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.)
Any visible success in pooling efforts might mean
unwelcome attention from governmental authorities.
I dreamed of something of the sort years ago before
I had heard about home schooling. The politics, policies
and enforced ignorance of education courses prevent
many people who have much to contribute from doing
so. It will come I suppose, but it will take much longer
than one would wish.
Very well said.
When family is involved, and you read some of these posts, it's difficult not to come to their defense.
As you said, at the end of the day, it's a personal choice.
Teachers unions should be banned
Whitman 'revolutionized' verse.
OK. How?
I call BS on that statement. I graduated from BJU in 1984 and saw more than one of Tennessee Williams' plays were performed during my 4 years there. I helped produce a student directed version of The Glass Menagerie my junior year and used a dialog from A Streetcar Named Desire in my sophomore platform. As far as Lawrence goes, I remember someone doing an excerpt from A Collier's Friday Night, but I don't remember reading a great deal of his poetry. (Of course it has been over 20 years, I've probably forgotten more than I remember at this point) During this time, BJ III was president and BJ Jr. was Chancellor. There is no way that these plays were used 'behind his back.' Going behind either of the Drs Bob was simply not done -- never, not one time. Unless you wanted to head on home....then you did what you wanted.
I'm not sure what you heard him say, but it wasn't that his institution wouldn't teach Williams or Lawrence because they did while I was there.
No...no redeeming value.
To some extent, I think I'm glad that my daughter has the MRI that shows brain damage. I wonder what kind of "diagnosis" she would have had.
We knew she could have brain damage when she was a baby, but we didn't have the MRI until she was 3.
I had one special ed teacher tell me that she thought my daughter was a selective mute. Basically she thought my daughter could talk, but she was choosing not to. What an idiot.
I also loved the psychologist that I went to when my daughter was about 3 or 4 and totally non-verbal. My daughter had (and sometimes still has) terrible tantrums. I wanted to find some tips on helping her with the tantrums. So the psychologist gives me a book that tells me that you need to communicate better with kids that have tantrums. I needed to talk more to my daughter, and I needed to encourage her to talk.
If the talking didn't work, well there was medication.
I couldn't talk to my daughter, and I didn't want to medicate her.
What I don't like is that professionals don't give you any other advice on how to handle situations. I honestly think calling Nanny 911 would have been better. I bet she could have given me better advice.
He was on Larry King when that anti-Catholic flap erputed a few years ago and I heard him say it. Maybe it changed since you were there. Maybe it changed after he said it.
Lawrence was quite straight. He just wrote explicitly about matters sexual in the 1910s and '20s. He epitomizes the post Freudian writer wallowing in his 'liberation' from Victorian pieties. F.R. Leavis thought he was the last link in the great tradition of the English novel.
I believe that I attended the Nutcracker when I was about seven years' old. I don't remember it advertising sexual perversion. We did not ask. Tchaikovsky, to the best of , my previous knowledge, did not tell. He is dead and no longer available to babysit but, given your revelation, I would have rejected him as a babysitter for my children or as a teacher since, if he was lavender, he did not even knew what ought to go where. I knew that Hitler favored Wagner as a composer but I had not heard that Wagner "helped set the socio-political agenda for the Third Reich." If so, that is very bad news and he won't be modeling for babysitter either. Somehow, I doubt that, whatever Wagner's political views, he was secretly meeting with the Nazi High Command to map out the fine points of Nazi ideology. Speaking of hyperbole!
Anyone familiar with my efforts here knows that I am no fan of either anti-Semitism or anti-Catholicism (being Catholic myself) or xenophobia or border moonbattery for that matter. I had the privilege of being personally acquainted with the late Professor Leslie Hotson, a Shakespearian scholar at Harvard and his wife, the late Professor Mary Hotson, who served in a similar capacity at Radcliffe. One or the other was T. S. Eliot's first cousin and both were enthusiasts. Neither was anti-Semitic and, if somehow T. S. Eliot exhibited anti-Semitism, he should be viewed in the context of his times. I did find him then and now an annoyingly turgid excuse for a poet although those more familiar with his work than I suggest that he was quite responsibly conservative. Maybe. Maybe not. The turgid nature of his work impels me to not recommend him to my kids. Life is short and ought not to be wasted on The Wasteland or other such "work."
Ezra Pound!!!! His broadcasts were for Mussolini not for Hitler or Tojo. He was the victim of a little scheme in which his government appointed attorney pled him not guilty by reason of insanity for his treasonous broadcasts (think Axis Sally/Tokyo Rose only for Mussolini). He was "hospitalized" at St. Elizabeth's in Washington where the political prisoners were sent. Eventually, courtesy of a petition to President Eisenhower by Nobel Prize winners and Pulitzer Prize winners headed up by poet Robert Frost demanding that Pound be tried for treason or released, Ike ordered him released or caused him to be ordered released. Pound pronounced his experience as a victory for fascism since he had made the government fascist in its treatment of him and then he retired to his villa in Italy. Pound is also dead and not on my list of role models for babysitters and, like Tchaikovsky, Wagner, D. H. Lawrence, Whitman, Dostoevsky, Pinter, Albee, Ginsberg, and Eliot, not particularly necessary to my children's education or that of anyone else's children although they will have to decide that for their own respective children. Letting Pound go was one of Ike's rare bright moves. It suggested that Pound was not quite up to a mental standard (mens rea) capable of treason. Very nice touch.
I attack what needs attacking. I probably fail to fully attack what needs attacking much less practicing hyperbole. Sarcasm is in the eye of the beholder. Self-righteous???? If I am righteous, should I be "other-righteous????"
If you think Whitman is "needed for any coherent study of 19th century American verse" (assuming arguendo that study of any sort of 19th century American or other verse is necessary in any event), fine, inflict it on YOUR children. Leave what is necessary to the education of other people's children to the decisions of their parents individually. No one died and left you in charge of setting standards for mine or theirs. As to what constitutes "ignorance", you fail to impress me as a source of any definition.
What the author meant to say when the author wrote the precise opposite is the shoddy shopworn stock in trade of each and every presumptuous hack literature teacher. If you imagine otherwise, you should be more honest with yourself. You are apparently the victim of the "intellectual" incest of the professoriate even if only in their classrooms.
Transparent???? I certainly hope so. Was I supposed to be devious? What you see is what you get.
The Arkansas Antichrist gave a copy of Leaves of Grass to Monica. Fat lot of good that did her.
You are obviously making the mistake of imagining that, having experienced your opinions here, I would give a feather or a fig for them. I don't but I can keep this up as long as you can, if I choose to do so.
This is one Catholic, BTW, who is determined not to be offended by religious disagreements which educational institutions of reformed Christians and their leaders may have with my Church. That there is disagreement is understood and ought not to be a source of friction. I think that Bob Jones the First was wrong about Al Smith but I would not for a moment have expected him to lie in his time to make my Catholic forbears feel warm and fuzzy.
I do note that much progress has been made toward personal reconciliation between serious Catholics and serious Evangelicals (without theological concessions either way) and I look forward to more.
Borges: The author's "claims for what he meant should not be an impediment to others' interpretation." Sandra Day O'Connor, is that you?????
Your opinion and profession are noted.
Bravissimo and likewise to Porterville if he agrees with you.
Hmmm. This raises an interesting conundrum, namely:
Much verse was written during Whitman's lifetime that wasn't written by Whitman. Who decided that Whitman's work was important?
The answer, of course, is 'the generation of poets that followed Whitman and drew on him as an influence.' Hence Whitman's influence is undeniable. All the "canonical" modernists at least knew who Whitman was and had read his work (whether they embraced or rejected his work is another question). But...who decides who the "canonical" modernists are?
The answer to that is unclear, except in the sense that Academia owns the canon. The influence of poetry (and hence the influence of Whitman) is as big as the culture, and clearly not limited to the relatively narrow confines of the academy. The question, then, is this: Does Academia's version of the canon accurately reflect the canonical poets' influence on the culture?
I personally suspect that the answer to this is a resounding no, on the face of it. However, the Academy's position as educators of succeeding generations guarantees that the answer has to be at least partly a yes. Academia teaches what it deems important, and so to the succeeding generation it is important...to a degree. The degree to which it is important depends on the efficiency with which it not only teaches, but inculcates values.
My university was only partly successful, in that I sat through several classes whose doctrinal bases I fundamentally rejected, and still reject. To this day I don't care to pick up a Joan Slonczewski novel...but then again, I had good courses on Chaucer and Shakespeare to fall back on, and I remember my classroom time with Marlene Barr much as John McCain remembers his time in Hanoi.
Still, it remains at least a little bit true that the authors we think are important are the authors our teachers tell us are important. Fore-warned is fore-armed, which is an aphorism to remember when you go to the library.
Today's a good day to read an author I've never read before. Thanks, guys.
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