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.)
Amen, sister!!
OK Mr. Formal Education expert, first we have to define what constitutes good formal education before we can argue about the best means to achieving this end.
Perhaps we could agree that a good formal education should prepare children for life. But how should we prepare children for life? To answer this question, we need to understand the purpose of life. The purpose of life is to know, love and serve God in this life so that we can be happy forever with Him in the next. This is a simple objective truth.
So any formal education that doesn't center on helping children to know, love and serve God in this life is a poor education, and any education that completely ignores the purpose of life, such as godless government education, is a fraud.
And so it seems that leaving formal education "to the pros" is a mistake of the highest order.
Friends of ours home schooled their children...the oldest son just graduated college with honors....Went to college on a FULL scholarship earned with very high SAT score..
Yeah...amateurs.
You can come and live with us, and teach composition and rhetoric :-).
Bump that!
"Better" how, anyway? Maybe in a "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" sense, but you could say that about surviving cancer, too. Wouldn't it be better not to be sick in the first place?
I wouldn't send a child I hated to middle school, public or private ... and I don't have any children I hate!
If the teachers and administrators don't take care of kids while at school they're not doing their job. How are parent supposed to "be involved" unless the parents are welcome at school all day every day ? No school I know would permit this.
IMO a parent's job is to deliver the kid well-rested, appropriately fed and with homework completed to the school. The school should take it from there for the rest of the day, then the parent should pick up again in the afternoon and reinforce what the school has done. How is a parent supposed to communicate with 6-7 teachers every day about these matters especially when the teachers have maybe 150 kids for which they are responsible for some part of the day ?
There is no way the parent can be "involved" at school except as a helper - parents are not permitted to dictate curriculum, teaching methodology or discipline techniques to the school unless there is an injury involved. If the parent has no say in those, the parent has no place except as a supporter of whatever the school chooses to do.
What I think you have seen here from many of us is that we don't approve of many things the schools do. For example, if I want my child to be taught to read using the phonetic method, that's too bad for us if my local school for which I'm forced to pay taxes uses the whole word method instead. I have no input that will immediately correct that situation and all I can do is vote with my feet. If a teacher permits student on student harassment in class, will the administrator back up the paent when the parent complains ? In my experience, unless the harassment rises to a very high level it's condoned by the schools.
My daughter had a classmate in 4th grade who pushed her down steps, pushed her hands against a hot register causing mild burns, and threw paint on her in art class. I went to the school time after time to remedy the situation and was told that the other girl came from a broken home where the father and the mother were in prison for drugs and who knows what else and the girl was in foster care. They were giving her counseling and hoped that would resolve the situation. After the burn incident I told the school if they didn't take immediate steps to physically keep the child away from my daughter I was calling the police right there from the principal's office and filing charges. How can a parent trust anything done in schools or any administrator associated with the school if the most basic criteria, personal safety, is not respected ?
My favorite paraphrase of that aphorism is as follows:
BlackElk has experience starting a school; maybe he can give you some suggestions.
Good luck!
Mr. Elk, what say ye? The school in question would not be expressly Catholic, but I can promise you that the students involved would read Augustine and Aquinas. =]
G.K. Chesterton, long ago, dissembeled all the pretensions and exposed all the fallacies and errors of the public school system. You stand in the same line as he - although, you are far more combative and your Christian witness always rekindles the fires in my Irish-Algonquin Catholic soul.
I love you, brother.
Dissembled? That means, "deliberately conveyed a false impression."
Disassembled?
Disembowelled? That would be vivid, even Elk-like, language ...
Dear achilles2000,
I can affirm what you're saying about intellectual capacity of education majors. In college, I studied in pyschology, and I had a particular interest in clinical and other testing. A little research showed that education majors were bringing up the rear on SATs as well as GREs.
It was truly scary.
sitetest
Maybe I should have said "disembowled"
Anybody who has been in College knows Sociology Majors and Education Majors were only allowed at MENSA Meetings to bus tables
BTW, I majored in Soc and minored in ed...
Dear bornacatholic,
"BTW, I majored in Soc and minored in ed..."
But you recovered.
;-)
sitetest
Ah! Now it makes sense.
Cheers :-).
As a result, I came away from college with a bachelor's in English and a Mrs. Oberon.
While I wasn't the academic success I had hoped I would be, I'm not sure I would do anything different if I had it to do over.
Source? Back-up data, please.
Your assertion that homeschooled kids do not perform as well as publicly educated kids with "parental involvement" was challenged. Since it has been two days since I challenged that statement without a response, I and anyone else reading this thread can safely tuck your unfounded assertion into the appropriate file.
The "Flatulence Passed Around The Teachers Lounge Between Reading 'Heather Has Two Mommies' To 8 Year Olds" file.
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