A friend of mind sent me a link to an article by John Jay. In If You Can’t Dazzle Them with Audacity… John writes about a trend he has noticed. More and more often now parents are told that teaching is so complex and hard that the parents just need to trust the teachers. Public schools use jargon and technical terms to make it seem like education is happening.
In general public school are not very respectful of parents. I think part of this is many teachers are defensive. By putting up a front of being the experts they don't have to admit that what they are doing is ineffective or wrong.
I found this particular thought of John's very insightful, and very scary:
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NCLB and the State standards do not reward schools for pushing good kids. Once the kid can pass the test, the school is done with them.
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I am all for helping children, all children. Schools should help those who are struggling to master basic concepts. And schools should challenge those who master the basics to move on to more interesting subjects. John's point ties in with two good books: Genius Denied and The War against Excellence. Both books document how government schools focus a lot of time and energy helping the slower students, and almost ignore the smarter students.
Tomorrow's problems will only be solved by our children, if our children have received a world class education. Public schools by and large fall short for our gifted students.
John closes:
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I no longer count on the school to properly educate my kids, and I resent the huge amount of time they waste on morning meetings and other fluff. I have given up on the American public educational system. It’s only a matter of time before I seek alternatives.
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In reading through the comments it appears John isn't ready, yet, to try homeschooling. But I am sure that more and more parents who struggle with government schools will continue to turn to homeschooling in the future.
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Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, parenting, children, government schools, public school, public education, education
3 comments:
I do understand how parents are marginalized by the schools. My next door neighbor's son was told at the end of school LAST year, at age 17, that he had completed a certificate of attendance, thank you very much, and that he was through with high school - or rather they were through with him. This was done without consulting his parents first. He has some type of vague "learning disabilities" and some other problems that he's working through. But, the fact is, he was 17 last year and, IMO, could have at least one year more of school before they cut him loose.
Since homeschooling for the past six years, I have discovered that it's much easier to teach average kids to read and do math and anything else than teachers let on. They aren't going to be stupid if they don't complete certain math worksheets or learn how to do lattice multiplication. You don't need Hooked on Phonics or some other expensive program to teach an average kid to read.
When I worked at an elementary school (before I had kids), I discovered how terribly easy it is to develop disdain for parents and learn to regard them as morons who are quite likely to damage their children. I think it was just a natural side effect of the system. (Though it was also easy to see examples of parents who *were* damaging their children, they were a very few and most of the parents were very nice people.)
One of the problems is so many parents went through the government schools and were taught to passively accept that the teachers were the experts. It is hard for parents to step back and consider that maybe the teachers aren't experts.
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