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.)
Very interesting. I agree that decoding is only part of the process, but as soon as a child can decode he can read to the extent of his spoken command of the language. In any event, without facility in decoding you never get to the next levels.
Something published by the NEA is going to change my mind about homeschooling? The NEA is one of the major reasons why the government schools are in the pitiful condition they are in today.
We've been through this argument about parents not being qualified to teach their own children before. Sorry, but that argument doesn't hold water.
And just how would one design a study measuring "parental involvement" in some relevant sense? I suppose it would be possible, but the methodological problems and cost would be formidable (basing a study on self-reporting of "involvement" by parents would be absurd. As Ann Coulter illustrated the problem, in her survey of the sexual activity of teenage boys 90% reported that they were having sex every night, 60% with Pam Anderson).
The NEA and ed school people publish garbage, which gets headlines, and then the work is shown to be essentially fraudulent, which doesn't get headlines. See my prior post on the NCES massaging of NAEP data vis private schools.
Arthur Levine, former president of Columbia Teachers' College, headed a group that produced an interesting study on ed schools. You can probably find it easily on the internet. Good chart on GRE scores by major.
Those of us who are involved in Roman Catholic alternative education of a classical sort root very hard for the success of our Evangelical brothers and sisters in Christ in establishing such academies as you linked and as you propose.
While we certainly disagree as to about 5% of theology (albeit an important 5%), we agree on so very much of Christian morality, the evils of public education and of some private or parochial education, the insipid culture of academic mediocrity/incompetence or worse that is the hallmark of gummint edumakashun, the fact that gummint skewels exist largely (according to Horace Mann and John Dewey who are the evangelists of leftist brainwashing posing as education in gummint skewels) to homogenize students in mandatory gummint skewels to be kneejerk leftist robots, all at the expense of taxpayers (with guns to their heads) who DESPISE what is taught at gummint skewels.
Promise me also that the students will learn diligently the languages of Latin and Greek, that they will be required to write essays daily and research papers periodically, that they will use Saxon Math and quality texts from ABEKA or other qualified reformed sources for history and literature, that they will study Jonathan Edwards' brilliant 18th Century sermon: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God and his participation in the First Great Awakening (a born-again one) as our Jesuits taught us with approval back wheen the Jesuits were still Catholic, that the kids will be competently trained to slay the SAT and ACT exams, that you will accept all well-behaved students whose parents and selves adhere to your religious standards without academic cherry-picking and that you will advertise relentlessly each and every academic success so that the public will know that their gummint skewels deserve not taxes but extinction and I will be a happy man.
We Catholics need you and, believe it or not, you need us in this fight. The Lubavitcher Chassidic Jews in the Northeast and the Satmar Chassidic Jews (both groups ultraorthodox) are also building their own high quality schools because they too are fed up with incompetent secularist gummint skewels. We Catholics and reformed Christians can fight along side one another on 95% of what we believe while agreeing to respectfully disagree on the other 5%, while educating ALL of our kids to levels of competence not seen in mere gummint skewels in generations. We can also ally with those Jews and with people of other faiths on matters of quality education.
God bless you and yours in all of your efforts. That's what I say!
Doesn't the mandatory gummint skewel curriculum at Lancaster, Massachusetts include, ummm, how to put this delicately(???) "fisting?" It is only a matter of time before the failed local motel is acquired by PS 666 as its "laboratory for sex education." Hands (or whatever) on edumakashun, don'tja know!
Are they teaching witchcraft yet as Massachusetts culture???
Not that your state's gummint edumakashun is any worse than our state's. You do an admirable job of putting the hay down where the goats can get it.
God bless you and yours, now and always.
I also do Math and Latin and History. My wife does French, English Grammar, English Literature and Catholicism.
I knew you'd have good advice, BlackElk :-).
Oberon, have you looked at the Hillsdale Academy curriculum - the grade school associated with Hillsdale College? They used to give away their grade-by-grade curriculum lists for free.
Wow! Would you like to move South and run our whole school, and I'll cook, clean, make clothes, and have more babies?
Excellent job throughout this thread! Congratulations.
Dear BlackElk,
"Promise me also that the students will learn diligently the languages of Latin and Greek,..."
These languages are making a comeback in a big way in Catholic schools.
When I went to school in the 1970s, my high school offered French and Spanish.
Today, it offers French and Spanish. And German. And maybe Italian, next year. And... Latin and Greek.
My 7th grade son has been picking up Latin in his spare time, and, I suppose in an attempt to get him to commit for 9th grade, my alma mater has invited him to come take Latin there a year early in his 8th grade year. He's now very motivated to work all the harder on his Latin, as they've promised to evaluate him this summer to see if he could start with Latin II.
Although it's a little early, he's giving some thought to a Classics major for college. I think it's a splendid idea.
sitetest
Because we're currently homeschooling, we have some curriculum in mind already. The curriculum we're using for theology, history, and literature is the Veritas Omnibus curriculum, which is fairly intense for an adult student, let alone our 6th, 7th, and 8th-graders.
So far this year they've read The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Codes of Moses and Hammurabi, R. C. Sproul's Chosen by God, C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces, The Oddyssey, the first five Narnia books, Genesis, Exodus, 1st and 2nd Samuel, 1st and 2nd Kings, and they're currently chewing their way through Histories by Herodotus. I know I left a few things out of the above list; I don't have my reference in front of me at the moment.
Their moms are covering math, science, and other subjects during the day, and we meet for three evening classes per week to cover Omnibus. Much reading and writing and thinking goes on. My daughter complained to me "Daddy, the other stuff we just had to learn. For Omnibus, we have to think!"
That comment satisfied me that we were on the right track.
If I want my kids to feel school atmosphere socialization I will personally physically kick their butts while calling them vulgar names while my wife stands around and berates them in belittling ways.
That should be enough school socialization to last them for another year or two.
Otherwise, we continue to participate in homeschool functions on a weekly basis. Field trips, group gatherings, and other functions like church. Our kids enjoy the many church sports options offered and seem to be functioning quite well without the unruly influences of some of the public school children. Everywhere we go, people compliment how well behaved our children are and I don't see any reason to stop homeschooling in the near future.
Zoicks! I get the Veritas catalog, and that's a very intimidating-looking program!
We're more "unschooling," except for math and religion. My oldest (10th grade) is involved in the Complete Works of P.J. O'Rourke, and had the 2 and 4 year old re-enacting the 1991 Gulf War with Lego cars and airplanes. "James! You crashed an airplane on Pat's embassy! That was bad, James!" (James talks to himself.)
Pat (the 4-year-old) read 9th grade Church History, and now he calls everyone heretics if they don't speak Greek.
It seems to be working out reasonably well (aside from having a kid who thinks he's the Ecumenical Patriarch, and also invisible). We use the standardized tests every year to make sure we're not totally off the radar.
She should not be paying $900 per year to a teachers' union so incompetent as to leave her with a lower salary than that of the factory-working taxpayers who are mercilessly farmed to pay her paycheck. Factories have no power to levy taxes. Of course, the likelihood of any claim that a single gummint skewel teacher in America makes less than a full-time factory worker is laughable on its face. We may have been born at night but it was not last night.
So, she prepares lesson plans in the summer (in a verrrrry stable subject like math). When she has completed her lesson plans competently, she will be enjoying her lengthy vacations.
She has to grade papers and homework and tests??? Well, those tasks are essential to her career and her students. If she does not like that aspect of her job, she should get one of those fat factory worker jobs.
If she taught in a private alternative school with Judaeo-Christian values instead of at a gummint skewel dedicated to secular leftist vaues, she would not find herself assaulted and she might even find her efforts at math appreciated.
180 days < 1/2 of 365 days. If she is a math teacher qualified to teach other than in gummint skewels she would understand that math. I would think that even gummint math teachers could handle that but maybe I am wrong about that.
Homeschoolers and those of us who are involved in alternative and rigorous private education seem more radical to you because of the increasing gap between competent education such as we offer and "progressive" gummint misedjamakashun (Dewey/Mann/etc.) which produces functional illiterates, innumerates and amoral monsters.
On the other hand, our students will govern your daughter's students so there is some hope.
We also educate at 1/3 or less of the typical cost of gummint misedjamakashun and produce a far superior result because we favor Saxon Math over polo ponies, Warriner's Grammar over yacht club experiences, actual science over Darwinism, morals over "fisting" ongoing good behavior as an ongoing condition of matriculation (enrollment for gummint misedjamakashunists in Rio Linda), actual music over MTV, actual art over the random product of an infinite number of monkeys (no, they are NOT our relatives mjuch less our ancestors) equipped with multiple oil paint tubes, William Wordsworth over beat poets like Allen Ginsberg, Shakespeare over Theater of the Absurd; English Grammar over ghetto patois; American history over Marxist and other "multicultural" propaganda; Theology over psychiatry; religion and morals over agnosticism or atheism and the amorality of "do as you please" as advocated by the late Antonio Gramsci.
Cinives is right. AND Free Republic is a no "boo-hoo" zone.
Parents would be sooooo pleasantly surprised at how much time they would have if they did not have to waste it arguing with gummint skewel "teachers" and administrators and other deaf public officials. Homeschoolers and alternative schoolers post their KNOWLEDGE and not mere feelings.
Interesting that you would mention that. My 11-year-old (homeschooled) daughter was recently told by her close neighborhood friend that she considers herself to be a witch. She claims that she can perform magic spells, which she learned from a school friend. This girl's parents are practicing Episcopalians, and were shocked when we told them.
Our priest had mentioned a few years ago that this type of thing was going on in our local public schools. Some might ask, what harm can it do? The girl also mentioned that one night she saw a "ghost enter her body." We've been praying for her. She seems to have broken off contact with our daughter.
Oh...incidentally, my kids will read Darwin's Origin of Species. They won't be taught that it's authoritative, however. By the time they get to it, they will have developed the critical thinking skills to see it for what it is.
Your average high school science teacher may well defend Darwin to the bitter end, but without having actually read him.
I second that emotion. There are a bunch of homeschooled kids in our church choir (about 25% actually). They're so much fun to be around.
I don't think so. I remember a few years ago, when the Pillowtex linens factory near here went out of business, the factory employees (high-school education, mostly, if that) were making astonishingly high wages. Their union, of course, had made sure they did, and made sure the pay was based on seniority, rather than productivity.
This is, of course, a main reason the company closed the factory, as so many other manufacturing plants in the United States have closed their doors.
Fortunately for the tenured employees of the Education Blob, their jobs are insulated from economic stress.
I like Oberon's take on it. I might use it in the future.
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