Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Links to interesting postings - 15 Feb 06

Buried Treasure Books has some good thoughts about the importance of getting an education, and how you don't need to go off to college to get an education. It is an interesting contrast. Most people who homeschool don't trust the public schools to do a good job of educating their children for kindergarten to 12th grade. As the price of college continues to grow faster than inflation, I wonder how many young adults will find other ways to get advanced education. I believe that distance learning may end up closing a number of colleges.
(hat tip: The Common Room)

HomeSchoolBuzz found a letter to the editor by a 16-year-old homeschooled girl who is also questioning the value of going off to college. She makes some good points.

Just for the record, our current plans are for our daughters to go off to college, but that is at least seven years away. We want our daughters to be well educated, and to develop a life long pattern on continuous learning.

At Townhall.com John Stossel has another column about problems in public schools. He explores some of the absurdities of not firing bad teachers to how private businesses are constantly working to improve their workforce.

There was a song in the 1960s, which had a line something like "The games people play now, every night and every day now, never meaning what they say now …" Joanne Jacobs reports on an instance of the kind of games public schools play. About a quarter of Seattle Public School sophomores are being reclassified as freshman. This will help the test scores with a much better average from the remaining sophomores. My suggestion is they do both. Go ahead and hold back those who can't do the work, it will be better for them to really learn the material. But still include their test scores to show more accurately where that year of students are performing.

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