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.)
Yes, it does have zip and zing.
I believe you live in Maryland and possibly in the Archdiocese of Baltimore. If so, rigorously check the theology texts. Allan Keyes has had some serious dustups with Cardinal Keeler over toleration and even encouragement of lesbianism at a Loyola Girls' High School in Baltimore. You are local and probably better informed than I but, as Ronaldus Maximus used to say: Trust but verify!
God bless you and yours!
a crucial distinction is that the factory union does not get to tax thee or me but the gummint misedjamakashunist union does. Also, no one will be outsourcing gummint misedjamakashun to Bangladesh, although Bangladeshi ten-year olds working for a nickel an hour are probably better informed and educated than our gummint misedjamakashunists.
Dear BlackElk,
Thanks for the heads up. He's using the Rosetta Stone software. It's good at teaching vocabulary. He's also figured out the verb conjugations. But I was thinking in the spring of getting him something to fill in with a little more of the basic grammar.
"I believe you live in Maryland and possibly in the Archdiocese of Baltimore."
The school is in the Archdiocese of Washington. It's grown progressively more Catholic since I was there.
Thanks!
sitetest
Middle daughter is to graduate Hillsdale Academy in May because she needed more of a challenge than we can yet give her. It is a great school and covers grammar and high school. It is not Catholic but it is by no means hostile to Catholicism. Hillsdale Academy now has a DVD as well to introduce parents to its program.
That is an important point.
I recall reading that online math and science tutoring (for Americans) is a growing industry in India.
Back to the Top, TC!
I drag my kids into the bathroom, beat them up, and take their lunch money once a week.
Now, I will admit that my daughter is deprived; so far she has only had two cousins make rude comments about her chest, but since that does not take place on an ongoing basis, I suppose she is being deprived of an essential element of socialization. So, I guess I am a bad father for depriving my daughter in this way...
Online education is growing rapidly. There is a big restructuring of education at all levels coming. Four-year colleges and universities are also vulnerable. The price tags are moving into the stratosphere, and much of what they do is done badly or shouldn't be done at all.
I'd sure like for them to give a good definition of socialization.
I heard that, over the racket produced by the thrilling game, "Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon."
Groupthink. Indoctrination. They want everyone to participate in the socially engineered zietgeist.
That reminds me of an article I read here on FR about a month ago. Indian tutoring services make a lot of money - online or phone based tutoring for school kids. So, New York has banned such tutoring services. Their stated reason is that they "can't run background checks on the tutors" - um, ok, background checks on someone thousands of miles away who is never near the kid? Huh? But further in the article it talked about how teachers often make big bucks tutoring on the side. Guess they don't want the competition.
Ah, I'd missed that bit of news. What a surprise ...
That's probably true but I bet they word it a bit differently. "social skills". That one always cracks me up. The social skills kids in public school learn are profanity, sarcasm and verbal combat. Oh I suppose dressing cool is another important one.
Actually it reminds me of the horror stories I hear about prison life. You have to get into a gang or you are screwed, so to speak.
You've identified my disconnect between successful use of phonics to decode Welsh while not understanding what I'm reading. I'm still learning the language. I haven't started from the position of having a verbal command of the language. The same applies to kids raised in a Spanish speaking household. If they don't have a verbal command of English, the phonics skills don't necessarily translate to any kind of facility in reading. My father had a huge vocabulary. He used it and I learned a large vocabulary as a young child. If a child grows up in an environment where the parents have a restricted vocabulary, the limited facility with the language will also manifest itself in poor reading comprehension.
I joined a DeMolay chapter in 1973. Many of the members were already in college and had a great command of English. One of the advisors assigned from the lodge was a very nice guy who barely managed to graduate from high school. It showed in his vocabulary. We met one evening to plan a party. He thought we would enjoy some good food and socialism. The persons assembled had the learned social graces of not embarrassing a man who was volunteering his time to help, but it did draw a knowing smile.
The adolescent instincts brought most fully into play in the public school social setting are the instinct to conform, and the instinct to enforce conformity. Want to torture your public-schooler? Make him wear a dorky hat to school.
Any non-conformity is siezed upon and seen as a weak spot, an entry point for ridicule. Take away the adults, and before long you've got Lord of the Flies. Heck, you sometimes get that with the adults present, depending on the adults.
However, this urge to conformity is not discouraged by the school system. In fact, one could argue that the architects of public education designed the environment to encourage it.
I have a daughter with speech problems. She actually reads better than she can speak. Decoding helps her with the speech aspect and reading.
Her decoding is still low, and she is in an multi-sensory reading phonics based reading program this year to help her improve her decoding skills. She can memorize words easily, but without the decoding she won't be able to move to that next level.
Of course, the public school would not provide the reading program, and we switched her to a private school that would. We looked into homeschool, and hiring a tutor. However, tutors are very expensive ($50-$100/hr) and it seemed like a better bang for the buck to invest in the private school ($7500/yr). (
The training for the multi-sensory reading program is very intensive, and is very costly. That didn't make sense either since I would only be doing it for 1 child.
My daughters' new public school did reach the "Lord of the Flies" levels last year.
Most of the time the kids ate outside (we live in California). The school does not even have an indoor cafeteria. Well, it does rain here, and the first rainy day was a total disaster.
They had the kids go into the gym, and sit on the ground and eat. The kids started going crazy. They were running around wild, screaming at the top of their lungs, and throwing food.
I didn't trust the school, so I went at lunch time. I wouldn't let my kids go into the gym. Thank God, my daughters' teacher saw what was going on and pulled her kids out of the gym and took her kids to her classroom. Most of the teachers didn't do that because they didn't want to give up their lunch break.
I could maybe let this slide once, but I would expect that it would never happen again. Well, this wildness in the gym happened many times before the school finally changed the policy.
I was at the school every single rainy day at lunch to make sure my girls did not go to the gym.
My daughters' teacher is no longer at that school, and neither are we.
3- I did not read this on a web site, I dealt with the teaches, administrators and the system.
When we HS'd our daughter a number of good teachers were very supportive of us. And quite impressed with the results.
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