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Originally Posted by malamute
Education has become more about "standardizing" kids -- making them the same. Square pegs need to be pounded into round holes --- or be drugged to fit.
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My school district went to pains not to separate disabled kids from main line classrooms. One classmate was blind. His tests were braille, and they were identical standard performance measurement. Another classmate had dyslexia. Her test was identical in standard, but they gave her more time to take the test. The school can't teach a standard of underwater basket weaving. There is a baseline of competence that any given student needs to acquire to meaningfully participate in civilization without rendering themselves willfully handicapped. It's wonderful when there's gravy & individuals can cultivate their specific gifts, but without that baseline firmly secured, those specific gifts can never live up to their true potential. Gotta pay your dues, kid. No way around it without it biting you in the butt down the road.
Someday, volunteer to teach a functionally illiterate adult how to read, and you'll know how needlessly difficult their lives are. They can't get a drivers license, can't fill out job applications, and have to lie about broken eye glasses to find out when the bus is coming. They wind up walking around in life cowed by the ignorance their pride is hiding under a rug. While schools might not be offering vocational training, a child gifted with mechanical ability is not going to be eligible for ACE certification or a degree in electrical engineering if they can't read technical manuals. Backyard mechanic is their zenith until they do learn, and remedial classes are so much more time consuming & costly than absorbing the lessons when their minds are open to it in youth. Familial problems shouldn't rob a child the education that empowers them to thrive. Tinker, tailor, soldier... whatever is their true destiny.
We agree that drugging away problems, whatever their source, is generally a bad idea. It's best if you illustrate first hand what you mean about square pegs and schools demanding they conform to round holes. Fitting in group settings is part of learning social skills. You seem to be implying that key parts of the individual are utterly annihilated in school systems but you're too vague. The way I experienced public education, the thing that was lost needed losing and it was consistent with my upbringing at home. Lost: lack of self discipline, childish demands for immediate gratification, and a wandering attention span obstructing the way of comprehension skills. Making things up was appropriate in art class, or even a creative writing exercise in english, but not on a history test. Running around was appropriate on the school yard, but not in the classroom. Often times 5 things are being taught simultaneously and it's not understood until well after the fact why the lesson plan was designed that way. I liken it to UCMJ tradition that civilians are oblivious to. Before you toss that book and rewrite it to accommodate an outlier problem better resolved on individual basis, it's best you fully comprehend what the original lesson plan was designed to solve.
Quote:
Originally Posted by malamute
Kindergarten is for 5 year olds, it doesn't matter if some can already read and do some math equations and that others have never seen a book or held a crayon. They'll be grouped together and they'll for the most part remain together - no matter that by 4th grade some would be capable of learning calculus and some have still not grasped addition and subtraction.
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I recall being very frustrated and acting out as a young girl. By 3rd grade I was reading at a 7th grade level and I resented not having material that challenged me. They recommended advancing a grade but it's a good thing mom decided against it. While I endured sitting idle during reading time having wiped out their 3rd grade library, my deficit in math was entirely overlooked and made itself apparent in 4th grade. Had any of them been aware of that deficit my mother would have invested the time tutoring my shortcoming at home. The school could have redirected my english time to math time. Low tech cost effective fixes are appropriate. Tearing down schools to accommodate one little girl is foolhardy.
All the upside to homeschooling still remains in the hands of parents sending their children to public schools. It's only under utilized by parents who've distanced themselves from their own child as if educating were some exclusive domain of a subcontractor that ought not be infringed upon. That's not the schools fault. The source of that mentality originates in religious abuses asserting politics in schools. It's an illusion in the minds of parents. I've not seen a school district that discourages parents from reading to their child at home, taking them on field trips outside school hours, or teaching children things above and beyond the parameters of a classroom. Ever. Where is this happening in America?
Quote:
Originally Posted by malamute
And they'll be taught group-think.
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I was taught the value of collaborative efforts. I was also taught the value of individual excellence finding it's place in the context of groups, and in competitive endeavors. I was not taught blind obedience to authority. Who teaches that? Rigid religious authoritarians lean hard on 'because I'm the daddy and I said so', but in doing so, they're abdicating teaching and obstructing meaningful possession of individual free will. American Catholic culture struggles & is non compliant when the Vatican persists denying the theological problem they created for themselves.
Lots of different brands of group think. Group as in familial bonds. Group as in friends. Group as in community endeavors. Group as in St Patty's day parades showing off my shamrocks. Group as in military service. Group as in preserving profession integrity. Group as in common sense. Group as in unanimously agreeing the calendar has 7 days in it. Group think/ consensus is intrinsically evil?
It's a curious thing about anarchist philosophies gone wild that, out of one side of their mouths, desires purist individualism, but out the other side, demands the planet validate their narcissism and through smarmy legalisms obliges all to carry their luggage. All hail worship individualist supremacy. The army of one, AKA the lone gunman shooting up communities. Heil, penis. Heil.
Quote:
Originally Posted by malamute
Especially the little boys but all kids whose learning style is best suited to hands on learning and interactive learning and are better at multi-tasking will have to either comply on their own to sit quietly for hours on end or be drugged. Now class...... it's time to take out your math books.....
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You appear to be struggling to articulate the specific skills of a boy that are outside the parameters of 3 r's measures. I hope you champion him somehow, but not by diminishing the value of all others around him to make him artificially taller. You've left me with a mental picture of a thug tackling the chess champ off stage jealously coveting a crown he didn't earn. "My kid beat up your honors student" bumper stickers announce what about whom?
You've got a vaguely similar argument of minorities, and minority cultures, being excluded from western culture norms. It's a similar argument the feminine muscles of emotional IQ's not registering in school systems. I can assure you this system is not, and has never been, beneficial to your daughter at the expense of your son. That too is mythology peddled by malevolent people bent on perpetuating sibling rivalries for profit. Notice a pattern here yet?
Back in the day I remember teachers rewarding/ highlighting virtuous behavior of students as part of the daily routine. Criticism could be negative, positive, or mixed, and I didn't experience assessments as if it were a punishment. It was more like an opportunity to get 'unstuck' and/or gather the esteem of accolades. Overall it reinforced a sense of common decency in the local neighborhoods, and in the larger community. What most social conservatives would logically describe as family values, but in this era, is horribly twisted by social conservatives themselves lost in their maze of contradictions. Liberals didn't do that. Their misery is self inflicted.
Virtue falls outside the parameters of the 3 r's, and so, bean counters ostensibly made it against the law tightening up the blinders for teachers to teach for the test, only to turn around blaming teachers for the blinders undermining their profession to service the bean counter profession. False 'religious' made it against the law to say the pledge of allegiance in school. Other 'religious' have created a professional victim religion laying blame at the feet of atheists persecuting them when atheists were overwhelmingly indifferent to it. When theosophists, atheists and secularists attempted to promote virtue and build consensus, they're accused by 'orthodox' (because I'm the daddy and I said so crowd) in all denominations of creating another religion. They're accused of indoctrinating children into the liberal world view 'attacking' the beam in the eye world view of 38,000 brands of child indoctrination attempting to proselytize through book burning in the school system. Thou shalt not think critically is not in the Bible.
Notice this OCD predator pattern yet? Should a herd of adults out of control with themselves be permitted to trump the best interests of children? To corrupt the mission statement with petty agendas intent on suppressing all for the sole benefit of one chosen child world view? Is this the adult example you'd like to be setting for your own child? Is this how adults solve their problems with a gang of accountants, a gang of Bishops or a gang of lawyers conscripting children into tribal wars?
The Queen is not amused, gentlemen.
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