Has it occurred to you, that most home schoolers are, in fact, very well educated? That most of them know more about the neighbourhood schools then parents who should have all the inside information on the school itself and send their kids to those schools?
If you have any thoughts, you can learn something from this book "Revealing School:Discover what school is really doing to your children".
I will first hand say that I don't agree with everything in the book. Like Facebook posts though, you learn to scroll through what you don't like or agree with so you can read the rest of the book and get things still out of it. And somethings you don't like, you will still learn from. It is like sitting down with your conservative uncle and talking to him about the education system and really going into depth with it with facts to back you up. So that being said, some things I strongly agree with!
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Sure you have the kid who has a screw loose and carries a gun in, or sexually assaults another, or even the story in Maryland where a school volunteer made students be part of a porn ring. Or even the school where President Barack and Michelle Obama send their girls, Sasha and Malia, where there was a sexual assault on campus of Sidwell Friends this week.
Now, this should not scare you because it does not happen at every school but it does happen more often than it should leading to the need of being well aware of the surroundings around you.
Think that schools fundamentally care about our kids? Nope, think again! I am not a generally negative person- I think there are AMAZING people within the school system- teachers, admins, who really put there heart and school into their students. They have my heart.
But when some high ranking officials say crap like:
"When School Children start paying unions dues, that is when I will start representing the interest of the children." ~ 1985 Albert Shanker, President of American Federation of Teachers.
It scare me! Or even this:
" "Parents Choice" proceeds on the belief that the purpose of education is to provide individual students with an education. In fact, educating the individual is but a means to the true end of education, which is to create a viable social order to which individual contribute and by which they are sustained. "Family's choice" is, therefore, basically selfish and anti-social in that it focuses on the 'wants' of a family rather than the "needs" of society" ~1979, Association of California School Administrators
I can't begin, being from California, to tell you how stunned and sad this makes me. As the book does state, the rate of things like depression, bullying, even extreme things like suicide are part of the school system because kids are taught not according to what should be taught but solely to a test. Talk about unnecessary pressure.
You know, so the school can get money. Because at the end of the day, all our kids are worth to the school system is NOT the needs of the society but to line their pockets.
I do very much think that the public education can get great for many kids, but not all. But all the testing and all the non sense crap that happens everyday has got to go!
Homeschooling parents are not anti social- I would actually argue against that. We are very social. I consider myself between home school and online public school but social interactions are the same. I think that it is better even. My kids can interact on a human level with anyone. Not just kids their age. So goes that theory right?
Let me say that some of the radical things that are said in the book I don't agree with. But some things I do.
One thing the author talks applying for jobs after high school and attaching the transcripts in hopes that the awesome GPA would get them far. It was not until someone handed back their transcript to them saying this was the real world and grades weren't everything that it hit them like a brick wall.
Even further more, and I can attest to this, that a few, sometimes more than a few sadly, that graduate from high school can't read and write. My five year old can read better than a eighteen year old? Yep. That is the sad truth sometimes. It is not always because someone has a severe learning disability either. It is or can be the educational system failing that child. So based on the statement made above, where does that leave society's interests?
Whilest this writer is Christian and some of the arguments he holds I completely disagree with some of what he is saying, I completely do. I am not Christian but the definition that many use.
So went the theory that only Christians home school, right? Nope. I home school and I don't classify myself as Christian because while I do believe in God I can't stand being lumped together conservatives that over reach their beliefs into society.
However, some of the arguments he makes are completely valid!
For example, I CAN'T stand him calling transgendered perverted and saying that the only reason they are is for perverted reasons. I can't believe someone would believe that let a lone write it down!
However, it is interesting to me and I agree that all the information they gather on students in exchange for free education crosses so many lines. Even leads to identity theft of students before they are eighteen. Does that sound extreme to you? It isn't. I have had numerous friends who have had this happen to them. Think it was family? Think again. It was often a mid aged man who took this information. We trust these people with our kids and their most private identifiable information plus their health records.
*This Book was received for my honest review*
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