I never went to a “public” or government school in my life—except for a few summer school classes. My impression is that for many Americans the government school system is like a religion, a bit like the NHS in England. Many would rebel against my use of the term “government” schools because they cling—bitterly or otherwise—to the notion that these schools are “their” schools, their local schools. That was true at one time, but is no longer the case—but it’s a tough mentality to break free from. Just like any other government funded institution, the schools are targets for revolutionaries on their great march to a transhuman future.
I homeschooled my kids from 6th and 3rd grade to college. Did public and private religious before that. Homeschooling is not for everyone but if is is for your family it is heaven. Schools, whether public or private are set up and run for the convenience of the school. Not your family and not your child. That is a hard fact. Homeschooling is about Your Child and Your Family. Your schedule. Peace.
I do believe many people still romanticize the American school as the place where 'The Melting Pot' and love for our brilliant system of government 'of the people, by the people, for the people' happens. Um, no. It happened in my father's classroom but not anymore.
Although I come from a teaching family, I have to say that teaching through the 8th grade is not rocket science! Anyone with competent reading and organizational skills can do it. High school is harder but there is so much more help out there now. it can be done. And as far as the 'S' word goes, kids are much better off with a just a couple of hours a day doing an extra curricular - whether sports or drama or something else that truly interests them - with like minded others - than imprisoned in a snake pit of peer judgment for 6 hours a day. No wonder they are all miserable!
A classical chronological education will make a conservative for life - no preaching required - it comes from seeing the long view of history. They may drift away for a while in college but they come back - mine did.*
My answer to all the friends and relations who thought my husband and I were nuts to homeschool; 'If it was good enough for George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abe Lincoln, it's good enough for my kids!"
Best lesson I learned from homeschooling and hard experience as far as academics goes; Drill math facts all year round.
Think about it - would you expect anyone to be a good reader if they stopped reading 3 months a year?
* My little Doubting Thomas is now an elder in his church.
* My daughter telling me about the reactions to her having been homeschooled from the classmates
at her elite university; 'I thought all homechoolers were awkward and weird. But you aren't weird or
awkward, you're like that Lady Mary on Downton Abbey. So classy.
Frances Leader: What you are talking about is not genuine homeschooling. Parents get sucked into it by the offer of free online programs. The schools love it because they don't have to teach and they will still get their federal funds. But families are still tied to the school district's schedule and curriculum, among other requirements. That is 'Remote Learning'. Learning, ha! Genuine 'Homeschooling' is completely divorced from the school system and the curriculum is chosen and delivered by the parent.
Erm.... yep. I home schooled my own son. Remote learning is completely different, obviously. My point made on this post was that remote learning will become enforced putting an end to schools and home schooling completely!
My daughter started her schooling at Pound house in Ann Arbor, Mi, (which was marvellous, we were the token white family!) then we moved back to the UK and when my daughtere was 6 the teacher took me into the classroom and told me she couldn’t teach her! So the next day I pulled her out of school and home schooled her till she requested to go to school and meet other kids at aged 11.
It was expensive to start with in books, Reading schemes and Maths curriculum support materials, but we spent about two hours a day one on one and when she went back to school she was ahead of the rest of the class. She now has an MSc in Physics.
My son on the other hand was autistic and has Aspergers (IQ 130+), and Dyslexia, wouldn’t do his studies so he was difficult. I did send him to school when my daughter returned but he was such a charmer he avoided doing any work there and it was many years before he learned to read. He never achieved his potential. He still lives at home.
This all took place while we changed countries again, and moved to France.
There once was a Senator from NC. Jesse helms. His slogan was: get the US out of the U.N. and the U.N. out the US “. He was considered a radical right wing nut. That was about fifty years. He was right then. He is still right. Too bad no one listened
"In public schools, they can only move as fast as the slowest child," Carter said. "If your child can learn faster, they don't necessarily teach any faster."
Twenty years ago, there was a big movement to abolish explicit grouping for instruction by reading level. Same for arithmetic instruction. A cadre (yes, they called themselves CADRES), was a specially chosen group of teachers and administrators in our local school district who would be tasked with proposing a new curriculum and teaching teachers how to teach the new curriculum, after parent listening sessions and school board rubber stamp approval of "best practices".
For example, these cadres pushed "differentiated instruction". The teacher would keep all the children together in her classroom for reading instruction but differentiate the instruction for each child according to that child's level. The point was to not physically segregate kids by reading level because that would make some kids feel inferior and some kids feel superior.
At the same time they pushed the idea that keeping fast kids together with slow kids would allow fast kids to help teach slow kids and to learn from slow kids how to be better kids. A virtuous circle.
Well, there are only so many minutes in the reading hour each school day, and teachers negotiate their contracts down to the minute, and so fast parents find other ways to ensure their children learn to read, and slow parents don't.
Don't you recognise that the trend is to drive all children away from schools and universities and into remote learning via the internet? I would have thought that was obvious!
"Like any other societal movement for the good, to succeed in transforming the nation it will take effort and constant maintenance and support. Blood, sweat, and tears."
My brother and I were blessed to be able to attend agenda-free public schools all the way through high school and even jc for freshman and sophomore college. We were both good students, smart kids who would have recognized an agenda. Elementary school - once we got past kindergarten which disappointed because it involved too much play time and naps (something we’d given up) and didn’t feel like the school we expected. Both of us were already reading. We wanted School! Our Mother was heavily involved in taking care of vey aged parents so homeschooling would have been impossible. He went on to win a full scholarship to complete junior and senior college years at a noted university. Like our parents, we are Conservatives.
I am glad our children and grandchildren also made it through before wokeness took over.
I attended Lutheran parochial schools through my sophomore of high school. Then my family moved to a town that did not have such schools.
I think I got an excellent education.
I homeschooled my kids from 6th and 3rd grade to college. Did public and private religious before that. Homeschooling is not for everyone but if is is for your family it is heaven. Schools, whether public or private are set up and run for the convenience of the school. Not your family and not your child. That is a hard fact. Homeschooling is about Your Child and Your Family. Your schedule. Peace.
I do believe many people still romanticize the American school as the place where 'The Melting Pot' and love for our brilliant system of government 'of the people, by the people, for the people' happens. Um, no. It happened in my father's classroom but not anymore.
Although I come from a teaching family, I have to say that teaching through the 8th grade is not rocket science! Anyone with competent reading and organizational skills can do it. High school is harder but there is so much more help out there now. it can be done. And as far as the 'S' word goes, kids are much better off with a just a couple of hours a day doing an extra curricular - whether sports or drama or something else that truly interests them - with like minded others - than imprisoned in a snake pit of peer judgment for 6 hours a day. No wonder they are all miserable!
A classical chronological education will make a conservative for life - no preaching required - it comes from seeing the long view of history. They may drift away for a while in college but they come back - mine did.*
My answer to all the friends and relations who thought my husband and I were nuts to homeschool; 'If it was good enough for George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abe Lincoln, it's good enough for my kids!"
Best lesson I learned from homeschooling and hard experience as far as academics goes; Drill math facts all year round.
Think about it - would you expect anyone to be a good reader if they stopped reading 3 months a year?
* My little Doubting Thomas is now an elder in his church.
* My daughter telling me about the reactions to her having been homeschooled from the classmates
at her elite university; 'I thought all homechoolers were awkward and weird. But you aren't weird or
awkward, you're like that Lady Mary on Downton Abbey. So classy.
Frances Leader: What you are talking about is not genuine homeschooling. Parents get sucked into it by the offer of free online programs. The schools love it because they don't have to teach and they will still get their federal funds. But families are still tied to the school district's schedule and curriculum, among other requirements. That is 'Remote Learning'. Learning, ha! Genuine 'Homeschooling' is completely divorced from the school system and the curriculum is chosen and delivered by the parent.
Erm.... yep. I home schooled my own son. Remote learning is completely different, obviously. My point made on this post was that remote learning will become enforced putting an end to schools and home schooling completely!
Thanks for the input.
Home schooling - Success and failure
My daughter started her schooling at Pound house in Ann Arbor, Mi, (which was marvellous, we were the token white family!) then we moved back to the UK and when my daughtere was 6 the teacher took me into the classroom and told me she couldn’t teach her! So the next day I pulled her out of school and home schooled her till she requested to go to school and meet other kids at aged 11.
It was expensive to start with in books, Reading schemes and Maths curriculum support materials, but we spent about two hours a day one on one and when she went back to school she was ahead of the rest of the class. She now has an MSc in Physics.
My son on the other hand was autistic and has Aspergers (IQ 130+), and Dyslexia, wouldn’t do his studies so he was difficult. I did send him to school when my daughter returned but he was such a charmer he avoided doing any work there and it was many years before he learned to read. He never achieved his potential. He still lives at home.
This all took place while we changed countries again, and moved to France.
There once was a Senator from NC. Jesse helms. His slogan was: get the US out of the U.N. and the U.N. out the US “. He was considered a radical right wing nut. That was about fifty years. He was right then. He is still right. Too bad no one listened
"In public schools, they can only move as fast as the slowest child," Carter said. "If your child can learn faster, they don't necessarily teach any faster."
Twenty years ago, there was a big movement to abolish explicit grouping for instruction by reading level. Same for arithmetic instruction. A cadre (yes, they called themselves CADRES), was a specially chosen group of teachers and administrators in our local school district who would be tasked with proposing a new curriculum and teaching teachers how to teach the new curriculum, after parent listening sessions and school board rubber stamp approval of "best practices".
For example, these cadres pushed "differentiated instruction". The teacher would keep all the children together in her classroom for reading instruction but differentiate the instruction for each child according to that child's level. The point was to not physically segregate kids by reading level because that would make some kids feel inferior and some kids feel superior.
At the same time they pushed the idea that keeping fast kids together with slow kids would allow fast kids to help teach slow kids and to learn from slow kids how to be better kids. A virtuous circle.
Well, there are only so many minutes in the reading hour each school day, and teachers negotiate their contracts down to the minute, and so fast parents find other ways to ensure their children learn to read, and slow parents don't.
Don't you recognise that the trend is to drive all children away from schools and universities and into remote learning via the internet? I would have thought that was obvious!
"Like any other societal movement for the good, to succeed in transforming the nation it will take effort and constant maintenance and support. Blood, sweat, and tears."
And TIME. A lot of time.
My brother and I were blessed to be able to attend agenda-free public schools all the way through high school and even jc for freshman and sophomore college. We were both good students, smart kids who would have recognized an agenda. Elementary school - once we got past kindergarten which disappointed because it involved too much play time and naps (something we’d given up) and didn’t feel like the school we expected. Both of us were already reading. We wanted School! Our Mother was heavily involved in taking care of vey aged parents so homeschooling would have been impossible. He went on to win a full scholarship to complete junior and senior college years at a noted university. Like our parents, we are Conservatives.
I am glad our children and grandchildren also made it through before wokeness took over.