Posted in Homeschooling
Here's a question that homeschoolers answer all the time but don't seem to really contemplate the consequences of. That question is:
The many answers to this question seem to be a hodge-podge of themes all reflecting back to a core belief, which is:
Why do you homeschool?
The many answers to this question seem to be a hodge-podge of themes all reflecting back to a core belief, which is:
Schools, public or private, are not as beneficial for my child as homeschooling.
The themes point to violence and corruption, like sex and drugs, in public schools, the negative impact of the social class structure of cliques, like the jocks, the goths, and the nerds, the curricula that points to chance and random variation as the origin for life, and the endless droning on of liberal educators teaching our children what we'd consider ludicrous under the best circumstances. Also, let's not forget that schools make great Wal-Mart clerks.
Huh?
Follow me on this one. Wal-Mart is one of the largest employers in the history of the world. Ever. Their staff is in the millions. Their earnings reports are used as indicators for our economy. That's huge. I would even wager they outnumber the burger flippers. It's an army of blue vests marching forward. Wal-Mart needs people to stock the shelves, run the registers, and help people find toilet paper, digital cameras, and self-sealing stem bolts. The education necessary for such a job is minimal. It's a McJob. Perhaps a small percentage of them might make manager, or even district manager, but they are drones in a hive.
David Allen writes, in his introduction to Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto,
South of Pueblo, Colorado, there's a monument in a ghost town called Ludlow. People used to think of Ludlow in the same way people think about Waco, Texas today. It was the site of a massacre of civilians by government troops. But instead of a group of cultists hoarding weapons, it was a group of striking coal miners wanting better conditions to work and live in. It was a costly disaster resulting in many deaths. This was one of many labor disputes of the day. Large business owners needed a reliable workforce that was docile and easy to work with. I need to emphasize that I'm still doing the research. Still, I'm wondering if they didn't look to standardize education in such a way that it would produce large quantities of human resources that they could use. After all, they were used to figuring out how to get better yields from crops and other resources. Why should human beings be any different? What's more, setting up schools makes you a philanthropist, a lover of mankind. Gatto's repeated theme seems to be that the government and business wants to teach us just enough to get by, but not enough to think for ourselves and make trouble.
For years, I have wondered what happened to the American Inventor. There's even a show out there looking for one. I think some of that show does more harm than good by maligning the more outrageous inventions. Hey, at least they're thinking...sort of, anyway. Back to the point, I remember that "American ingenuity" wasn't just a phrase stating that citizens of the United States were inherently better. I remember that it actually denoted people who thought for themselves, like Edison and Ford. Today, we admire Gates for his business sense, but the true innovators are lost, or not thinking.
My first experiences in public school echo Gatto and Allen. I remember sitting down in a circle in kindergarten and the teacher teaching us a song about a donkey. She said we needed something to give us the clip-clop sound of the donkey's hooves. I eagerly raised my hand, and told her about the sound I had learned to make with my tongue to sound like a clip-clop. But my offering was immediately dismissed and we all sat in silence until someone clued in and said we could use musical instruments, which was the answer the teacher was looking for all along. There was no room for true ingenuity or innovation in that circle, and something inside me got lost that I'm still looking for: the spark of ingenuity.
I imagine this sort of thing happens in kindergartens and grade schools often, and probably countless times in the 27 years since my experience. By the time a student reaches high school, they are dressing the same, acting the same -- even if it's goth, nerd, or jock -- and thinking for one's self is not nearly as profitable as "thinking with others." A century after the Ludlow massacre, the thought of an army of blue vests revolting or burger flippers causing a riot is ridiculous. But nearly as ridiculous is the idea of a great inventor like Edison rising out of a public school. Thousands of Edisons are running around today, trying to act the same and not do anything that might make them the outcast, the one fired from the group.
Homeschooling is one avenue for education that truly encourages inventiveness and ingenuity. Rather than force our children to fit into the egg carton, we let them explore their potential in as many ways as there are children in homeschooling. Maybe they will learn to emulate their Creator. Perhaps they will learn to use that spark of ingenuity.
The themes point to violence and corruption, like sex and drugs, in public schools, the negative impact of the social class structure of cliques, like the jocks, the goths, and the nerds, the curricula that points to chance and random variation as the origin for life, and the endless droning on of liberal educators teaching our children what we'd consider ludicrous under the best circumstances. Also, let's not forget that schools make great Wal-Mart clerks.
Huh?
Follow me on this one. Wal-Mart is one of the largest employers in the history of the world. Ever. Their staff is in the millions. Their earnings reports are used as indicators for our economy. That's huge. I would even wager they outnumber the burger flippers. It's an army of blue vests marching forward. Wal-Mart needs people to stock the shelves, run the registers, and help people find toilet paper, digital cameras, and self-sealing stem bolts. The education necessary for such a job is minimal. It's a McJob. Perhaps a small percentage of them might make manager, or even district manager, but they are drones in a hive.
David Allen writes, in his introduction to Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto,
Central to this understanding is the fact that schools are not failing. On the contrary, they are spectacularly successful in doing precisely what they are intended to do since their inception. ...[it was] explicitly set up to ensure a docile, malleable workforce to meet the growing demands of corporate capitalism...
South of Pueblo, Colorado, there's a monument in a ghost town called Ludlow. People used to think of Ludlow in the same way people think about Waco, Texas today. It was the site of a massacre of civilians by government troops. But instead of a group of cultists hoarding weapons, it was a group of striking coal miners wanting better conditions to work and live in. It was a costly disaster resulting in many deaths. This was one of many labor disputes of the day. Large business owners needed a reliable workforce that was docile and easy to work with. I need to emphasize that I'm still doing the research. Still, I'm wondering if they didn't look to standardize education in such a way that it would produce large quantities of human resources that they could use. After all, they were used to figuring out how to get better yields from crops and other resources. Why should human beings be any different? What's more, setting up schools makes you a philanthropist, a lover of mankind. Gatto's repeated theme seems to be that the government and business wants to teach us just enough to get by, but not enough to think for ourselves and make trouble.
For years, I have wondered what happened to the American Inventor. There's even a show out there looking for one. I think some of that show does more harm than good by maligning the more outrageous inventions. Hey, at least they're thinking...sort of, anyway. Back to the point, I remember that "American ingenuity" wasn't just a phrase stating that citizens of the United States were inherently better. I remember that it actually denoted people who thought for themselves, like Edison and Ford. Today, we admire Gates for his business sense, but the true innovators are lost, or not thinking.
My first experiences in public school echo Gatto and Allen. I remember sitting down in a circle in kindergarten and the teacher teaching us a song about a donkey. She said we needed something to give us the clip-clop sound of the donkey's hooves. I eagerly raised my hand, and told her about the sound I had learned to make with my tongue to sound like a clip-clop. But my offering was immediately dismissed and we all sat in silence until someone clued in and said we could use musical instruments, which was the answer the teacher was looking for all along. There was no room for true ingenuity or innovation in that circle, and something inside me got lost that I'm still looking for: the spark of ingenuity.
I imagine this sort of thing happens in kindergartens and grade schools often, and probably countless times in the 27 years since my experience. By the time a student reaches high school, they are dressing the same, acting the same -- even if it's goth, nerd, or jock -- and thinking for one's self is not nearly as profitable as "thinking with others." A century after the Ludlow massacre, the thought of an army of blue vests revolting or burger flippers causing a riot is ridiculous. But nearly as ridiculous is the idea of a great inventor like Edison rising out of a public school. Thousands of Edisons are running around today, trying to act the same and not do anything that might make them the outcast, the one fired from the group.
Homeschooling is one avenue for education that truly encourages inventiveness and ingenuity. Rather than force our children to fit into the egg carton, we let them explore their potential in as many ways as there are children in homeschooling. Maybe they will learn to emulate their Creator. Perhaps they will learn to use that spark of ingenuity.
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