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.)
Y'all must have had sturdy furniture! We have little wire shelves that probably wouldn't even hold skinny Pat.
"Please do not get me wrong. I am 100% for your right to do what you will with your children, only that I question how well you can provide all the time."
The problem is that the average teacher isn't much better than a "well-meaning amatuer" parent. So much of classroom time isn't relevant to learning any specific subject. Teacher opinion, discipline, silly social engineering games. Public school test scores are a testimony to how little learning actually takes place. Even a sloppy attempt by a parent following a homeschool curriculum manual will do better in most circumstances.
I have many family members who work in the public school system ranging from principal to 40 year teacher. They all support and encourage my homeschooling efforts. You wouldn't believe the stories I hear from my brother who is a principal of an elementary school in California... about the teachers! That being said, I don't mean to offend the precious few outstanding teachers out there. We know you're there and that you do good work.. but it won't repair 4 years of sloppy teaching by the others.
Dad still is an excellent carpenter, has always liked building things. He and mom panelled the entire inside of the house (cypress tongue and groove downstairs, pine upstairs), he built all the kitchen cabinets and the "entertainment center" (except that wasn't what it was called then) in the living room, plus stuff like chairs and bookcases when somebody needed one.
They sold their house when the city taxes got too high -- and some fool wrecked it out (it was an architect-designed contemporary) to build a Monster Mansion.
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That's so cute. My mother used a drawer for my little brother. He's fairly normal. :)
I can't imagine feeding and caring for 8! You must be wonder woman! I had only one and she STILL gives me a hard time [but I love her dearly!]
As am I...almost normal...
That puts you one up on me. :)
I just have a higher-than-average tolerance for chaos.
Being a parent of any children is difficult, but I don't think that eight is all that much more difficult than two. You just have to accept that you're not in control of most of what goes on.
They do eat a lot, of course, but a casserole for ten isn't much more work than a casserole for four.
Sad story. It would be neat to have a house that wasn't totally ordinary :-), but we have no skills!
No flaming... You asked a legitimate question. Many non-homeschoolers misunderstand homeschooling, as did I before we began homeschooling our children.
I am not a "teacher" any more than every good parent is a teacher. Homeschooling fosters independent learning. Once a child learns basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, they become independent learners. Schools foster "dependent" learning where a teacher tells the children what to learn. But, in homeschooling, I purchase books and other materials and give them to my kids. Then I check their work. They proceed at their own pace.
Though at times it may present challenges, the academic part of homeschooling is a breeze.
Every subject can be learned independently, even a foreign language, but I put my children into foreign language classes so that they can learn it from someone who can speak it.
I used to sleep in my closet when small because I was convinced by my older sister than there was a monster under my bed...
And now you've grown up only to learn that monsters always hide in closets...
Fortunately, in Catholicism, the 20th Century began with Pope Leo XII, then Pope St. Pius X, and also Pope Pius XI, Pope Pius XII, Pope John Paul I, Pope John Paul II (to be known as The Great), and Pope Benedict XVI, and several lesser lights. Also Cardinals Merry del Valle, Amleto Cicognani, Carlo Confalonieri, Alfredo Ottaviani, James McIntyre.
In the United States, we had Presidents William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Warren Gamaliel Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan and the dark side consisting of such as Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover (as president but he improved in private life), Franklin of the New Deal (although concededly also Dr. Win the War), Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, RMN, Gerald Ford, Jimmuh Peanut, Bush the Elder (and Tax Hiker) and the Arkansas Antichrist.
In popular culture: 1950s DooWop, the Beach Boys, the Big Band Era, the Blues, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Elvis, Buddy Holly, Motown, Natalie Wood, Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Gone With the Wind, Dr. Zhivago (even though the author was a Gramscian communist), Godfather I-III, Seven Samurai, Sound of Music, American Graffiti, popular novels by writers like Clavell, Clancy, Baldacci, Grisham, Deaver, Jeffrey and Kenneth Shaara, and by Taylor Caldwell, histories by Samuel Eliot Morison and Allan Nevins and Paul Johnson and Crane Brinton and Donald Kagan and Shelby Foote, and biographies by Robert Caro and by James I. Robertson and by George Weigel and American Caesar by William Manchester and by Carl Sandberg and by Robert Remini.
Political thought: books like Witness, The Road to Serfdom, anything by von Mises, The Suicide of the West, Kevin Phillips' early books like The Emerging Republican Majority, nearly anything by Tom Wolfe.
Villains whose example is to be avoided: secularists generally, John Dewey, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, anything opposed to Francisco Franco in Spain.
Heroes to be emulated: The foregoing list of good popes, St. Maria Goretti, St. Benedicta of the Cross (nee Edith Stein), St. Pio, St. Maximilian Kolbe, St. Jose Maria Escriva, the four horsemen of SCOTUS, Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge the Elder (Wilson's enemy). Francisco Franco, Konrad Adenauer, Charles deGaulle, Ronaldus Maximus, Margaret Thatcher, Winston Churchill, Tony Blair, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the ten Booms, Russian Orthodox martyrs to the soviet coup, Spanish martyrs to the communist and anarchist "Spanish Republicans," Nguyen Cao Ky, Ngo Dinh Diem, Menachem Begin, Jonathan Netanyahu, George S. Patton, Jr., Douglas MacArthur, the National Guardsmen at Kent State (5/70), Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, Sen. William Jenner, Sen Henry Dworkin, Sen. George Murphy, Sen. Peter Dominick, Cong. John Ashbrook, Cong. Henry Hyde, Cong. Chris Smith, Cong. Curt Weldon, Prof. David Nelson Rowe, Prof. Clarence Manion, James Burnham, Frank Meyer, Willmoore Kendall, Will Herberg, Phyllis Schlafly, Janice Rogers Brown, .
Leave out the 20th century???? Hell, no. More like: Never forget the 20th Century and all of its examples positive and negative.
Uuum, Grisham? Whatever Pinter's politics, his 60s dramas are hugely important and influential. So is Albee if you want to look at the American side of Theater of the Absurd. The Beats were very pro-American btw. Kerouac and Co. considered themselves heirs to Whitman.
LOL no, I learned that monsters can hide anywhere :)
I also learned at an early age to not trust the word of my sister ...
Hmmm...on the one hand, we've got monsters...on the other...sisters...
yep - when I was little they were one and the same... :)
I used Allen Ginsberg as an example of Beats. I trust you are not going to call him pro-American."
I wasted time and money on a Pinter Play or two (one of them with actors popping out of garbage cans: Waiting for Godot???). That will do for a lifetime. I have but one life to live and I am determined not to waste it watching Theater of the Absurd now that I have grown up.
As to the "arts community" in general, Pinter's "dramas" were "hugely important and influential" to whom???? The usual crowd of arts arbiters and college professors and pseudo-intellects whose politics may be found well to the left of Mao-Tse Tung???? I am soooo impressed!!!! Oh, and I forgot the English Profs who make a living telling you what authors MEANT to say when they said the precise opposite. I also do not listen to NPR or watch "public" television programming except on an extremely selective basis. I can think for myself and I do.
Kerouac stood out as an exception but not enough of one to cleanse the reputation of the beats.
Also, Grisham entertains which is more than Pinter could say and a good explanation ofd why he was so much more successful without his works being required by the leftist professoriate.
Finally to cement my reputation as a hopeless philistine, wasn't Whitman a lavender queen????
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