A hearty shout-out to Professor Plum for the connection to this:
WorldNetDaily: America’s children search for meaning
It felt more like a juvenile detention center during lockdown than lunchtime in my neighborhood public middle school. Teachers were strategically stationed throughout the cafeteria about 20 feet apart. One of the vice principals had taken her customary place at the microphone. Every few seconds the noisy room was punctuated with her constant commands: “You, in the green shirt, sit down.” “Students standing at the back table, find a seat quickly.” “Young man at the soda machine, move to a table.”
Parents who had attended this upper-class suburban institution 20 years ago touted it as “a wonderful school.” Other parents had told me how terrible it was. At the time, my son was nearing graduation from fifth grade, so I decided to find out for myself what our middle school was really like.
If you read the whole article, not just my sample there, you may have an inkling why I titled this post the way I did.
I’m surprised that Prof. Plum didn’t start his diatribe with a modified Monty Python quote, from Roger the shrubber: There is a pestilence upon this land, nothing is sacred. Even those who educate the young are under considerable mental and emotional stress at this period in history. The point is that regardless of “root causes” or any other spurious or specious assignment of blame, schools are more about keeping the young out of the collective hair of society while preparing them to be good sheep (err, citizens) than about educating and enlightening the minds and intellects of the next generation. This is my over-generalization and over-simplification. There are yet remaining dedicated teachers and students both who are succeeding. They succeed in spite of the system, however, and not as a result of any benefit it may offer.
Teachers teach, students educate (themselves). This remains as true today as it ever was or will be: a teacher can teach until he drops down dead, the responsibility to retain and learn the disseminated information belongs solely to the pupil. As such, education necessarily requires effort and discipline. Learning is hard work. Let me say that again: Learning is hard work. It comes easier to some, just as some are predisposed to display talent in any number of other fields. Nevertheless, it remains true that effort and discipline are required.
Where a lack of discipline is evident in only one child, it spreads like a malignant cancer. Where only one child in thirty has no discipline, soon there will be ten or more. It used to be that teachers had the authority to enforce a certain kind of discipline within their own classrooms. Fear of litigation has all but removed this now. As an obvious consequence, group focus and discipline are all but non-existent now. As it stands, school is a place for all to learn where but few take advantage of it to any real degree. Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly difficult for those few to make headway as curriculum and method are geared towards the lowest common denominator, more especially in light of NCLB (No child left behind).
This leaves the child of today in a horribly precarious position, that of being left to fend for themselves — educationally, emotionally, you-pick-the-reason. In a day where so-called latch-key kids don’t have a parent to go home to, all they have during the day is school, which is increasingly losing integrity as a place of learning and becoming, as the article suggests, “more like a juvenile detention center during lockdown.”
How much better would each student fare in such a world if each child’s parents were to take more responsibility for their education, leave alone teaching them to discipline themselves? Surely it is the parent’s responsibility, is it not? If not, then whose? The school’s? The government’s? Government has shown an appalling inability to manage itself, leave alone the children of its constituents, so why should we yield up our responsibility so unquestioningly?
My wife and I affirm our responsibility to our children, and encourage all other parents to do the same. It is up to you, the parent, to decide how best to serve your child’s unique educational needs, whether that be public, private, parochial, charter or home education. Regardless of which you choose, be aware of what is actually going on in the venue of your choosing. The mother in the linked article had her eyes opened wide, and she too encourages other parents “to do a little substitute teaching.”
We have determined our course and set sail. Sometimes it feels like we’re sailing by the seat of our pants, but it is highly rewarding, and we have seen the benefit in our choice to educate our children in our home many times over. It is difficult at times, but it is the most rewarding labor we’ve undertaken to date.
And people wonder why we homeschool…
