Monday, July 25, 2005

State of the Union

I'm very pleased that I live in a state where government employees are not allowed to unionize. Otherwise, I'd probably be required to join the ranks of the mentally retarded NEA and have their views expressed as my own using my own extorted money cleverly disguised as member dues.

Boortz put out a link today (God only knows why I still read his page, probably more habit than actual interest) to an article that attempts to negate the perceived benefits of home-schooling.

I do question the efficacy of some home-school models, and I have seen the results of several attempts that could best be described as failures. But on the other hand, I've also seen some students come out of home-school environments where they seem to have done quite well for their children. These models tend to involve tutors, some group classes with other home-schoolers and other methods. It's probably expensive, just think of property taxes and what the government spends on the average public school student... blah blah...one-on-one vs. mass production...blah... home-schooling can be successful.

Back to the article, what absolutely floors me is the idea that somehow public school teachers are somehow inherently more qualified than parents to educate their children.
So, why would some parents assume they know enough about every academic subject to home-school their children? You would think that they might leave this -- the shaping of their children’s minds, careers, and futures -- to trained professionals. That is, to those who have worked steadily at their profession for 10, 20, 30 years! Teachers!
First, I absolutely loath being called a professional. I'm sure it was a well intended euphemism, most of them are. But that type of designation lumps teachers in with lawyers, doctors, architects, engineers and others that require intense and extensive training. If I am to judge by my graduate school courses in education and the ability of my average colleague, this designation is absolutely an insult to those people in an actual professional career. I went from doing 40+ hours of "homework" per week in a non-education undergraduate program to being lucky if I had 40 hours of out-of-class work per semester in an education graduate program. That's their idea of extensive training? The most beneficial component of my teaching experience has been just that, experience. Try something, screw it up, fix it next time. Try that as a doctor. Try it as an architect. I'm sure that's how you'd want your lawyer to be certified as a professional.
Don’t most parents have a tough enough job teaching their children social, disciplinary and behavioral skills? They would be wise to help their children and themselves by leaving the responsibility of teaching math, science, art, writing, history, geography and other subjects to those who are knowledgeable, trained and motivated to do the best job possible.
I appreciate the empathy here. Teaching is a tough job. But here he goes again with the assertion that parents are not "knowledgeable, trained and motivated" to do the best job possible. I agree that some people take their kids out for home-schooling for wacky reasons without thinking through all of the factors that they will have to consider, but I do think that those people constitute a minority of the home-school population. How can you chastize parents for wanting to do the best for their children?

I'm sorry, but this article seems to be just a bit too offensive giving it the overall image of being too defensive. I imagine part of the rationale behind this stance is the reports of late that home-schooled kids are outperforming public school kids on standardized tests.

And the tag about the author at the end? He's a janitor. Sorry, I'm not being politically correct. He's not just any janitor, he's head custodian. While we're at euphemisms, let's go all out and call him a sanitation engineer. And as for the NEA's blurb that the author's view may not be theirs, then why on earth would you let it exist on your web site?

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