Home School anyone?....
I just read this on a website I visit often - Hatrack River - the site of one of my favorite Authors, Orson Scott Card. He is a big-time Mormon and too trusting of Republicans in general, but sometimes he sure hits the nail on the head. Like today. I have been thinking a lot about home schooling Jackson and if any of you with babies of a similar age are interested, I say let's start our own co-op home-schooling group and not send our kiddos off to public school. Anybody with me?
Here is Orson's rant:
"Back to school.
Nightmare time.
When I was a kid, I loved school. Because I was good at it, and so were my teachers. We learned stuff. We learned it better than kids do today. And I never had homework.
Well, almost never. But the philosophy was not to pile on homework so that parents will be reassured that school is doing a good job. Except for special projects, homework consisted of work that you did not get done in school. And I usually got it done in school. Voila! I had free time.
You know -- the time in which you get to be a kid.
The time that is being stolen from our children -- especially our smartest kids -- by homework that either forces them to go over and over material they've already mastered, or that plunges them into material that was so badly taught they haven't a clue what the homework is about.
What happened to the old-fashioned idea of doing the teaching in class?
Yeah, I know, the teachers are beleaguered and the last thing they need is another parent carping about stuff. The thing is, kids are doing far more homework at each grade level than I ever did -- and yet they're learning far, far less. Why?
Part of the problem is textbooks. Part of the problem is that teachers are so fenced around by idiocy from the district that they can hardly keep their minds on teaching. Part of the problem is "helicopter parents," who hover until their child screws up, and then come in to attack the teacher -- how can a teacher help a student whose parent invariably screams that their nasty little child can do no wrong?
All kinds of problems. A lot of good teachers simply can't teach as well as they know how. But at least we know that at the district level, we have the best bureaucrats tax money can buy.
One thing there is no shortage of in middle school, at least, is obsessive micromanagement. There is, however, a dearth of competent micromanagement.
Take the lists they mailed to us before the start of school, specifying supplies that our children must have. Leading the list was the Texas Instruments 34II calculator. It had to be that model. Naturally, this datum had not been communicated to the local office-supply stores, so they were out. We have ordered it online.
But the real question is, why that model? Is this the only calculator in the world that has all the functions that the students will be required to use? Why not just tell us what functions the calculator should have, and let us buy what we prefer?
Apparently the school district mentality that all decisions must be made in a central location is now to apply to parents. Central planning worked so well for the Soviet Union all those years. And central planning did a splendid job of making sure those new schools they've been building would be competently engineered. By all means lets extend central planning to what parents are allowed to buy their children for school. Because each home with school-age children is just another unit of the school district, under their complete authority, right?
But that was just the first annoyance on the list. What I loved was the fact that the list we were mailed was far from identical with the lists we were given when we showed up for the open house a couple of days before the start of school.
Suddenly we discovered that the "blue, black, and red ink pens" we had been ordered to buy -- and had bought -- were no longer needed, because now what we needed were those crappy little erasable-ink pens -- you know, the smeary ones that don't really erase completely.
The #2 pencils they asked for in the mailed list -- which we had already bought -- suddenly became mechanical pencils. Why? So that kids wouldn't constantly be getting up to use the pencil sharpener. (Heaven forbid children should actually be permitted to walk about the classroom.)
At the open house we learned about items not on the list, like 3x5 cards and a dictionary-thesaurus. (We ended up getting a separate dictionary and thesaurus -- I hope our child won't be booted out of school for unauthorized purchasing.)
And why is it that we had to buy a separate 1.5-inch binder for every subject? While it's true that our child doesn't have to bring them home -- which is good, since the four of them completely fill her backpack-- she does have to clog up her tiny locker with this stuff. Plus, of course, the two classes that each required her to buy a 3- or 5-subject spiral notebook. Considering that each of those classes was a single subject, why did we have to buy separate multi-subject notebooks?
When I was in school, I was allowed to make my own decisions about how many notebooks I wanted. During my three-ring binder phase, I used subject dividers and carried a single notebook. Later, I used multi-subject spiral notebooks that I chose myself, and organized them as I chose.
I bought my own pens -- the brand I wanted, or my parents could afford -- and when I needed to make corrections, I did the civilized thing and neatly drew a line through words I was deleting. I didn't have to smear things up with erasable ink that makes every paper look ugly, whether you make mistakes or not.
In short, I -- and my parents -- were able to make our own choices, and you know what? I got a superb education, I got along well with my teachers, I never lacked for the supplies I needed, and my parents weren't treated like untrusted employees of the school district.
The crowning blow, however, was the teacher who insisted that his students had to have Pentel click erasers. Why? Because mechanical pencils always run out of eraser before they run out of lead. Isn't that nice of him? We couldn't provide our child with a standard handheld eraser. No, we had to get this brand. He said we could get at Office Depot. He was wrong -- they were out.
So we ordered it online. Thus a $4.49 item cost us $13.31, after tax and the "small order handling fee."
All to do a job that is better done by a small handheld rubber eraser you can buy for less than a buck.
Ironically, this requirement came from the same teacher who, during the open house, did not meet parents inside his room, but instead came out into the hall, thereby creating a huge clot in the traffic flow as parents had to stand around waiting for a chance to find out which inconvenient nonsensical piece of erasing machinery they had to buy to please him.
I'm sure every single one of these contradictory, expensive, and/or flat-out inferior decisions that were made on our behalf were well meant. But this is America, and in America we generally tell people what our purpose is and give them the freedom to decide how to accomplish it. At least now and then.
So are our schools becoming robot factories? Do they really think they have the right to force parents to become robots, too?
I look at my friends who home-school with increasing envy. Their kids learn far more, spending less of their day on schoolwork. And they don't have to go wait in a gym if they get to school early, where they are forced to stand near the edges and not cross the line to get out onto the courts.
I suppose that as the public schools have lost the ability to discipline kids in any meaningful way, they impose discipline in the few areas left to them. Precisely the areas, I might add, that make even hard-working, obedient students feel oppressed.
I know everybody's doing the best they can. I'm not really angry. I'm just frustrated by meaningless, time-wasting, money-wasting regulations -- especially from people who aren't accomplishing their core assignments. I'm also irritated by people who assume authority over adult citizens who are perfectly capable of making our own decisions -- especially when those decisions are nearly irrelevant to the actual teaching of the subject matter.
And just so you know, I wrote this column despite the heartfelt protests of my child. I hereby affirm that none of the opinions expressed here are hers. She absolutely loves all her teachers, agrees with all their recommendations, and approves of all the regulations at her school, so please do not hold her responsible for the wild-eyed, horrible things her father is saying. Except about the homework. "
He hasn't played in his ball pit for about a month or more. I put the lid on it to get a break from having to pick up a hundred colorful balls from my kitchen floor every night. His favorite game was getting in and flailing about spilling most of the balls out to roll everywhere. I just put the lid on it and we both forgot about it. Then today he whined and made it very clear that I needed to take the lid off. So I did, resigning myself to ball retrieval later. But an interesting change of modus operandi has occurred. Now Jackson plays in the pit by putting balls in the bucket. Or balancing one ball in the little trowel. What astounded me was that any time a ball escaped and rolled away, the boy had to stop playing, get out, and go get the ball. Instead of sending balls flying with glee, it bothered him when a ball escaped.
