Home Schools Run By Well-Meaning Amateurs

NEA ^ | By Dave Arnold

[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.)

[Oberon]

No, it's not. Your tax dollars are paying for the Stalinist model education system, and 50 million other kids are in that system. This is no more 'free market' than living in a country with socialized medicine but flying to the US for an operation. It's a band aid on a broken system.

It's not a free-market solution for the 50 million...it's only free-market for mine. I consider my property taxes the "protection" that I pay to the school district to leave my children alone. So far it's working pretty well.

It's not right, but it works. I'm not sure how eager I am to move to a system that is right, but may not entirely work.

[-YYZ-]

But that's an important life experience! I mean, virtually every day at work I have to deal with bullies who steal my lunch money... /sarc

We expect kids to learn to "deal with" stuff in school which in adult life would result in the offender being arrested and charged.

It is not normal to stick hundreds of children together in a building with maybe (and I'm being generous) 1/10th that number of adults around to supervise them. I think that through most of human history that would have been considered a ludicrous idea.

[BlackElk]

Saxon Math!!!!! Warriner's English Grammar!!!! For Catholics, at least, and for others who can overlook the Catholicism in search of the teaching quality: Fr. Robert Henle's Latin: 4 volumes plus a grammar handbook!!!! Substantial English Literature and novels that go crunch!!!!

Bless me, father, for I have sinned. I accuse myself of using too many exclamation points in my enthusiasm for a real curriculum.

[BlackElk]

Why also do so many PS denizens have difficulty reading? Answer: Look/say instead of phonics. Illiteracy, innumeracy and ignorance are the stock in trade of the National Education Association.

[meandog]

I have to wonder then (in reading your long post) what do you have against private schools? You state that you went to a Catholic prep school, so why don't you send your kids there? Homeschooling to me is analogous to the lawyer that tries to represent himself in court...okay, granted, your public school system may be bad but Catholic schools are not and their faculties are a darn site better at educating student than moms or dads.

[GraniteStateDad]

As a former homeschool parent who is now a customer of the local public school system, I have gained a respect for teachers that I never had before.
That said, I think that Mr. Arnold was paid by the local NEA Chapter for his remarks.
I suppose if you get right down to it, all parents are "well meaning amateurs". There are no colleges to attend or unions to hide behind when it comes to parenting - it is an adventure that unfolds daily.
Better a "well meaning amateur" than an "educated idiot" is what I say.
GSD

[bd476]

They probably all describe the same job then.

Or a rose by another name.

[BlackElk]

Actually, there have been online colleges established by the homeschooling and anti-gummint skewel community. There is even discussion of the establishment of brick-and-mortar colleges for people who care enough to see to it that there is a leftistectomy performed on their kids' educations. We are a century or two behind the ignorance factories and their enthusiasts in terms of fund-raising and won't take gummint money on principle but we wiull get there or the US is finished. An important goal would be to rip the credentialing function off of schools altogether. Go back to apprenticing in the professions and trades. Each professional should be required to tell each person treated or represented what education if any. Examinations (like bar examinations for lawyers) can be used to credential the professionals. One of the sharpest lawyers I ever had to oppose in court was an elderly man who never finished high school or attended college or law school. He apprenticed when it was still possible and had an encyclopedic knowledge of our state's law at his fingertips.

If the University of Texas or Yale for that matter are so good, they should not fear competition from those whose learning is done by alternative methods. Let there be consultancy corporations to assist both conventionally educated professionals and others. In medicine, computers routinely screen for drug interaction. That was not the case forty years ago. Computers are already heavily used in law. Is engineering immune??? Certainly accounting is open to computer effort. The teaching profession has never been worse. There are plenty of online universities already and plenty of brick-and-mortar institutions doing computerized courses online already.

This century will see greater changes in higher education than will be seen even in the abolition of gummint education as a norm. The ancient Lancastrian factory model of primary and secondary education is pretty well finished except as an extraordinarily expensive baby-sitting service. It makes very little sense for higher education as well, as experience teaching part-time at several colleges has shown me.

[GraniteStateDad]

Yeah, we used to get the "socalization" thing thrown in our faces all the time.
Most of what goes on in public schools (and a good many private ones, too) isn't socialization, it's what I call "being absorbed into the mob".
My 4 (former) homeschool kids have social skills that have made them favorites with their teachers and classmates.
That "socialization" argument is like throwing your gun at the enemy when you have no more bullets left.
GSD

[BlackElk]

Bad behavior and rank stupidity have consequences. Fortunately, God created homeschooling and private unregulated schooling to guarantee that there will be leaders who can govern the gummint skeweled sheeple.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Hi, Meandog! If you haven't already done so, please check out posts 34, 36, 38, 45, 64, 187, and 188, now clickable for your convenience.

Many, many homeschoolers work cooperatively to get the best possible homeschool instruction for their kids.

You're very welcome.

[Oberon]

In the last thread like this in which I participated, the pro-teacher advocate in the discussion demonstrated his superior social skills by calling homeschoolers geeks, more or less.

I was duly impressed, and took notes. =/

[luckystarmom]

Our school district closed my kids' elementary school that had recently been renovated so that they could save $300,000/year. However, then they moved the kids from two old schools into a middle school campus(that had recently been renovated). To get the middle school campus turned into an elementary school, they spent 12 million.

Of course, the funds are different. One is for salaries, and one is bond money. So the district has tons of bond money to spend on building, but it doesn't have the funds to pay teachers.

What a joke!

[BlackElk]

Meandog: When you group public and private education, that is analogous to a politician talking about "poor and middle class people" or "working and middle class people." When you look at the rest of the speech, you realize that the politician is trying to recruit supporters for a wider welfare state as in: Poor and working class citizens NEED reliable medical services and care (socialized medicine). Working and middle class kids need better funded public schools (more luxurious indoctrination centers in which to brainwash the community's kids: We educrats gave you football and basketball and swimming pools and a golf team and tennis and condoms and snuggling opportunities and abortions hidden from your parents. Don't you want to help us politically??? Tell your parents to vote yes on school funds or we will have to take your entertainment away and there will be no more fun of any kind!).

Forty acres???? And a mule???? You sure are our friends, I guess!

[luckystarmom]

In San Jose, they closed my daughters school in order to save $300,000 per year. However, probably about 50 kids moved out of San Jose Unified, and they lost that money. That amounts to about $375,000 in money they lost.

[Mrs. Don-o]

One of the best things about homsechooling is the way kids can become the advocates and architects of their own learning. It's been almost 40 years since I took Algebra, and I honestly remembered almost none of it. But did #1 son languish in ignorance, waiting to be tube-fed by a "professional"? Not at all. He taught himself Algebra I and did a splendid job of it.

And there are tons of teaching resources and entire counses available for free on the Internet. You should see what they've got in foreign languages! Maravillosa!

[meandog]

Typical parent of homeschool child CLICK HERE

[No Truce With Kings]

"Why did you stop at 10 years? The University of Texas system is a public institution and your son would have been exposed the same kind of social ills there as in high school, wouldn't he?"

You don't read too well, do you? Our objection to the public school system was that they were not doing their job -- teaching my children. Unless you interpret teachers not teaching as a social ill I do not think that was discussed in my post.

As to why I sent (and send) my children to Universities, it, too has to do with the difference between trades and professions. Teaching on grade levels 1-12 is definitely a trade. Always has been. Teaching on the University level is a profession. Always has been. (That is one reason those that teach at Universities are called professors.)

I leave professions to professionals. If one does not do a good job, I find another one. (And yes, there are good colleges and bad colleges. UT-Dallas is an excellent school for engineering and business. OTOH I would not recommend my son go to a school like Cornell because it is my belief that for the last ten years being politically correct is more important than being technically correct.)

I leave trades to tradespeople only so long as (a) the there are competent ones around or (b) getting the job done is more important than getting the job done right. If I cannot hire a tradesperson competent to do a job right -- and the job is important enough that it has to be done right (and getting an education for my kids falls into that category) -- I'll do the job myself.

[go-dubya-04]

Most people missed the key part of the article which is the attribution at the very end:
"Dave Arnold, a member of the Illinois Education Association, is head custodian at Brownstown Elementary School in Southern Illinois.)
The guy is the frickin' janitor of the school! Oh... beg pardon - the HEAD frickin' janitor of the school! LOL! This is who is telling us who is best suited to educate America's youth?! Oh yeah, so they can grow up to have a wonderful career like Dave here, in the area of custodial management.

[pray4liberty]

The system is already starting to collapse in Delaware. The graduate rates hovers between 64% to 61%. Those stats don't even count the kids who drop out in 8th grade. It's pathetic.