O'DonnellWeb Monthly Archives

WWHS - Teachers Like This

This column, by former government school teacher Kelly Flynn is so bad, so misguided, that I almost suspect that it was planted by a homeschooler to make the anti-homeschool crowd look bad. It's hard to believe any adult could really be this ignorant.

No, I take that back, it's not hard to believe at all. I'll comment on a few choice issues here, but go read the whole thing.

But when it comes to a well-rounded education that prepares students for the world of work and for functioning in a global society, the public school system can't be beat. They take everyone. Blind, deaf, learning disabled, mentally impaired or non-English speaking, public schools take them all and provide the services they need. And in my experience, that's exactly what some parents don't like about the public school system.

They take them all, label them, confine them to a small uninspiring room all day, tell them that feeling good is more important than actually doing good, and that there are no wrong ways to spell a word. You're right, we don't like it. We expect better of our children.

The educational choice that confounds me, though, is home schooling. Why would parents choose to isolate their children from a rich and varied learning environment? Why would parents choose to pull their children out of the real world and shelter them from the very society that they will ultimately have to live and work in?

It's perplexing.

Perplexing, really? The public school system is rich and varied? Are they handing out crack to the columnists at her newspaper? In the public school system everybody is equal, competition is not allowed, feelings matter more than achievement, dodgeball is forbidden as a violent game, drawing a picture of a US Soldier with a gun will get you expelled, and giving a Tylenol to a friend with a headache will get you 5 years for dealing drugs.

Yeah, that's one hell of a rich and varied environment. Where do I sign up?

In extenuating circumstances home schooling is the only viable alternative, such as in the case of a long-term illness. I'm not talking about those situations. But many times in my career I observed parents choosing to home school to keep their child away from a certain "element" in the public school system that they deemed to be unsavory, to isolate their kids in what seemed to me to be an unhealthy way.

That "certain element" is people like you.

Even with the help of home schooling organizations, home-schooled children are often shortchanged. The worst public school has more to offer in the way of resources than most parents can offer at home, such as science labs, technology, foreign language, theater, large and varied curriculums, textbooks, a variety of multi-media lesson support, clubs and sports.

Oh please, we've all seen the standard public school science lab and computer room. My kids have far better equipment in the basement of our house. Our textbooks are real books, not government approved textbooks that take liberties with the facts to protect the feelings of every self proclaimed oppressed group of people in the country. Granted, my kids can't buy drugs in the backyard, don't have to fend off rapists in the bathroom, and to date, neither of our dogs have used the threat of violence to extort their lunch money. They really are missing out. And while your exalted public school students are sitting in a 20 year old science lab looking at a 20 year old filmstrip about rocks, my homeschooled kids will be at Morefield Mines in central Virginia, digging through the mud and muck, experiencing geology and learning more in a couple of hours than the kids trapped in the school system will learn all year.

Sure, I could go to the home-schooling store and buy a book on say, history, and I could read the chapters and assign the accompanying assignments. I could check the answers using the answer key. We could even take a trip to Greenfield Village. But could I offer the same depth of understanding as someone who chose to teach history because of a passion for it, someone who is an expert in the field?

Yes, a teacher that is passionate for the subject is a wonderful thing. How many of them did you get in your k-12 career? I can remember 3, maybe 4 total. A parent that gives up a career, sacrifices the country club lifestyle and the dual BMW's to teach their own children is by any reasonable definition passionate about education. Kids don't need to be hand fed every frigging fact to learn. They need a guide to point then in the right direction. Children teach themselves to walk upright and talk before the age of two. No other mammal on this planet has advanced even that far yet, and that is just the starting point for our kids.

The one thing, the biggest thing, that seems to differentiate homeschooled kids from their public school peers is that homeschooled kids retain that innate desire to learn that we see in toddlers. The public schools beat it out of the kids by 2nd grade. A kid that can read well can pretty much teach themselves anything they want to learn. The facts speak for themselves. But then, Ms. Flynn was a public school teacher, the facts aren't important to her.

All in all, a public education is the best deal around. It's a great training ground for the real world and, even better, it's free.

Oh really Ms. Flynn? Where exactly did all those paychecks come from? How about that pension plan Ms. Flynn? Is there an education fairy bestowing these great rewards on you ?

How frigging stupid can one person be? Public education in this country is the most expensive education around. And when you factor in the results, its also the greatest scam job in the history of the USA. The average public school spends about $8000 per year per child. And for that we get kids who are barely qualified to take my order at McDonald's.

I feel better now :)