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shadowspring -> RE: MaverickMom's answers (why we HS) (7/18/2008 1:46:07 PM)
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WARNING: EXTREMELY OPINIONATED POST TO FOLLOW
If we look at the big picture of human history, institutionalized mandatory "education" is a nothing more than a modern experiment. And I submit, a failing experiment at that.
In both states in which we have lived during my children's school years, the public schools have been and still are failing. Only two-thirds of high school students will make it to graduation. Of those who graduate, how many will become successful adults (successful meaning able to earn a living wage and have stable personal and professional relationships)?
The idea that children will become better socialized by being age-segregated and locked away from interaction with the greater society is ludicrous. Public education was designed for children who were being groomed for factory work. That would be the only people group I can see benefiting form America's public educational model.
And let's be honest, it would be the factory foreman who would really benefit. It just made it easier for the children, once grown, to be satisfied with being locked away for eight hours in a building doing monotonous work with your peers nearby.
That will not work in the economy our children face. World competition will favor the innovative and the entrepreneur. There are cheaper factory workers in India and China.
What do children get out of being age-segregated with disinterested adults deciding what they will study and when? Bored, disinterested children who come to despise what passes for "education".
Children who were forced to be socially peer-dependent from an early age will follow the crowd when they're teenagers, or choose to be counter-culture because they figured out a long time ago that their parents were poor and they could never achieve acceptance in the "successful" group no matter how hard they tried.
Yes, in our public schools there is great emphasis among the children on having the best clothes, latest electronic gadget, coolest jewelry, etc. Even in schools that go with uniforms there are all those little add-ons like shoes and watches that differentiate between rich and poor.
Busing, far from helping poor kids achieve more by putting them in wealthier districts, emphasizes the differences in family income. In neighborhood schools of yesteryear, where everyone was poor or rich together, kids were not nearly so aware of income disparity. (My mom would say, "We were poor, but we didn't know it because so was everyone else we knew. We never felt poor.") They were free to achieve without the shame of having ill-fitting hand-me-downs, because there was no one around in designer clothes to shame them.
Every year our FL support group helps parents and children who have been failed by the public school experiment rediscover joy in learning and in being themselves, loving their families at whatever their income level or social background. At the beginning of the home school movement, there were very few of these public school refugees. Now I would say half of the people who join our FL group have already tried public school and out of love for their children said "I can not in good conscience put them through that for another year."
This is not to say it fails everyone. If your parents are on staff at the school, your teachers will have a vested social interest in you as a student. If your family has the money to keep you in the latest styles and gadgets, you will be accepted socially in the right groups. If your parents are willing to teach you all over again when you get home (i.e. help you with your homework), you will probably do well in public school. (A friend who has some in public and some at home refers to her children as being day-home-school and night-home-school). If you are especially attractive and athletic you are likely to succeed in public school.
Public school is to me the pop-tart of education. It is fortified with vitamins (the academics) and has icing and sprinkles (all the accoutrements that bring kudos to the wealthy, attractive and athletic students from supportive homes). Pop-tarts are superior to starving to death, and so public education is superior to illiteracy and ignorance.
By my family gets a home-cooked breakfast every day. Eggs and toast one day, berries and cream on another. We get book work done by noon, leaving plenty of time for pursuing their own interests in computers, Tae Kwan Do, sports leagues, drawing, Sudoku, writing poetry, learning foreign languages, and reading. Learning is an adventure for my children. They do not equate learning with drudgery like so many of their public schooled friends do.
My children learned their social skills from the greater society around them: group lessons and activities, park days, tutors along with the way mom and dad treat each other and the good people in our world. They learned about race relations by playing football in the inner-city community leagues and hanging out in our church's youth group, plus the friends they have in their own neighborhood. (Not to mention that my unit on the Civil Rights Movement is far more detailed and in-depth than anything I was ever exposed to in public school!)
They have visited four foreign countries, and we have had foreign exchange students from three different countries live with us. Plus our neighbors through the years have included Palestinian Muslims, Lebanese Catholics, devout Hindu Indians, devout Jewish New Yorkers, and people who are not into religion from China, Russia, and Mexico City. Since my children don't limit themselves to friends of the same age, they have gotten to know the adults and little children in these families as well as their age peers.
If I had to send my children to public school, they would do as well as anyone could expect to do. We have the income to dress them in clothes that will gain them acceptance by their peers. They are both reasonably attractive people of decent physical fitness. They score above average to amazing on all their standardized tests, so they should be able to easily handle the academics. And I would be super-supportive, helping with home work and volunteering to help the school where I could.
But I love the days we have spent together, and don't regret a single one. If I had to do it all over again, I would choose home schooling again. It's just an awesome way to enjoy your family and raise successful adults.
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