Educational thoughts
Today I watched a CNN segment on “unschooling”, which is an educational method where the child chooses what to learn and when to learn it. (This schooling method does not appeal to me. I’m too organizational.) The segment set my brain whirling with thoughts and opinions about various educational methods. I decided to write an analysis of all the methods I know of and what I think of them. I even started writing it. Then I realized that my motivation for writing it was to reassure myself that laziness on my part isn’t the reason my kids attend public school.
I’ve considered homeschooling. I know I’m cabapble of being really good at it. To be honest, the thought of all the work invovled exhausts me. I would be constantly creating curriculum, researching topics, and planning activities. All of that while also managing the household and the business. I don’t want to do all of that. I don’t want to spend hours figuring out how to teach division when there are professional teachers available who already know how. Professional teachers already have the experience that I would have to painstakingly acquire. Why duplicate all that effort?
Public school teaches social lessons that cannot be learned at home. Sitting quietly, taking turns, and dealing with difficult people are all life skills. Some social lessons are painful, so painful in fact that some parents choose to home school in order to avoid them. I know that in public school my kids may encouter bullying, peer pressure, negligent teaching, or drugs. I feel that the best defense against these societal ills is not to shut my children up inside my safe house. The best defense is to inform my children about theset things before they encounter them.
Public school aslo gives my children the chance to meet people frome a variety of backgrounds, heritages, and socio economic strata. They get a chance to meet people with different values than we teach at home. This is good. Sheltering my children from these things is more likely to teach intolerance and fear than to provide safety. People need to have thier values and habits challenged so that they can re-evaluate them. I do not want my children following in my footsteps merely because no other footsteps are available to them.
The biggest indicator of educational success is parental involvement. If a child’s parents are actively involved it education, that child has already won no matter what educational method is used. If all the caring, active, involved parents pull their kids out of public school then the children whose parents can’t or won’t be involved do not stand a chance. I believe in the public school system. It has problems, all systems do, but most of those problems could be resolved if only more parents volunteered. I do volunteer in my kids’ schools. That fact reassures me that laziness isn’t why they’re there, because volunteering isn’t easy.
To summarize: My kids are in public school because I feel that social lessons are as important as academic ones and because by being there both they and I have a chance to help other kids who need it.
There, I feel better. Now my brain can stop whirling and find happy thoughts.
Edit: I feel better until I re-read it and after every paragraph my brain starts supplying contrary arguements for everything I just said. Sigh.