Maybe not you, but try this:
Go down to your local WalMart.
Take a look at all the folks in there.
Picture them trying to teach algebra or economics.
Take a look at all the folks in there.
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Yep! Clean them up a little and they would definitely outshine the government teachers in my county.
In fact, the people in Wall Mart are likely more patriotic, can make change, and have a working knowledge, appreciation for, and experience in the free market of profit! ( profit: defined as **eeeevil** in the Marxist government schools.)
1. I agree wholeheartedly with what wintertime has written.
2. If you think American public schools are doing a competent job of teaching algebra and econ (much less doing a better job than homeschoolers), you have been living in a cave for at least a decade now. I don’t think they even offered econ as an elective at my high school, and I graduated in 1989.
3. Do you really think the average homeschool parent would only be qualified to work at Wal-Mart? The last three I talked to were a businessman doing several million in sales a year, a computer consultant who usually is a project manager and the director of activities at a nursing home. At my house the science teacher is a registered nurse and the history teacher used to write a history column for the local paper. That said, I’m pretty sure the computer guy, the business guy and the nursing home gal could figure out how to pass on the same information they were taught, given a good curriculum. And so could Joe Six-pack from Wal-Mart.
4. Is it really your contention that the state of California is going to be a better judge of these childrens’ needs than their parents? Are you really thinking this is anything but an attempt to end home schooling in the state?
5. I recall seeing an article that Walter Williams referenced while hosting for Limbaugh. The article described how a shocking number of California teachers were unable to answer basic math questions on the CBEST (California Basic Educational Skills Test) exams. A sample question Williams shared that had given a lot of them a problem was: 4 + 4x = 32. Solve for x.
Could the average Wal-Mart worker solve that?
Should a teacher who can’t solve it be teaching algebra or econ?
Should a state where 20% of the teacher candidates fail the test at least once be in the position of telling people what a good teacher is? (http://www.dailyrepublican.com/cbest_test.html)
(BTW, my older two children took about a second to solve that one, and the youngest got it as soon as I explained that 4x means 4 times x. I wonder if they could pass the CBEST...)
6. What is it about ed school that qualifies one to teach algebra that isn’t provided to them by their high school algebra teacher? In other words, Joe Blow easily passed algebra, he has an algebra textbook, why can’t he teach his kid algebra? What is it about the bachelors in math or ed that makes the difference?
7. Is it really your contention that a member of the Wal-Mart crowd is not only incompetent to teach algebra and econ, but is incompetent to write the check for a tutor or self-study curriculum? Wal-Mart guy can’t go to Amazon and order a Walter Williams book for his high schooler to read? He can’t enroll his kid in a computer-based school, a distance learning course or (as you can here in Illinois) enroll his kid in a couple of high school elective classes that he feels he’s not the best teacher for?
8. My mother, who taught me to read when I was three years old, works at a Wal-Mart. At the time she left the workforce to raise me, she worked at a Mammoth Mart in Maine. According to the state of California, she was not competent to teach me to read, and according to you she should have had a certificate because she is, as a retail employee, too dumb to mold the mind of her own child.
9. Item number 8 has nothing to do with the following: When I go to Wal-Mart, I don’t get on my high horse and see the great unwashed. I see the sort of people who make this country work. Please take your elitist, class warfare snobbery and cram it in whatever orifice your species traditionally crams things in.