Posted in Homeschooling
Carleyross and MattZach4 both blogged on this week's Wife Swap show on ABC with the homeschooling family. MattZach4 mentioned that the homeschool families these shows select are always the odd ones that make all homeschooling families look offbeat and weird. Unfortunately, producers like showing the extremes, the man-bites-dog kinds of stories, because they're better for ratings. Caricatures and highly opinionated people dominate these shows because they have been coached by the directors to say anything they want and not to hold things back. If there was ever a time to be reserved and quiet, it's in front of the network cameras.
Carleyross also had a great point that the other mom, a public school teacher, was also narrow-minded in her concepts of education, saying,
We run into this all too often. Our homeschool is required by the state of Colorado to have 172 days per year averaging four hours per day. That is a burden, but a light one because we have enough freedom with our curricula that our children don't have to spend all of those hours behind a desk. Still, people don't understand that learning is a lifestyle and not a row of desks. I remember sitting in school and absolutely hating the fact that I had to sit in my desk and listen to a teacher try to make verbs and subjects sound interesting. I grasped the topic easily, but the teacher still cajoled and did her song-and-dance routine for the other students. A lot of my time was wasted daydreaming and disengaged from the class because my learning style was so different than what they were offering.
It's as if classrooms have a collection of all sorts of light sources and they're trying to light as many as possible with the proven method of electricity. This works wonderfully with the incandescents and the fluorescents, but candles, oil lamps, LED's and klieg lights take special approaches that regular 110-volt electricity just won't light, at least not without some explosive results. On the other hand, if you have a lighter, a transformer, and other applications that are too specialized for the classroom approach, you can light the candles, LED's and kleig lights. Otherwise, you invest hours and hours trying to light a candle with an extension cord without much success. This is the flaw in the classroom system.
My own children learn from reading narratives and doing practical application more than watching the song-and-dance presentations. Thank God we homeschool, or they would be as turned off to learning as I was. Their minds would be dark and no amount of classroom juice would help light their love for learning.
Bring 'em home, folks!
Carleyross also had a great point that the other mom, a public school teacher, was also narrow-minded in her concepts of education, saying,
She downed the homeschooling repeatedly---how three hours a day wasn't enough. How she was very concerned they weren't receiving a proper education. How could they if they weren't in a real classroom?
We run into this all too often. Our homeschool is required by the state of Colorado to have 172 days per year averaging four hours per day. That is a burden, but a light one because we have enough freedom with our curricula that our children don't have to spend all of those hours behind a desk. Still, people don't understand that learning is a lifestyle and not a row of desks. I remember sitting in school and absolutely hating the fact that I had to sit in my desk and listen to a teacher try to make verbs and subjects sound interesting. I grasped the topic easily, but the teacher still cajoled and did her song-and-dance routine for the other students. A lot of my time was wasted daydreaming and disengaged from the class because my learning style was so different than what they were offering.
It's as if classrooms have a collection of all sorts of light sources and they're trying to light as many as possible with the proven method of electricity. This works wonderfully with the incandescents and the fluorescents, but candles, oil lamps, LED's and klieg lights take special approaches that regular 110-volt electricity just won't light, at least not without some explosive results. On the other hand, if you have a lighter, a transformer, and other applications that are too specialized for the classroom approach, you can light the candles, LED's and kleig lights. Otherwise, you invest hours and hours trying to light a candle with an extension cord without much success. This is the flaw in the classroom system.
My own children learn from reading narratives and doing practical application more than watching the song-and-dance presentations. Thank God we homeschool, or they would be as turned off to learning as I was. Their minds would be dark and no amount of classroom juice would help light their love for learning.
Bring 'em home, folks!
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