Molding Our Kids into Liberal Obamatons
BY: NCViking
Anyone who is a mother or father can tell you how influential authority figures can be on their children. Parents, teachers, older siblings and other people of stature all have a huge impact on shaping them, and now our Dear Leader wants his shot by addressing school children across the nation directly in their classrooms on September 8th.
President Obama’s planned address to America’s schoolchildren on Sept. 8 is generating a firestorm of controversy from concerned parents who think he should mind his own business and stay away from their children. It’s easy to see why.
According to an Aug. 26 letter from Education Secretary Arne Duncan to school principals, the president wants to “challenge students to work hard, set educational goals and take responsibility for their learning.” He also will call for “shared responsibility and commitment on the part of students, parents and educators to ensure that every child in every school receives the best education possible.”
This address may be fine and dandy, but it doesn’t just end with some inspirational “don’t forget to study” speech interrupting arithmetic. Teachers, most of which are union members who adore Obama, will be handing out activities to kids courtesy of the Department of Education so they can have discussions and answer questions like: “Why does the President want to speak with us today? How will he inspire us?” I especially like this question (emphasis mine):
“Why is it important that we listen to the President and other elected officials, like the mayor, senators, members of congress or the governor? Why is what they say important?”
Shouldn’t the question be “Why is it important that our elected officials listen to the people?” Of course not, since liberals are indoctrinating the idea that government knows what’s best for us.
The DOE has also suggested putting up memorable Obama quotes on walls, presumably along with big-face pictures of our Dear Leader. Who knows, our kids could even break out into songs of praise! Maybe the younger ones will get Obama coloring pages to make pretty, similar to the ones my first-grade daughter received from her teacher during the election. I have no doubt that some activist teachers may even take this opportunity to peddle the merits of Obama’s socialistic agenda to our most vulnerable.
Note: Please leave our children alone. If you don’t, this simple groundswell of anger over liberal intrusions in our lives will become a tsunami.
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What a disgusting attempt to influence our children. What the heck would the lefties have said if G.W.B. tried to do this? They would have screamed for his head.
It’s very sad, and somewhat ironic, that the Left (which has historically has hated the thought of an all-powerful, controlling Federal government) is now embracing this potentially totalitarian move.
What’s B.O. going to do next? Sadly, any answer to this question would not surprise me at all, but is sure to offend me..
Like Buzz I wonder what would have been said if W would have tried something like this. I’m not sure I have an overriding problem with the POTUS speaking to children, but I’m not sure that the school system is the correct place to present this information – no matter it is.
As involved parents, we all want the best education available for our children. The last time I checked the US lagged way behind in Science and Math and probably several other subjects. How about upping the knowledge in these basic areas before indoctrinating kids with civics. Just a thought.
I know that Michelle, Hugh, and others are all worked up about this, but I can not seem to get there. I have a feeling that the President will probably do a few atta-boys, with strong political language like “stay in school” and “study hard”. Hardly Nazi Youth or Communist indoctrination. Much ado about nothing.
That said, I would prefer if I got to see any potential political messages that my kids will see (I know it will be available eventually through Whitehouse.gov and YouTube) before they do. This is the only thing that really bothers me.
If Obama uses this time to even hint at a political agenda, from global warming or any other so-called consensus subjects, I will be one of the first to criticize him here.
On the other hand, I can not help but agree with everyone else who feels that if President Bush would have tried this that the media class and lefties would have gone mad. There is no doubt.
I would agree that this is not something to really get that worked up about, but to stay cautious about the eventual message.
George Bush was in many classrooms throughout his presidency. So was Clinton. A famous video of George sitting in a classroom
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na600UB-bG0&feature=PlayList&p=A6431C0DFB2EFD5C&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=36
Surprised you didn’t recall this video.
So maybe lefties wouldn’t go nuts if George did it. (para-noia)
George Bush visited many classrooms during his Presidency. So did other presidents. There is a famous video on Bush sitting a bit dumbfounded in a classroom jut after he learned of the 9/11 attacks.
He sat actionless for 7 minutes, which I think speaks volumes for the man.
So, nothing new here.
I think the big difference is that they were visiting individual schools and not broadcasting a talk to classrooms across the country – complete with lesson plans.
Nothing new here? Everything is new here and I’m surprised that you went the direction you did – or maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.
That being said, most of the comments from the bloggers here have indicated that this is not a big deal, right now, and we’ll take the next step if needed. While we are taking a wait and see approach, questioning motivations should be part of the dialogue.
I would agree and be against if Obama wanted to start the Komosol. I applaud Obama wanting to reach out to children to stay in school. The message is no different than the message I heard when I was in school.
Whether went to individual schools or whether Obama makes a one time speech each year at the start of the school year is a matter of reach, cost and efficiency.
I don’t see this as anything new and I have no idea what you meant by “I’m surprised that you went the direction you did.”
Truthfully, I am surprised that an address to schools by a president is so political, but then again you gents are in the polarized zone.
Explained in the comment above. This is not the same old program. Having a lesson plan and pushing to have a mass audience is very new. That is what I was talking about in the comment.
As stated before, we’ll see what transpires from the address next week. May be much ado about nothing, which is what I and others think this will be.
The real reason why some districts are going bat-ape over this
http://www.reddit.com/comments/9hcvv/youve_got_it_all_wrong_rightwing_parents_are_not/
Might correct their views.
Yeah, that’s probably the reason. How could I have been so short sided?
BTW, I’m one of those parents not thinking this is a big deal…yet.
Hi!
Please stop complaining about Obama’s address to the nation’s students.
Instead, please, please, please, tell all your readers to pull their kids out of their local school. If they are motivated at all, then their child will probably have a better education at home, than they will get at their local school.
I encourage ALL parents who are upset/worried/feeling uneasy about the President of the United States talking to their children, to immediately pull your kids out of school.
It is legal all across the country, and in places like Wisconsin, where I live, VERY easy to pull your kids out and homeschool them
God Bless!
cliff
NBO
Cliff, thanks for reading. For me, I wish homeschooling was an option. But first, one needs a very special skill set in order to be a homeschooler. Some people have the ability to teach, and others do not. Second, sending kids to public school is generally the only option for families with working parents, and it is not easy just to say that everyone can afford it. In and around big cities, where one’s job is, the cost of living is expensive. To pay the mortgage, taxes, and cost of living, both Mrs. Windbag and I have to work. We then make a choice between public and private schools. In many areas, this is not a tough choice, because the public schools are that bad or unsafe. In ours, our public grade school is very highly rated and so we send our kids there. So what does our school say about the President’s speech? Here is a letter from our Superintendent:
Amen. I could not agree more. I plan on watching this video and seeing what the President has to say. If there is value, then I will watch it with my 6 year old son while doing commentary along the way. Even though we disagree with the President at this site, I feel strongly that the office of the President should be respected and we should not degrade it in the eyes of our children.
Keep reading and commenting. Thanks again.
What Cliff and others really want (or should want) for their children is to give them a world class education. Unless you have special skills, you simply cannot deliver that through home schooling.
Home schooling let’s you control the curriculum, but it cannot include subjects you know very little about. Will they be able to learn advance placement subjects? Will they read 1984?
Home schooling is just another way to restrict the message your children receive — at the expense of their future.
Mike, that is a bit insulting. Thousands of kids go through home schooling every year and testing shows that they are not only further ahead of those that go to private or public schools on average, but also that they are not damaged socially in the least. Saying that home schooled children are somehow lacking because they did not get the same education at a public school is preposterous on its face. Are there exceptions? Sure there are. But you can not argue with the results.
I too received a well written letter from our Superintendent:
I have been asked by several friends what I think of all this “controversy.” My answer is “let’s see what happens,” which I believe was the point of this post.
As far as Home Schooling, it seems that these students are very well prepared and very well educated. If my memory serves me right, the only perfect scores on the SAT have come from a pair of home schooled brothers. Like WC, we have very good public schools in our area and desire to offer home schooling to our children. I guess we are fortunate for that.
WCW, no insult intended.
I am not impressed by ACT, SAT, and other formalized test results. ACT and SAT are self-selecting tests, which means that they are not representative of the entire home or public education. Very high scores on tests represent either a very good education, or they represent focused education of the likely test topics.
It is possible to associate words and solve math problems and acquire high test scores without receiving a broad education.
One indication that home schoolers are teaching to the test is that home school students do not outperform their public school peers in the first year of college (yea I can post a link). The good news for home schoolers is that there is no statistical difference between home and public schooled students.
First year college is hardly a determination of the broadness of one’s education.
School settings are designed to foster discussion. Will your child learn differing opinions on Orwell’s 1984, or Huxley’s Brave New World?
Home schools may have books that define a curriculum. If the parents have a specific point of view (very conservative, or very liberal, or very religious) then the home schooling curriculum becomes biased.
Without being insulting, I stand by my original statement that Home schooling is just another way to restrict the message your children receive — at the expense of their future.
Unless you can show me that the home school experience is broad and unbiased.
I think the results speak for themselves. There are plenty of home schoolers that get solid, first rate educations. They read the books… the classics, not just the ones dictated by the schools. They can study the Presidents and other historic figures, not just the ones that the school board finds politically correct. They can read and study at their own pace, not wait for others to catch up to them. Are there home schoolers that are not up to snuff? I am sure there are. Are there public school kids that are miserable failures? There are too many to count. We can not say that public education is the gold standard when it is lacking in so many areas. I stand by my original statements as well.
I can not show you that ever home school experience is broad based because each is individually designed. The results speak for themselves. You can dismiss them, but those are the only measurements we have.
My concern is precisely the argument you gave: parents removing reading material from their children. Why? Parents can always introduce their children to any book they want. They can always augment their own child’s education.
Why create a student that is unaware of the Holocaust, or of the causes of WWI or WWII? or of basic economics?
Your statistics are skewed: you are comparing the worst results in public schools with the best results in home schooling. It would be as bad as comparing the best results in public schools with the worst results in home schooling.
If both produce children that perform just as well in first year college than we can agree that both can produce college students at the same level.
I would argue that the failure of children in public schools is really a failure of the parent involvement or the parents not valuing education.
Parent involvement is the answer, not parent paring down the curriculum so that their child can focus on the test.
Mike
Mike, you are making the assumption that home school parents cut things out while schools provide a rounded education. We all know the stories of schools cutting out lessons of Thomas Jefferson in order to add in Cesar Chavez. Whether this is right or wrong, the school has limited time to put together a plan. You assume the worst, that home schoolers will miss out on 1984 or other book that is considered invaluable. Who makes that choice? By your comments, I sense that you see society makes that decision. Should not our parents?
First, Thomas Jefferson and Cesar Chavez would not be thought in the same grade level, and are not even in teh same subject matter, so your example is plainly invalid.
Thomas Jefferson would be taught in primary school. He would then be taught in middle school around teh constitution. There is no material on the constitution that would not include TJ. TJ would be taught in American History. Chavez is a very recent event. I doubt he is taught at all, except in Current Events.
Second, as I said, parents need to be involved and curriculum issues are usually resolved in public meetings, and ultimately in elections.
Third, parents can always give their children the education they want. If a book or material is important, yanking the student out of school is hardly the only or even preferred choice.
Fourth, parents tend to take their children out for the dumbest of reasons, usually having to do with the introduction of contraceptives and sex education. I can see parents with religious objections to be granted an option to provide alternative reproduction material.
Another reason is often that the child will hear ‘evolution’ and controversies. Some parents believe that schools will expose children to alternative lifestyles, or propaganda, or left wing nuts. All bad reasons to deny a child a broad education.
Fifth, your child has to compete in the world. How can a parent reading from a book replace a teacher that has 15 years of experience making a student understand a topic, like science, or math?
Most parents are incapable of making informed choices about curriculum for one year, across all subjects, never mind being able to teach their children a subject.
A public school is paid to hire professionals to build a curriculum that will teach your children to be competitive. Parents should be involved, look at the material and make it a point to ask teachers or school officials about any subject being taught.
Home school parents wouldn’t take out a liver with a rusty knife by reading a book, so why do they think they can teach?
Give your child a break – let him learn to understand the world around them.
I assume you are joking, but if you are not, my answer is this: schools have limited time in the year to teach subjects. When a school board instructs a grade to teach a new subject matter, they have to cut something out. Saying the TJ and CC are not the same grade level is incorrect, because both subjects are taught at several levels. I did not learn about Jefferson once, but many times growing up. All had different maturity levels and deepness of thought, so dismissing it as invalid is plainly off base. The example was brought up as a specific example. A few years ago while listening to public radio, this specific case came up. I am sure that I could find it, but I am not going to take the time to do it. CC subject was introduced to US History in an effort to introduce more Latino historic role models. Jefferson was selected to be cut. It was such a strange contrast that it has stayed with me all these years.
One time in a parent-school meeting, I heard a parent say to those teachers and administration, “He was mine first, and I have a right to…” What she had a right to was irrelevant, but fits here. Parents have the right to teach their kids if they wish. The kids are theirs first and foremost. The school is a service provided by the community. It should be optional. I choose to send my kids to school, and others do not. Stating that they are more likely to miss an important subject matter than the school is your argument. Mine is that you are wrong about that, and stats prove it out.
That is a broad generalization that would need specific examples. I can think where that argument can go both ways. I am not arguing that parents should pull their kids out of school if the teacher assigns Tales of Fourth Grade Nothing. But if the teacher wants to teach my child something that is inappropriate, it may not be preferred, but it is certainly the right thing to do to pull them out.
Your moral code states that this is a dumb reason. Others do not agree with you. 95% of the people in this country would have disagreed with your position 50 years ago. Today, more have flocked to your camp. That does not make it one of the dumbest reasons, just one you disagree with.
This is a loaded statement. One could write post after post addressing each part of your statement. One persons propaganda is another person’s core belief system. Left wing people tend to be in education, so that is not irrational. I will take one of your examples further, and one that I feel pretty comfortable about: “alternative lifestyles”. I happen to strongly believe that gays should have the same rights as heterosexuals in life. That said, the only thing that make gays and straights effectively different, in my opinion, is who they want to have sex with. Going further, I don’t want my 6 year old, who has a hard enough time understanding how to read a clock, tie a shoe, or how to use empathy to be taught sexuality at any level. It is easier for my son to understand that when he grows up he can marry a girl. My daughter can hear, if she likes the idea, that someday her prince will come. Introducing “prince or princess” to that discussion is not something I want to do to grade schoolers. When he or she starts entering puberty, then we can talk about the “Daddy, I really like Sally and not Sam”. I don’t want schools to introduce that topic to my child. That is not their choice. Again, many schools have made the decision that they will read books about Johnny having two daddies. I will have that conversation at home with my son… that is not up to the school. In case you are wondering, the six year old has had that conversation with me (one of his friends has two moms), and the explanation was mine… I don’t need his teacher trying to work that out with him. I am pretty progressive on this subject, and I don’t think that my core beliefs should be forced on others.
How can a teacher with 30 students compete with the one-on-one personal attention of a loving parent? You bias is clear here. I am open to both. I utilize the public schools, but do not belittle the home schooling parent.
This is a load of bull dung. There are tons and tons of resources available to parents who home school. Your inability (or mine for that matter) to teach a broad array of topics does not mean everyone is limited. Most parents are perfectly capable of making informed choices, especially those with resources available. People who make the commitment to home schooling are not likely people who approach it timidly.
I actually laughed at loud at this analogy. Yes, being a surgeon and a teacher are the same exact skill level… that is why they are paid the same. I can not teach a broad array of subject matter, so I allow the school to do so. The same goes for oil changes… I take it to the local place and let the guy under the car do it. He is very helpful and I pay him for his services. But if my neighbor wants to change his own oil, I don’t go over there and tell him “who do you think you are, a mechanic? What makes you think you can do this?” He may love cars or have a passion for it. He would not do it unless he thought he could, and he does not approach his car haphazardly. Parents who home school are the same. They are serious about their kids. They approach this seriously. Comparing home schoolers to rusty knife wielding lunitics (who else would try to take out a liver) is way off base.
I stand by my point on TJ and CC. They are not thought just once, or at the same grade level. Your answer confirms my position.
I am not arguing that parents don’t have a right to teach their own children. I am saying that doing so denies those children a valuable education.
Parents have the right to live in a cave with electricity, they even have a right to not provide consistent medical care. They have all those rights. Doing so has consequences for the family and the child.
Those consequences rob their children of their future. You can rob your children – it’s your right.
Yes, a teacher can teach 30 students much better than a loving parent. It’s called knowing the material. Most of the material can be absorbed by a semi-intelligent student by the examples and exercises. The rest may need a bit of help, a few minutes here and there.
You went to school. You know how it works.
And yours reinforces mine. Look, a win-win.
And I am stating that you can not judge whether their education they’re receiving at home is or is not valuable.
Your need to blast home schooling with analogies of dark ages vs. enlightenism only demonstrates your prejudice towards this form of education. Open minded indeed.
I understand you prejudice and your elitism as you demonstrate here.
Well, this has degenerated into the ground.
A consistent pattern you use is to respond with insult when you have no cogent arguments to make. Or, you call someone “left.”
Really? this is your response? I have gone out of my way to try to get you to back away from your callus insults of home schoolers. You have provided no reasons for your prejudice, and yet you proceed to ratched it up in each response. I have hardly insulted you. In this sense, you claim to know better than the home schooling parent and you have provided no cogent arguments to support it. That is the pure definition of elitism. Saying that you know that the education they receive is inferior without knowing better is prejudice, pure and simple. You can call it an insult, but I call it descriptive in this case.
The only thing consistent on this post is your inability to see any value in anything but your belief system. I have never degraded all public schools, yet you have done the opposite.
Save the wounded martyr for someone who has not read your post responses for months on end and knows exactly what you dish out.
Really, I provided no reason for my response? How about:
- the results are that of home schoolers that go to college, they perform about as well as public schools. Not better than private schools.
- you acknowledged that home schoolers may miss out in books like 1984 and other works that have build our social consciousness. In fact, books like 1984 tend to build more conservatives.
- home schoolers have the right to take their children out, but what do children gain? Is this another my-parents-are-nuts-and-the-children-pay-the-price?
- Public school was fine for America for the last 150 years. Suddenly, in the last 20 yrs, a few have decided to home school.
Unlike you, I rely on experts: scientists, teachers, doctors, experts.
You seem to rely on wishing: that pollution isn’t as bad, and that parents who don’t know anything about some subjects can do a better job than experts who have expertise in the material and have taught it for several years.
I’ve made these points before and I continue to make them. Your verbiage about cogent is nothing more than rhetorical posturing.
Parents have the right smoke too, but that’s mean it isn’t harming their children.
Perfect support of my case. I never claimed that home schooling was any better than public schooling. I just said that it was not true that it is worse in all cases. In many cases it is better and in many cases it might not be as good. The fact is that the only people home schooling are the ones that are motivated to do so. Not the ones who are lazy and not interested in doing a good job. It is a self-selecting sample, and I would not be surprised if the percentage of these students go to college in greater numbers than in public schools.
I did not acknowledge this. I said that you felt that way, and stipulated it for the purpose of an argument. I deal with facts, and there has been nothing presented that proves that home schoolers do not read 1984 or Animal Farm or any other book.
Again, I reject your premise here. You assume that by taking children out that there is obvious damage to the child. The child may gain something, they may lose something, and they will undoubtedly have a slightly different experience that public school kids. That does not damage them, it just makes their experience different.
Answer: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Quincy Adams, William Henry Harrison, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Question: What US Presidents were homeschooled?
Pretty interesting group… would you not say? Arguably, the six of the top ten Presidents this country has ever seen grace this list. If it was good enough for these great men, why suddenly has it become so disfiguring?
I don’t call in a plumber every time the toilet gets clogged, nor do I call a painter every time I want to change the color of a room. Your lumping of teachers into the same arena with technical, specially skilled people like doctors and scientists who go to school for 8-10 years and intern for just as long is a stretch of a comparison. I find what teachers do day in and day out to be grueling and rewarding, challenging and uplifting. It takes a skill to deal with children, but the same can be said for a claims adjuster, a gardener, a farmer, or a accountant. That does not stop me from dealing with my insurance company when I have an accident, mowing my lawn, picking my garden or balancing my checkbook. The gifted among us might even take these skills to a higher level.
I think that you have this image of a home schooling parent as some buck toothed, overall wearing, hick racist who tells his kid “You is going to be smart because you does not have to read those learnin’ books about that commie Obama.” An exaggeration? Maybe…
That like me saying “you seem to rely on panic and Pavlovian responses to stimulus: the sky is falling, the oceans are rising, we’re all going to die.” I can disagree with you without denigrating the parents among us who take the initiative to teach their children at home. Like I said, it’s not for me. I send my son to public school, and he is better for it. I don’t have the skills to home school (or at least I don’t think I do), and I don’t have the financial resources to pay for public school and not utilize it. On the other hand, it is easier to say that George Washington and FDR or worse off for their home schooling and will never amount to anything.
You seen to think that if you insult people that you have made a point, and if I counter with a balanced approach that I am providing rhetorical posturing. OK, in that case… I give up and you win.
Why not just go for the gold? Parents could sexually abuse their kids and chop up their bodies into pieces, but that does not mean that they should. Hmmmm… not a strong enough analogy?
Your list of President’s that were home schooled was very interesting. You can dismiss outright all of the President’s on your list who were home schooled before there was public education. I am sure you missed that one. (It would be like saying George Washington didn’t need a phone).
Of the rest, they were all pretty rich and the rich have a tradition of educating their children through tutors and masters. They weren’t exactly schooled by their mom.
Abraham Lincoln was the exception.
Also, your list is essentially somewhere from 100 to 230 years ago, hardly relevant to today, and hardly relevant to the complexities of today. Back then a good education was plant recognition and how to read a planting chart.
Today it takes a lot more to teach a child. Your list might make me think that home schooling is a lovely idea if we lived in 1776.
Which brings me to your other great example, you don’t call a plumber every time “the toilet gets clogged.”
I’ll take it a step further: you don’t need a mathematician to teach your fourth grader fractions, but you’ll need a math teacher to show them high school level calculus.
You may not need a historian to read about Thomas Jefferson’s two page biography, but you may want a history teacher to teach you the detail of how we got into the civil war.
I say this last piece cause I noticed how we go into the 14th Amendment here often, and I seriously doubt you could pass a HS history test on the subject. Do not attempt to teach that your children — and that is a very good example of what is wrong with home schooling.
I could go on and on in detail about subjects and topics that you know not much about, and can’t teach just by reading a book: chemistry, evolution, cell biology, calculus, and the list goes on.
I am not dumping a teacher with a scientist. That is just plain ridiculous. I am saying that in their specialties there are experts: teachers on their subject, most having several years, some having 20 years expertise in their subjects; scientists in their specialties; doctors in theirs.
You don’t want me to bring up scientists when we discuss CO2 (according to you the TV weatherman knows more). That right there disqualifies someone from teaching a child.
So yea, I think I made my case why home schooling hurts a child.
Elitist is the far rights favorite insult label, but it has lost a lot of luster and meaning when Hannity attacked Obama for putting mustard on his burger.
So call me a condiment lover. I’ll return the favor by telling you you have no idea what you are talking about with your long and rambling posts. The far right cry of elitist is the new “jew.”
Just to show you how utterly meaningless elitist is, John McCain, who owns 7 homes, is worth over 100 million dollars, has an economic advisor who thinks that the recession was caused by whiners and doesn’t have a clue how much a gallon of milk costs, Obama an elitist.
When you home school your children, the education they will have will be straight out of the far right gun lobby platform. They will know absolutely nothing of the real world.
One of the posts in this blog was about how a weather man claimed that there was no global warming because temperatures in June were cooler than average. Wow. Science. I didn’t hear you complain about the post. It is what you believe in, it is your bias, and it is this bias that you would bring to any teaching situation.
That should be contrasted with public curriculum. They are made from years of public and professional input.
Your emphasis on Presidents and home schooling, nothing the greatness it produced. You will notice that no modern president is on the list. Those 18th and 19th century presidents had no choice. It is ridiculous to demonstrate the virtue of home schooling when public education wasn’t even invented.
In the world that these Presidents lived, interpersonal connections and networking was by far much more important than knowledge. These individuals were wealthy. They had people to do stuff for them.
Your children need to know how the world works. They will need to be able to understand concepts that were foreign to a President of 130 years ago, even more so to one that of 230 years ago.
But I do have an answer for your President analogy. Albert Einstein went to public school.
The topper to your argument is that you can actually learn HS economics or mathematics from a text book, and then teach it to your child. It demonstrates how removed your argument is from the actual reality. In essence your point is that a teacher goes to 4 yrs of college, then maybe some grad school, then teaches the subject for several years, maybe has used 3 or 4 different books on the subject, more than likely recommended books as part of the district’s book selection process, maybe even went to a teacher’s conference of the subject, and yet you can just read a book, comprehend the implications of its content sufficiently if not thoroughly, and teach it.
We could save a lot of money with your method. Your school district could just hire moms with a book, an attitude, and a dream. Why not, same standard as home schools.
Nice deflection. I notice that you said that the term lost its luster, but you can not deny the truth of the matter.
So now I am a racist? So much for the logical argument here. This one is right from the Rev. Wright, Fr. Pflager, Van Jones playbook. If you can not win an argument, call them a racist. Nice. As far a “long and rambling posts”, you are really hilarious. If we post a tightly written essay explaining our point, we have not supported it. If we write a longer post, you call it rambling. You are so partisan. So much for an independent thinker.
I can not imagine that you think you are fooling anyone here. Elitist thought is different that having a lot of money. I quote “Elitism is you know better and don’t have to answer questions or back it up with reason.” Yeah, I can check our blog roll too. You are a busy person on the blogs. You can not support that home schoolers are given a worse education, but you just know better. Sucks when your own words are repeated right back at you.
This is laughable drivel. You are just saying this because you think I will respond in kind. Hardly.
That post was about the coldest June on record in Chicago. Followed by one of the coldest Julys and one of the coldest Augusts. Who are you going to believe him or your lying eyes?
Your need to have a single answer to this issue is interesting. I never said that public education was bad, and only said that home schooling is a viable option for those willing to put forth the effort. You have turned this into a black and white issue, that only public schooling is good, and that home schooling produces right-wing loons. Do you even read what you write?
I don’t see how that makes a difference. The fact that someone in the past learned at home only proves that it is possible. You seem to think that it is now impossible. Those former Presidents had very well rounded educations at home. They studied the classics, learned math, science, and foreign languages. All of a sudden, this is impossible, and the only reason for home schooling is because we need to teach our youngins how to shoot. Goofy… so goofy.
So now these home schooled President’s are idiots who had lackeys to do their work? One of the most brilliant speeches I ever read was the Gettysburg Address. Perhaps Abe did not write that one at all.
We don’t disagree on this. We only disagree that there is multiple solutions to this issue. You think that parents are incapable, and I think they are.
I will stipulate more. Lots of talented and brilliant people went to public school, even in the US (Einstein went to school in Germany, although he went to Catholic school for 6 years). You seem to think (incorrectly) that I think home schooling is better than public schooling. Not in all cases, but it is in others. You are the only absolutist here, and as Obi Wan Ken-obi says, only a Sith sees in black and white. Do you know the Dark Side?
Either you choose to distort what I say, or you don’t understand it at all. I know you are intelligent, so the latter is unlikely. I never stated that picking up a book and reading it once makes a person an expert in a subject. Home schooling is hard work, and a full time job. Being able to teach multiple subjects to your children is difficult, and supplementing that education takes research and patience. But teaching one or two children gives you experience, and these parents are obviously doing pretty well, because according to your own words (repeating them once again for your own benefit), “The good news for home schoolers is that there is no statistical difference between home and public schooled students.”
Ah… sarcasm. I know that you have also commented on this before. To quote you again, “Your sarcasm is a product of your irritation with counter opinions… You post sarcasm instead of a reasoned and well thought out defense. It speak volumes about you.”
Indeed.
This thread has been replete with insults and the insults have got to stop if we are going to have a conversation. And they stop here and now.
If you want the conversation to continue, it has to continue on the subject. A fair point is that you may point at my posts and say I was insulting. None of my posts intentionally contained anything insulting, emphasis on intentionally.
My reference to my heritage was a sensitivity to classifying everyone you don’t like as elitist. History of any totalitarian society starts with a group of dedicated followers who place a label on other groups. It becomes a code word.
A dangerous group on the left would be one that labels all on the right by a single term, when in fact we all know that there is a wide spectrum of opinions on the right, all the way to neo-nazis and militiamen.
I therefore, equally, chafe at the term “left” or “elitist.” These are code words you did not invent but emulate their use and it is a term applied to the entire group of anyone who you do not like.
You called me an elitist, and it is a perfect segue to a discussion on education. The definition you quoted is “Elitism is you know better and don’t have to answer questions or back it up with reason.”
Hardly anyone that the right labels as elitist fits into this definition, and it equally wouldn’t apply to me or Obama. I gave you lots and lots of reasons why I think home schooling is bad for the child. I stated that
- bad because the parents can only provide their bias
- bad because the parents aren’t subject experts
- bad because the child misses out on the social aspects of education: making friends
- among home schoolers that go to college, the good news for home schoolers is that there is no statistical difference between home and public schooled students.
My entire quote in context was: One indication that home schoolers are teaching to the test is that home school students do not outperform their public school peers in the first year of college (yea I can post a link). The good news for home schoolers is that there is no statistical difference between home and public schooled students.
- think home schooler teach to the test, plus some parental bias as to what is important. For example, do they teach cell biology?
- it is possible to associate words and solve math problems and acquire high test scores without receiving a broad education.
- and, the results of any human endeavor is a bell curve. There are those because of effort or intellect score above the median and those that score below it. The question which has not been answered is where is the median for home schoolers in same kind education. Specifically meaning, broad education.
So, I provided reasons, contradicting your definition of elitism. But you knew all of this when you laid down the charge. Further, I self admitted that I do not know better. I rely on scientists.
This blog and the response thread is a conversation. In that conservation the focal subject became home schooling. My opinion on the focal subject is that home schooling is bad for the child. I backed up my opinion with reason. Is merely having an opinion elitist?
Parents have the right to home school, along with many other rights that you and I would abhor (the right to withhold medicine, etc…). So, I’ll leave you with a question. What benefit does home schooling provide?
I’m obviously with you, Windbag, on the home schooling thing. There are all kinds of options for the education of our children. Many of the home schoolers I have had conversations with utlize very organized and well ballanced curriculum. A part of that education, many times, includes the ability to take the students (children) to places to experience subjects like history.
I’m more than fine to have my kids in public school. We have a great district and educators. The Madman family, much like the Windbag family, are not able to spend full time in some type of home schooling environment, nor do we want to explore that option.
It seems that we do have a problem nationwide with the education system and how we educate our children. Reports come out every year indicating how far US students have fallen behind countries like China, Finland and Canada in important subjects like science and math.
What’s the solution – the same old status quo? Mike, you did point out one thing that should be part of the solution – parental involvement.
ACM ~
The curriculum(s) uses in public schools and the curriculum(s) used in most home schooling are both highly deficient in mathematics, sciences, and really involved reading.
It is staggering the number of students who can’t identify states on a map, or countries around the world, or understand that Africa is a continent and not a country. And that’s just geography – the simplest of all of the subjects.
How many students could find the volume of a cylinder, or the area of a four sided polygon (that is, a quadrangle)? I bet you probably know HS graduates who’ll glaze over these terms.
Standards have dropped quite a bit, and mostly they have dropped as a result of grade inflation. Everyone wants their child to be the A student. I would bet that the bell curve median for most schools is around A-.
Grades are a complex thing. Children are not motivated by a C-. Some very willingly accept that they are “less than smart” in order to lower expectations. Lower expectations, lower workload.
I personally believe that grades should measure progress and should be a tool for the teacher to provide remedial assistance. Once the student understands that the work gets harder if the grade is lower, there is a motivation to keep them up.
I am not a child psychologist, and my idea could be controversial. I’ll accept that.
School performance isn’t a left or right thing: school districts in highly conservative (and well off districts) tend to be no more advanced than those in liberal (and well off districts). It is a gross generalization, but both graduate equal opportunity mediocre students.
There are notable exceptions. There is a school in Baltimore in a minority district where nearly 100% of the students go to college.
In my opinion, first year college is what 12th grade HS should be. College admissions will tell you that the writing and reasoning skills of most of there entrants has been in decline for many years.
While more money for schools is not always the answer, underfunding schools can be disastrous. We tend to not allow districts to raise taxes, even though we all know that inflation eats up its budget.
Just recently in another thread we discussed the price of oil, and the defense has been that greater prices were acceptable because it tracked inflation. Try that argument on school or municipal taxes.
There is room for debate, but none of us are qualified to answer the question of what is the optimal performance and the optimal cost per pupil.
I would say that the curriculum needs to change.
And I do not disagree with parental involvement in public education. That is very important. I think that a parent who takes it upon themselves to educate their child will doing them a great service if they are truly motivated. Again, this is a self-selecting group. Parents who do not want to be involved do not pull their children out for home schooling. It is not in their abilities.
Mike, your reasoning is nothing more than theories with no truth to back it up. Where do we see documented bias in the home school? There has been plenty of documented evidence of teacher bias in the classroom. Teachers in most grade levels are not experts in any subject. Their specialty is teaching children. As you get to the older grades, this changes, but I still contend, and the results pan this out that the home schooled children do well against their contemporaries. As for social, that is a misconception I have seen debunked. The home schooler is not one person living isolated in their house, but rather a community working together to advance the education of all the children. Are their some lone wolves? Sure. Are there some parents who do not teach well? Sure. Those are likely the exceptions. Again, a motivated parent is likely to put forth extra effort in order to succeed.
As I stated before, there are plenty of studies that show that home schoolers perform at or above grade level. You can call it teaching for the test, but that is the way we gauge learning. Soft meaurements through observation are questionable. Test taking is not perfect, but it is the best option.
Your arguments seem to focus on what is missing, but not knowing the curriculum, you have no idea what is missing and what is not. Again, I contend that the results speak for themselves.
I found some stats in an article about home schooling that I thought were relevant. I did read the whole article, but the author is in favor.
Another study had this conclusion:
So what are the advantages of home schooling? Madman pointed out one… the ability to go out and experience history because of the flexibility of the teacher (limited students). So flexibility, and one-on-one attention is another. The ability to slow down or accellerate curriculum based upon the needs of the child. Perhaps more specialization into subject matter the child wants to explore (for example, a deeper dive into the civil war or into English Lit). You also do not have to deal with the children who are a disruption, or teachers who did not care (most teachers are hard working and try to make class interesting, but I had a couple that I remember that were not). Those are a few off the top of my head. There are obvious advantages to any learning environment, and also disadvantages. I am sure we can name those as well.
Again, I am not claiming home schooling is better than public schooling. I am only rebutting your assertion that it is worse prima facie.
Wow, Mike, something we finally agree on. Progress is being made.
I have no argument with your statements about the quality of education in the US. I work with my kids on age appropriate information and concepts, but I know many parents do not to take the time. Geography and history are two of my areas of interest as it is sad to see US citizens so inept at these subjects. I remember all of those people on the Tonight Show when Leno used to go out and ask questions – most had no idea about anything.
The reading and writing skills that are deficient in the high school graduates of today should not be a shock as we (mostly the younger population) have been conditioned to use text messaging and email for communication purposes. Many would rather text than actually talk with another individual. I’m not against text messaging, but I predict a vast shortage of people who can actually write well in the next 20 years. Product of their surroundings.
All that being said, your thoughts on home schooling are not based in reality. Parents still have the choice in this country, for now, and I support any decision to take on home schooling. Frankly it’s way too much work for my bones, but I would have no problem teaching my children a variety of subjects (I do teach at the collegiate level). The evidence you have presented in this string indicates there is not much difference in the educational level but that both are lacking in math, geography and hard science. Why demonize that parent’s choice in favor of the equally lackluster performance (your paraphrased words) of the public school system.
We need a better way of teaching our children and the DOE and every school district in the country should follow the examples of success stories like the school in DC that you referenced.
ACM, WCW
Parents have always had a choice and I doubt anyone is motivated to remove that choice. If this is a question of rights, then there is no question that parents have the right.
Just because parents have the right doesn’t mean that they should. How many parents are truly qualified?
I think we need to work from at least the principle that the teacher needs to know her material and not be a few pages ahead of the student. To me that right there should be the basis for improving education.
If we define education as just pass the math and reading test then fine, just teach to the test and graduate.
If we define education as a more broad experience, taught by subject matter specialists, broad based, then measuring home school’s effectiveness is much more complex.
Everyone is biased, either subtly or overtly. Teachers, parents, administrators, everyone. But nothing is more biased than one person, single point of view, for 12+ years (K-12). That is too biased.
Teachers can be biased, subtly or overtly, but students see that one bias for an hour or less a day, for 10 months or so, and then they move on. I would say that when I was in school, as a student I picked up on the bias and whether their arguments made sense. I raised questions and debated (it was encouraged) with my teachers. The multi-dimensional experience was wonderful, broadening, and really let us delve deeply into a subject. That experience is missed in home school.
I do not appreciate your stating my views aren’t based on reality. Show reason or evidence that contradicts my view. By resorting to just calling my view “not based on reality” you are stating that you know reality, can distinguish reality from my position, and you are superior enough to not to have to explain your reasoning. How do your statements not fit into your definition of being an elitist?
I think I did a pretty good job defending “not based in reality” when I put the statistics up and the study up. You have asserted that there is bias, and that there is social and intellectual deficiencies. You do not back it up with any proof, just your own belief that it is true. Also, the studies do not back it up. You have the right to your opinion and theory, but you have nothing to support it beyond anecdotal evidence.
Again, no one is stating that public education is worse than home schooling, we are just stating that home schooling is a viable option. It has its advantages and some disadvantages. From the high school level, one disadvantage is that there will be less opportunity for discussion with a diverse group of thought, since the class is smaller. Another is one that you pointed out, less instructors with expertise in a subject level.
These trade offs are all part of choices, whether it is deciding to have children or choosing where to buy a house.
What I said is that measuring the broader school experience is more complex for home schooled children. It doesn’t take a genius to see that parents are non specialists, have limits on their knowledge, and provide a slanted point of view from k-12 and for 24/7 of a child’s life. These are realities.
We are I think at some agreement. You list opportunities for discussion in public schools, we agree (I believe) that curriculum in general is not competitive with the rest of the world, and parents have to be involved.
The final decision, as you stated, is a matter of choice and the type of education that the child will receive.
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