctorate in history from Berkeley who started the class with the America-Is-Evil claptrap from Day 1. My daughter's first essay assignment was whether the class should learn typical American history or "the real history" as defined by that teacher. In my own experience I was a motivated student who loved history. Too many times I sat in a class staffed by coaches who were more interested in coddling his athletes and discussing game strategy than teaching history. When one coach/teacher had a silly feud with the librarian, he suddenly declared that no one in his class would ever have to set foot in the school library and he cancelled our term papers.
You might try EPGY, Stanford's self-paced math program. We've begun our kids in 1st grade. Our fourth grader is enrolled in 7th grade math.
at least they'd be a professional degenerate.
This homeschooler believes that vouchers are an engraved invitation for increased federal regulation of homeschooling. No, thank you.
...in fact, it's such a crack-up it makes you think the whole article is a practical joke...
Milton Friedman bump.
"EVERYONE"?
What a nasty, insulting lie.
I support the rights of anyone who wants to homeschool. I don't, and won't. I have made the choice for my children, and
I am VERY thrilled with our conservative, award-winning school in the Bible belt.
And my children NEVER set foot in daycare.
"Not to mention that the whole system is constantly reinforcing liberal dogma. Even the state tests are laden with little bombs. Stories where you must find the moral (moral is always: people who don't share what they earned are bad, bad people)... essays on segregation and how bad racism in America was and is... environmental activism masquerading as reading comprehension... My ESL 4 students are required to do a research paper on How FDR's New Deal Saved America. No, I'm serious. And the state of California wants that paper in their ESL folders that go with them all through the program, so they want to make ABSOLUTELY SURE that EVERY ESL student has obediently recited that FDR's New Deal Saved America. I could go on"
Please do so ... it's a good litany!
As for us, we get "TIME for Kids". YUCK!
Liberal media bias for the young, on taxpayer dime.
Another one - didn't have time for washington's birthday, but do have time for earth day and world culture event.
daughter's 6th grade book is "Esperanza rising" about mexican illegal immigrants in cali; swarthy folks, think 'grapes of wrath' with all-present racial-sensitivity thrown in . ... And so it goes.
When I was in the second grade my Sunday-school teacher was also a fifth-grade schoolteacher. One of the other Sunday-school students asked her what a word meant and she didn't know. I attempted to tell her that the word was explained in the footnote. The teacher didn't know what a footnote was. My Mother was in college at the time and had explained about footnotes while she was typing her papers.
Another anecdote about the dedication of teachers: my sister's eleventh grade English teacher told the whole class that he was only there to avoid the draft. He was still teaching earlier this year.
My mother became a schoolteacher at the same time that I completed high school. She later earned her M.Ed. She often revealed her frustrations with the social engineering and bureaucratic machinations behind every action she was allowed to perform or forced to perpetrate.
For the gummint skeweled: 2 + 2= ?
a) 5
b) 22
c) 7 +/-4 when the wolfbane is in bloom
d) It depends on the meaning of 2
e) This question is a plot by Dubya to make gummint skewel teachers look bad.
f) NCLB made math teacher Snidely Whiplash "teach to the test" BUT he failed as usual and all I get is this lousy grade.
g) I was shooting up in the gummint skewel lav when this advanced math was being taught.
h) Something else but I don't know what.
Was this important? Yep. Should it have been mentioned? Sure. But, should it have been given prominence over the Yalta Agreement, The Miracle at Dunkirk, The Battle of Britan, Patton (who was later proved to be 100% correct), MacArthur, Truman, Montgomery, Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, and so on and on and on..... Nope.
I'm a public school grad and I can still tell you who Crispus Attucks is. (FYI, He's a *BLACK* man who happened to be the first person killed in the Revolutionary War. The fact that he's black, was of some importance, I guess.). However, 'Common Sense' was never assigned reading and most of the knowledge I have of the people of the time - giants, really, like Washington, Greene, Paine, Franklin, and on and on, was aquired on my own. Go figure.
There. I fixed it.
I homeschooled my two for 7 years. I always said that I was doing it because I *had* to, not because I wanted to. I said, "If I can find a school that does it as well or better than I can, I'd send the kids in a heartbeat."
We moved to a school system that we'd heard great things about. Last August I sent my son. (Very intelligent, willful, sassy diabetic. I figured, if they can handle him, they can handle anything.) They're doing a WONDERFUL job! I *love* this district!
My daughter will be going to high school in January and we're thrilled. I love what they teach and how they teach it. I love they way they view boys and discipline the children. (very down-to-earth)
They have a lot of farmer's kids here. Time is taken off for planting and harvest. Older kids have the option of working on these vacation days for a local farmer. The homework level is reasonable and the teachers are "old-school".
*Most* HSers would be very happy to send their kids to such a school, but they are rare and difficult to find.
With all that said, I do think its better for kids to be taught at home until they're at least 11 or 12. Both of my kids have been impressed with definitive ideas of right and wrong. They both have the confidence to speak up and don't get "confused" when an adult tries to persuade them otherwise.
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