quote:
Originally posted by chaosadelt:
Homeschooling - It's definitely faster! But's it's not true that you don't have to deal with people you don't like - just because your home schooled doesn't mean you hang around your family all day (at least my experience). If the population is dense enough in your area your parents usually meet up with others in the area that homeschool and I guess they barter classes. For example, my parents hated math but my mother has degrees in English, French, German (native lang), and Spanish. So she taught all the homeschoolers English class (+ foreign languages if they wanted), and in exchange I would go to the some other homeschooler's house who parents had degrees in something else like history, science, math (or math experience) like euclid geometry, trig, spherical trig, stats, calculus, concrete mathematics, etc! Our classes sometimes had up to 20 other kids in it. Plus if you know what career path you want to take (me - computer science) early on your parents can hook you up with people in the field who know what you need to know so you have some guidance (not like those clueless guidance councelors I see in cartoons, and hear from my friends, they remind me of managers from dilbert cartoons). Then you can learn subjects revelant to your study way before college and actually get prepared. The end of year test they make you take (the state) are so easy. By the time my "senior" year came the tests were six years behind, so my last 5-6 years of home schooling I didn't need to take classes to pass those tests just took whatever I felt like, mostly related to computer science.What is sad is that people tell me that they learned things over and over and over again - like one guy who said that he his math class was basically aritmetic from 1st grade to 5th grade (should take only one or max two years), learned about the american revolution and civil war(over and over) from 3rd grade to 10th grade (6 too many years IMO, should take 1 year). Phys Ed never developed into anything (choosing one sport you like and getting really good at it, learning to eat right, and setting up an excercise routine you can keep at), it was basically playing some lousy games for 15 minutes and the rest of time is wasted on roll call, picking teams, etc, and making sure everybody has the right clothes (?!) on.
I'm not saying homeschooling is perfect but I see why so many schools seem to give a subpar education. They seem to keep back people because of the slowest common denominator, I would think classes would start getting really boring after hearing the same s*it for the 2,3,4,5 year or more. And by the time kids can start choosing their classes (stuff their interested in) it's probaly around 10th grade and they get to pick what, maybe two classes out of six? Who would want to sit through stuff like that - it sounds way too boring. Also way too many useless things take up time in school like rollcall (why not a sign in sheet or someting it would take less time), classes for 45 minute instead of longer (like college has 3 hr classes if you take it in one stretch), and I don't know what else! Homeschooling only seems to be growing as a backlash to all this crap!
I would think you could get a basic core education by sixth grade (good reading/writing skills, arithmetic and algebra, critical thinking skills, phys ed/body development, maybe even a second language) and then let the student start choosing what he wants to learn that he could start using in his life. So many schools in other countries teach that by sixth grade, why can't the US.'
Sorry about the long post but this subject really burns me sometimes because I'm in college now and I see the same crap popping up here too from time to time and it affects the rest of society!
hmmmmmmm............. maybe I should have snipped all that. But anyway, THAT POST MAKES THE MOST SENSE OF ANYTHING I'VE HEARD WITHIN THE PAST THREE YEARS. It's what I've been saying since I STARTED school, and adults NEVER take you seriously!! But, I'm now being homeschooled (after fighting for it for three years), and I think we're about to see a powerful combination - Homeschooling and the PhotoReading Whole Mind System. I'm currently on Tape 5b of the PLC (got the thing just yesterday!!), and I'd be farther, but I wanna wait a full 24 hours for the book (Natural Brilliance) to incubate. But hey!! Once I master PR and can get all my core subjects out of the way, who knows where I can go from there??
And now for my all-time favorite quote:
"One-size-fits-all schooling has had a century and a half to prove itself. From the START, it's been making excuses for why it can't get the job done." - John Taylor Gatto
JTG taught in a NYC public school for 28 years. (Or was it 26??) Most books on school are written by doctors and professors, who haven't spent much time teaching in a classroom. That's like writing a first-hand account of the Donnor party, based on the fact that you've eaten Beef Jerky. JTG, however, has gnawed on an ankle or two. Anyway, this post has gotten too long. I'm outta here.
