We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control

[vovat]

arfies recently linked to this article on homeschooling. I'm sure there are many valid reasons to homeschool kids, but the "I want to control every single aspect of my child's life" attitude expressed by this guy creeps me out. Parental involvement is obviously vital, but isn't getting a variety of viewpoints important? At least students at public schools (and private schools, for that matter) get input from parents, peers, and preceptors. Sure, a lot of them are just going to do whatever damn fool things their friends do, and that's a concern for a parent. But as a parent, you have to keep in mind that, um, you're not always right. Somebody needs to make a poster or bumper sticker for parents like that, with a caption along the lines of, "Don't let the schools brainwash our kids!" and then in smaller letters, "We're perfectly capable of doing that ourselves."

I don't know. I was just recently discussing the school system with bethje, and there are definitely problems with public schools. I'm somewhat convinced that some people go into elementary or secondary education because they only have to know slightly more than their students. Like, take that Debra Lafave who was in the news recently. Even putting the sex scandal aside, she just came across as really friggin' dumb. School supervision also strikes me as being rather lax, and I say this as someone who went to SUBURBAN schools. But there are also a lot of GOOD public school teachers, and some of these problems can't really be blamed on the school administrators anyway. I mean, when you live in a society that puts insufficient funds into education and encourages people to crank out as many kids as possible, what do you expect the result to be?

Comments

[kristenjarrod.livejournal.com]

but the "I want to control every single aspect of my child's life" attitude expressed by this guy creeps me out.

My (stupid) half sister homeschooled her (then) 11 yr old son for a year. He didn't get anything accomplished due to the family "dramah". But on the other hand, the school system where they used to live was horrible. So I don't know what would've been better for the kid.

Don't let the schools brainwash our kids!" and then in smaller letters, "We're perfectly capable of doing that ourselves."

You could probably get one made on Café Press or something.

[dragonxbait.livejournal.com]

The ratios in elementary school are really unreasonable, like 1:20 or 1:25 teacher:students (probably worse in some states). A lot of the time is spent on classroom management. Keeping kids busy is more important than the educational value of an assignment when youa re fighting anarchy. The crazy christian "school at homers" are homeschooling for silly reasons in general, but a lot of people homeschool because their kids would be bored or miserable (or tormented) in a traditional classroom and at home they can blow through things much faster and also have more time to just be kids. My nephew homeschools (he is only 5) but he does tons of stuff during the day, like hiking with his homeschooling group and going to plays, taekwon doe, etc. I think there is something to be said from it, if you don't approach it wrong-headedly (and if you can afford to have one parent home, which is a big if)

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Darnit, you've gone and touched on like five of my really sensitive topics! Okay maybe not five. But you know I've totally moaned about them before so I really have nothing more to say.
The school system sucks because it is run politically, and policy and words get in the way of good teachers actually being able to TEACH. ANYone with a background in education would tell you that your problems will improve if you have ADEQUATE STAFFING, if you have enough teachers for the teachers to be able to actually keep track of their students and HELP them, if you have enough aides to work one on one with special needs kids, if you have security to deal with serious discipline issues, IF YOU GIVE YOUR FRIGGIN' LIBRARIAN A FRIGGIN' AIDE, AND MAYBE SOME TIME TO ACTUALLY DO LIBRARY WORK, like whoa, it's beautiful, look at all you can accomplish! Look at how the all-important TEST SCORES IMPROVE (and let's not even go there)!
Parents suck because they either a) (like the parents in your article, and lots of parents who actually DO send their kids to public school) they think they know everything even though they themselves don't actually have a degree in education, but they did read an article on it once; or b) they are the exact opposite and don't pay ANY attention to their kids. There are of course decent parents in the world, but why is it as a teacher you only ever seem to notice the bad ones?
And the total unfairness of life sucks. I think it would be SO MUCH FUN to homeschool my kids-- which they might need, because it is very likely they will have special needs, if only ADHD or giftedness-- there are so many cool things you could do with it, not in so much WHAT you teach (like some people want) but HOW you teach: immersive learning, real-world application, getting out of the textbook and not learning the same things over and over again year after year just because your classmates might have forgotten! But, as one of your other commenters pointed out, we haven't got the income for me to stay home. This is the part where I feel like swearing loudly and repeatedly, even though I don't actually swear in real life. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Who wants to send us money so I can take a maternity leave that is longer than five days?!?!? Anyone??????? Come on, you all are generous loving-of-the-poor liberal-types, right?

[vovat.livejournal.com]

People always argue that homeschooling means a lack of social interaction for kids, which is probably true in many cases. I went to public school, though, and I probably didn't have much more social interaction than a homeschooled kid, because I was all shy and awkward and such. I did get to see how other kids interacted, though, which might have been somewhat of an advantage. I don't know.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Yes, as with most things, having choices in education seems to be largely a prerogative of the rich. Sure, it's nice that homeschooling and private school are options, but they're just not feasible for the majority of parents.

I remember my elementary and high schools both having library aides, but I don't know how common they are in general.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Unless you're poor and desperate like my husband's family. He ended up going to a private boarding school for dyslexic boys, because the school district up and said, "We can't help him-- our special ed curriculum is set up for kids with much lower IQs. He's too smart. He's slipping through the cracks. You ought to start looking into alternative education." Now, the nice thing is is that school districts are required to pay tuition if a kid needs alternative schooling-- IF that school is in state. But the only school for dyslexics in state was on the other SIDE of the state and was NOT a boarding school-- which would be basically impossible to do! So my inlaws scrounged up a loan to send him to a very elite school for dyslexic boys in New York, where he was technically the poorest kid there... but, conversely, he also therefore was the only kid who got homemade chocolate chip cookies sent to him in care packages instead of just More Money... and when you get right down to it, homemade chocolate chip cookies were infinitely more appealing than more money to the materialisticly-spoiled-but-attention-starved rich kids, so Jason found they made excellent bartering materials. And somehow, the end of that story makes me feel quite a bit better about our situation (even though our debts wouldn't be QUITE so bad if his parents hadn't had to pay for boarding school). :)

Oh, and school library aides, and aides in general, seem to be getting less common all the time. School districts aren't willing to pay for all the aides a school needs, and parents aren't willing to put in the volunteer time. It was one thing in the poor school district I taught in, but when I asked about aides at the interview I had with a GOOD district this past summer, the principals exchanged looks and said, "Well, we've been BEGGING for that, but the school board has decided NOT to give us a library aide this year" after, incidentally, already cutting back the librarian position to half-time, spent entirely teaching, giving no time for library management.... Rather glad I didn't get that job, actually.

[matt-argos.livejournal.com]

I am an education major and I feel that a lot of my fellow education majors are pretty dumb and many of them have really terrible grammar, something I don't really want to see in teachers that are going to be teaching English to 3rd graders.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

He ended up going to a private boarding school for dyslexic boys, because the school district up and said, "We can't help him-- our special ed curriculum is set up for kids with much lower IQs. He's too smart. He's slipping through the cracks. You ought to start looking into alternative education."

Yeah, public schools seem to have trouble with that kind of thing, in that they tend to automatically associate learning disabilities or other difficulties with being a slow learner, and such is obviously not the case with many people.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

I don't even know if it's so much THEY tend to lump all special needs together in THOUGHT, as much as the district is only willing to pay for one or two special ed teachers, three maybe if you throw in a gifted teacher, and so they end up sending everybody to the same class no matter what their problem is. And MAYBE that teacher's got, like, ONE aide... to deal with all these kids with all these different needs! It's really sad. The school district had that problem with my brother when he got to high school, because although he was theoretically "mainstreamed," once you get to high school you have, like, the academic track and the regular track and the basic track, and they "mainstreamed" all the mainstreamed kids into the BASIC track, and after awhile they were like, "Wait a minute, this kid ought to be in ADVANCED English and we have him in Remedial English!" Really threw them for a loop. But luckily my parents are the good sort of parents who are involved but not TOO pushy... so they manage to work stuff out pretty well.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I don't even know if it's so much THEY tend to lump all special needs together in THOUGHT, as much as the district is only willing to pay for one or two special ed teachers, three maybe if you throw in a gifted teacher, and so they end up sending everybody to the same class no matter what their problem is.

Good point.

The school district had that problem with my brother when he got to high school, because although he was theoretically "mainstreamed," once you get to high school you have, like, the academic track and the regular track and the basic track, and they "mainstreamed" all the mainstreamed kids into the BASIC track, and after awhile they were like, "Wait a minute, this kid ought to be in ADVANCED English and we have him in Remedial English!"

That's sort of similar to how it was for me. I was in a special class identified as "Socially and Emotionally Disturbed" when I was in elementary school, but I was also in the gifted program. Apparently it was typical to move students who got out of the SED class in junior high to a Learning Disabled class, but they made an exception for me.

When I first started college, my mom got a letter from Dr. Goebel (I think) saying that she'd heard I had a learning disability. I'm not sure where she got that idea, but I assume it had something to do with the SED class.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

See, from knowing my brother and the subject and all, I would have classified you as having a mild Autistic Spectrum Disorder before any of that other stuff. Not counting gifted. You can stay gifted. ;) Of course NOWADAYS now that it's the Cool, In disorder it would probably be more likely to diagnose as such; but anyway that's the point-- schools don't know what to do with special needs kids so they just throw them together in whatever fits the best. IEPs my foot. Ah well. So, how did we get on this topic again? Never mind.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

What does IEP stand for?

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Funny, I almost wrote it out instead of using the abbreviation, but it took too long. Individualized Education Plan. As you see, seems a lot of school administrators forget what the "I" stands for, too.