The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher
by John Taylor Gatto - 1991 New York State Teacher of the Year

Call me Mr. Gatto, please. Twenty-six years ago, having nothing better to do at the time, I tried my hand at schoolteaching. The license I hold certifies that I am an instructor of English language and English literature, but that isn't what I do at all. I don't teach English, I teach school -- and I win awards doing it.

Teaching means different things in different places, but seven lessons are universally taught from Harlem to Hollywood Hills. They constitute a national curriculum you pay for in more ways than you can imagine, so you might as well know what it is. You are at liberty, of course, to regard these lessons any way you like, but believe me when I say I intend no irony in this presentation. These are the things I teach, these are the things you pay me to teach. Make of them what you will.

1. CONFUSION

A lady named Kathy wrote this to me from Dubois, Indiana the other day:

   "What big ideas are important to little kids? Well, the biggest idea I think they need is that what they are learning isn't idiosyncratic -- that there is some system to it all and it's not just raining down on them as they helplessly absorb. That's the task, to understand, to make coherent."

Kathy has it wrong. The first lesson I teach is confusion. Everything I teach is out of context. I teach the un-relating of everything. I teach disconnections. I teach too much: the orbiting of planets, the law of large numbers, slavery, adjectives, architectural drawing, dance, gymnasium, choral singing, assemblies, surprise guests, fire drills, computer languages, parents' nights, staff-development days, pull-out programs, guidance with strangers my students may never see again, standardized tests, age-segregation unlike anything seen in the outside world....What do any of these things have to do with each other?

Even in the best schools a close examination of curriculum and its sequences turns up a lack of coherence, full of internal contradictions. Fortunately the children have no words to define the panic and anger they feel at constant violations of natural order and sequence fobbed off on them as quality in education. The logic of the school-mind is that it is better to leave school with a tool kit of superficial jargon derived from economics, sociology, natural science and so on than to leave with one genuine enthusiasm. But quality in education entails learning about something in depth. Confusion is thrust upon kids by too many strange adults, each working alone with only the thinnest relationship with each other, pretending for the most part, to an expertise they do not possess.

Meaning, not disconnected facts, is what sane human beings seek, and education is a set of codes for processing raw facts into meaning. Behind the patchwork quilt of school sequences and the school obsession with facts and theories, the age-old human search lies well concealed. This is harder to see in elementary school where the hierarchy of school experience seems to make better sense because the good-natured simple relationship of "let's do this" and "let's do that" is just assumed to mean something and the clientele has not yet consciously discerned how little substance is behind the play and pretense.

Think of the great natural sequences like learning to walk and learning to talk; following the progression of light from sunrise to sunset; witnessing the ancient procedures of a farmer, a smithy, or a shoemaker; watching your mother prepare a Thanksgiving feast -- all of the parts are in perfect harmony with each other, each action justifies itself and illuminates the past and the future. School sequences aren't like that, not inside a single class and not among the total menu of daily classes. School sequences are crazy. There is no particular reason for any of them, nothing that bears close scrutiny. Few teachers would dare to teach the tools whereby dogmas of a school or a teacher could be criticized since everything must be accepted. School subjects are learned, if they can be learned, like children learn the catechism or memorize the Thirty-nine Articles of Anglicanism.

I teach the un-relating of everything, an infinite fragmentation the opposite of cohesion; what I do is more related to television programming than to making a scheme of order. In a world where home is only a ghost, because both parents work, or because too many moves or too many job changes or too much ambition, or because something else has left everybody too confused to maintain a family relation, I teach you how to accept confusion as your destiny. That's the first lesson I teach.

2. CLASS POSITION

The second lesson I teach is class position. I teach that students must stay in the class where they belong. I don't know who decides my kids belong there but that's not my business. The children are numbered so that if any get away they can be returned to the right class. Over the years the variety of ways children are numbered by schools has increased dramatically, until it is hard to see the human beings plainly under the weight of numbers they carry. Numbering children is a big and very profitable undertaking, though what the strategy is designed to accomplish is elusive. I don't even know why parents would, without a fight, allow it to be done to their kids.

In any case, again, that's not my business. My job is to make them like it, being locked in together with children who bear numbers like their own. Or at the least to endure it like good sports. If I do my job well, the kids can't even imagine themselves somewhere else, because I've shown them how to envy and fear the better classes and how to have contempt for the dumb classes. Under this efficient discipline the class mostly polices itself into good marching order. That's the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place.

In spite of the overall class blueprint, which assumes that ninety-nine percent of the kids are in their class to stay, I nevertheless make a public effort to exhort children to higher levels of test success, hinting at eventual transfer from the lower class as a reward. I frequently insinuate that the day will come when an employer will hire them on the basis of test scores and grades, even though my own experience is that employers are rightly indifferent to such things. I never lie outright, but I've come to see that truth and schoolteaching are, at bottom, incompatible just as Socrates said they were thousands of years ago. The lesson of numbered classes is that everyone has a proper place in the pyramid and that there is no way out of your class except by number magic. Failing that, you must stay where you are put.

3. INDIFFERENCE

The third lesson I teach kids is indifference. I teach children not to care about anything too much, even though they want to make it appear that they do. How I do this is very subtle. I do it by demanding that they become totally involved in my lessons, jumping up and down in their seats with anticipation, competing vigorously with each other for my favor. It's heartwarming when they do that; it impresses everyone, even me. When I'm at my best I plan lessons very carefully in order to produce this show of enthusiasm. But when the bell rings I insist that they stop whatever it is that we've been working on and proceed quickly to the next work station. They must turn on and off like a light switch. Nothing important is ever finished in my class, nor in any other class I know of. Students never have a complete experience except on the installment plan.

Indeed, the lesson of the bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything? Years of bells will condition all but the strongest to a world that can no longer offer important work to do. Bells are the secret logic of schooltime; their logic is inexorable. Bells destroy the past and future, converting every interval into a sameness, as the abstraction of a map renders every living mountain and river the same, even though they are not. Bells inoculate each undertaking with indifference.

4. EMOTIONAL DEPENDENCY

The fourth lesson I teach is emotional dependency. By stars and red checks, smiles and frowns, prizes, honors and disgraces I teach kids to surrender their will to the predestined chain of command. Rights may be granted or withheld by any authority without appeal, because rights do not exist inside a school -- not even the right of free speech, as the Supreme Court has ruled -- unless school authorities say they do. As a schoolteacher, I intervene in many personal decisions, issuing a pass for those I deem legitimate, or initiating a disciplinary confrontation for behavior that threatens my control. Individuality is constantly trying to assert itself among children and teenagers, so my judgments come thick and fast. Individuality is a contradiction of class theory, a curse to all systems of classification.

Here are some common ways it shows up: children sneak away for a private moment in the toilet on the pretext of moving their bowels, or they steal a private instant in the hallway on the grounds they need water. I know they don't, but I allow them to deceive me because this conditions them to depend on my favors. Sometimes free will appears right in front of me in children angry, depressed or happy about things outside my ken; rights in such matters cannot be recognized by schoolteachers, only privileges that can be withdrawn, hostages to good behavior.

5. INTELLECTUAL DEPENDENCY

The fifth lesson I teach is intellectual dependency. Good people wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. It is the most important lesson, that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives. The expert makes all the important choices; only I, the teacher, can determine what you must study, or rather, only the people who pay me can make those decisions which I then enforce. If I'm told that evolution is a fact instead of a theory, I transmit that as ordered, punishing deviants who resist what I have been told to tell them to think. This power to control what children will think lets me separate successful students from failures very easily.

Successful children do the thinking I appoint them with a minimum of resistance and a decent show of enthusiasm. Of the millions of things of value to study, I decide what few we have time for, or actually it is decided by my faceless employers. The choices are theirs, why should I argue? Curiosity has no important place in my work, only conformity.

Bad kids fight this, of course, even though they lack the concepts to know what they are fighting, struggling to make decisions for themselves about what they will learn and when they will learn it. How can we allow that and survive as schoolteachers? Fortunately there are procedures to break the will of those who resist; it is more difficult, naturally, if the kid has respectable parents who come to his aid, but that happens less and less in spite of the bad reputation of schools. No middle-class parents I have ever met actually believe that their kid's school is one of the bad ones. Not one single parent in twenty-six years of teaching. That's amazing and probably the best testimony to what happens to families when mother and father have been well-schooled themselves, learning the seven lessons.

Good people wait for an expert to tell them what to do. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that our entire economy depends upon this lesson being learned. Think of what would fall apart if kids weren't trained to be dependent: the social-service businesses could hardly survive; they would vanish, I think, into the recent historical limbo out of which they arose. Counselors and therapists would look on in horror as the supply of psychic invalids vanished. Commercial entertainment of all sorts, including television, would wither as people learned again how to make their own fun. Restaurants, prepared-food and a whole host of other assorted food services would be drastically down-sized if people returned to making their own meals rather than depending on strangers to plant, pick, chop, and cook for them. Much of modern law, medicine, and engineering would go too, the clothing business and schoolteaching as well, unless a guaranteed supply of helpless people continued to pour out of our schools each year.

Don't be too quick to vote for radical school reform if you want to continue getting a paycheck. We've built a way of life that depends on people doing what they are told because they don't know how to tell themselves what to do. It's one of the biggest lessons I teach.

6. PROVISIONAL SELF-ESTEEM

The sixth lesson I teach is provisional self-esteem. If you've ever tried to wrestle a kid into line whose parents have convinced him to believe they'll love him in spite of anything, you know how impossible it is to make self-confident spirits conform. Our world wouldn't survive a flood of confident people very long, so I teach that your self-respect should depend on expert opinion. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged.

A monthly report, impressive in its provision, is sent into students' homes to signal approval or to mark exactly, down to a single percentage point, how dissatisfied with their children parents should be. The ecology of "good" schooling depends upon perpetuating dissatisfaction just as much as the commercial economy depends on the same fertilizer. Although some people might be surprised how little time or reflection goes into making up these mathematical records, the cumulative weight of the objective-seeming documents establishes a profile that compels children to arrive at certain decisions about themselves and their futures based on the casual judgment of strangers. Self-evaluation, the staple of every major philosophical system that ever appeared on the planet, is never considered a factor. The lesson of report cards, grades, and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents but should instead rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to be told what they are worth.

7. ONE CAN'T HIDE

The seventh lesson I teach is that one can't hide. I teach children they are always watched, that each is under constant surveillance by myself and my colleagues. There are no private spaces for children, there is no private time. Class change lasts three hundred seconds to keep promiscuous fraternization at low levels. Students are encouraged to tattle on each other or even to tattle on their own parents. Of course, I encourage parents to file their own child's waywardness too. A family trained to snitch on itself isn't likely to conceal any dangerous secrets.

I assign a type of extended schooling called "homework," so that the effect of surveillance, if not that surveillance itself, travels into private households, where students might otherwise use free time to learn something unauthorized from a father or mother, by exploration, or by apprenticing to some wise person in the neighborhood. Disloyalty to the idea of schooling is a Devil always ready to find work for idle hands.

The meaning of constant surveillance and denial of privacy is that no one can be trusted, that privacy is not legitimate. Surveillance is an ancient imperative, espoused by certain influential thinkers, a central prescription set down in The Republic, in The City of God, in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, in New Atlantis, in Leviathan, and in a host of other places. All these childless men who wrote these books discovered the same thing: children must be closely watched if you want to keep a society under tight central control. Children will follow a private drummer if you can't get them into a uniformed marching band.

II

It is the great triumph of compulsory government monopoly mass-schooling that among even the best of my fellow teachers, and among the best of my students' parents, only a small number can imagine a different way to do things. "The kids have to know how to read and write, don't they?"  "They have to know how to add and subtract, don't they?"  "They have to learn to follow orders if they ever expect to keep a job."

Only a few lifetimes ago things were very different in the United States. Originality and variety were common currency; our freedom from regimentation made us the miracle of the world; social-class boundaries were relatively easy to cross; our citizenry was marvelously confident, inventive, and able to do much for themselves independently, and to think for themselves. We were something special, we Americans, all by ourselves, without government sticking its nose into our lives, without institutions and social agencies telling us how to think and feel. We were something special, as individuals, as Americans.

But we've had a society essentially under central control in the United States since just before the Civil War, and such a society requires compulsory schooling, government monopoly schooling, to maintain itself. Before this development schooling wasn't very important anywhere. We had it, but not too much of it, and only as much as an individual wanted. People learned to read, write, and do arithmetic just fine anyway; there are some studies that suggest literacy at the time of the American Revolution, at least for non-slaves on the Eastern seaboard, was close to total. Thomas Paine's Common Sense sold 600,000 copies to a population of 3,000,000, twenty percent of whom were slaves, and fifty percent indentured servants.

Were the colonists geniuses? No, the truth is that reading, writing, and arithmetic only take about one hundred hours to transmit as long as the audience is eager and willing to learn. The trick is to wait until someone asks and then move fast while the mood is on. Millions of people teach themselves these things, it really isn't very hard. Pick up a fifth-grade math or rhetoric textbook from 1850 and you'll see that the texts were pitched then on what would today be considered college level. The continuing cry for "basic skills" practice is a smoke screen behind which schools preempt the time of children for twelve years and teach them the seven lessons I've just described to you.

The society that has become increasingly under central control since just before the Civil War shows itself in the lives we lead, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, and the green highway signs we drive by from coast to coast, all of which are the products of this control. So, too, I think, are the epidemics of drugs, suicide, divorce, violence, cruelty, and the hardening of class into caste in the United States products of the dehumanization of our lives, the lessening of individual, family, and community importance, a diminishment that proceeds from central control. The character of large compulsory institutions is inevitable; they want more and more until there isn't any more to give. School takes our children away from any possibility of an active role in community life -- in fact it destroys communities by relegating the training of children to the hands of certified experts -- and by doing so it ensures our children cannot grow up fully human. Aristotle taught that without a fully active role in community life one could not hope to become a healthy human being. Surely he was right. Look around you the next time you are near a school or an old people's reservation if you wish a demonstration.

School as it was built is an essential support system for a vision of social engineering that condemns most people to be subordinate stones in a pyramid that narrows as it ascends to a terminal of control. School is an artifice which makes such a pyramidical social order seem inevitable, although such a premise is a fundamental betrayal of the American Revolution. From colonial days through the period of the Republic we had no schools to speak of -- read Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography for an example of a man who had no time to waste in school -- and yet the promise of Democracy was beginning to be realized. We turned our backs on this promise by bringing to life the ancient pharaonic dream of Egypt: compulsory subordination for all. That was the secret Plato reluctantly transmitted in The Republic when Glaucon and Adeimantus exhorted from Socrates the plan for total state control of human life, a plan necessary to maintain a society where some people take more than their share. "I will show you," says Socrates, "how to bring about such a feverish city, but you will not like what I am going to say."  And so the blueprint of the seven-lesson school was first sketched.

The current debate about whether we should have a national curriculum is phony. We already have a national curriculum locked up in the seven lessons I have just outlined. Such a curriculum produces physical, moral, and intellectual paralysis, and no curriculum of content will be sufficient to reverse its hideous effects. What is currently under discussion in our national school hysteria about failing academic performance misses the point. Schools teach exactly what they are intended to teach and they do it well: how to be a good Egyptian and remain in your place in the pyramid.

III

None of this is inevitable. None of it is impossible to overthrow. We do have choices in how we bring up young people; there is no one right way. If we broke through the power of the pyramidical illusion we would see that. There is no life-and-death international competition threatening our national existence, difficult as that idea is even to think about, let alone believe, in the face of a continual media barrage of myth to the contrary. In every important material respect our nation is self-sufficient, including in energy. I realize that idea runs counter to the most fashionable thinking of political economists, but the "profound transformation" of our economy these people talk about is neither inevitable nor irreversible. Global economics does not speak to the public need for meaningful work, affordable housing, fulfilling education, adequate medical care, a clean environment, honest and accountable government, social and cultural renewal, or simple justice. All global ambitions are based on a definition of productivity and the good life so alienated from common human reality I am convinced it is wrong and that most people would agree with me if they could perceive an alternative. We might be able to see that if we regained a hold on a philosophy that locates meaning where meaning is genuinely to be found -- in families, in friends, in the passage of seasons, in nature, in simple ceremonies and rituals, in curiosity, generosity, compassion, and service to others, in a decent independence and privacy, in all the free and inexpensive things out of which real families, real friends and real communities are built -- then we would be so self-sufficient we would not even need the material "sufficiency" which our global "experts" are so insistent we be concerned about.

How did these awful places, these "schools", come about? Well, casual schooling has always been with us in a variety of forms, a mildly useful adjunct to growing up. But "modern schooling" as we know it is a by-product of the two "Red Scares" of 1848 and 1919, when powerful interests feared a revolution among our own industrial poor. Partly, too, total schooling came about because old-line American families were appauled by the native cultures of Celtic, Slavic, and Latin immigrants of the 1840s and felt repugnance towards the Catholic religion they brought with them. Certainly a third contributing factor in creating a jail for children called school must have been the consternation with which these same "Americans" regarded the movement of African-Americans through the society in the wake of the Civil War.

Look again at the seven lessons of schoolteaching: confusion, class position, indifference, emotional and intellectual dependency, conditional self-esteem, surveillance -- all of these things are prime training for permanent underclasses, people deprived forever of finding the center of their own special genius. And over time this training has shaken loose from its own original logic: to regulate the poor. For since the 1920s the growth of the school bureaucracy, and the less visible growth of a horde of industries that profit from schooling exactly as it is, has enlarged this institution's original grasp to the point that it now seizes the sons and daughters of the middle classes as well.

Is it any wonder Socrates was outraged at the accusation that he took money to teach? Even then, philosophers saw clearly the inevitable direction the professionalization of teaching would take, preempting the teaching function, which belongs to everyone in a healthy community.

With lessons like the ones I teach day after day it should be little wonder we have a real national crisis, the nature of which is very different from that proclaimed by the national media. Young people are indifferent to the adult world and to the future, indifferent to almost everything except the diversion of toys and violence. Rich or poor, schoolchildren who face the twenty-first century cannot concentrate on anything for very long; they have a poor sense of time past and time to come. They are mistrustful of intimacy like the children of divorce they really are (for we have divorced them from significant parental attention); they hate solitude, are cruel, materialistic, dependent, passive, violent, timid in the face of the unexpected, addicted to distraction.

All the peripheral tendencies of childhood are nourished and magnified to a grotesque extent by schooling, which, through its hidden curriculum, prevents effective personality development. Indeed, without exploiting the fearfulness, selfishness, and inexperience of children, our schools could not survive at all, nor could I as a certified schoolteacher. No common school that actually dared to teach the use of critical thinking tools -- like the dialectic, the heuristic, or other devices that free minds should employ -- would last very long before being torn to pieces. School has become the replacement for church in our secular society, and like church it requires that its teachings must be taken on faith.

It is time that we squarely face the fact that institutional schoolteaching is destructive to children. Nobody survives the seven-lesson curriculum completely unscathed, not even the instructors. The method is deeply and profoundly anti-educational. No tinkering will fix it. In one of the great ironies of human affairs, the massive rethinking the schools require would cost so much less than we are spending now that powerful interests cannot afford to let it happen. You must understand that first and foremost the business I am in is a jobs project and an agency for letting contracts. We cannot afford to save money by reducing the scope of our operation or by diversifying the product we offer, even to help children grow up right. That is the iron law of institutional schooling -- it is a business, subject neither to normal accounting procedures nor to the rational scalpel of competition.

Some form of free-market system in public schooling is the likeliest place to look for answers, a free market where family schools and small entrepreneurial schools and religious schools and crafts schools and farm schools exist in profusion to compete with government education. I'm trying to describe a free market in schooling just exactly like the one the country had until the Civil War, one in which students volunteer for the kind of education that suits them, even if that means self-education; it didn't hurt Benjamin Franklin that I can see. These options exist now in miniature, wonderful survivals of a strong and vigorous past, but they are available only to the resourceful, the courageous, the lucky, or the rich. The near impossibility of one of these better roads opening for the shattered families of the poor or for the bewildered host camped on the fringes of the urban middle class suggests that the disaster of seven-lesson schools is going to grow unless we do something bold and decisive with the mess of government monopoly schooling.

After an adult lifetime spent teaching school, I believe the method of mass-schooling is its only real content. Don't be fooled into thinking that good curriculum or good equipment or good teachers are the critical determinants of your son's or daughter's education. All the pathologies we've considered come about in large measure because the lessons of school prevent children from keeping important appointments with themselves and with their families to learn lessons in self-motivation, perseverance, self-reliance, courage, dignity, and love -- and lessons in service to others, too, which are among the key lessons of home and community life.

Thirty years ago [in the early 60s] these things could still be learned in the time left after school. But television has eaten up most of that time, and a combination of television and the stresses peculiar to two-income or single-parent families have swallowed up most of what used to be family time as well. Our kids have no time left to grow up fully human and only thin-soil wastelands to do it in.

A future is rushing down upon our culture which will insist all of us learn the wisdom of non-material experience; a future which will demand as the price of survival that we follow a path of natural life economical in material cost. These lessons cannot be learned in schools as they are. School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I should know.

Dude!!!!!!

Thread is long.  I will have to copy and read later.

Good, you'll really want to read this, anyone who doesn't is a fool. These writing really give you a peek into the world of our government school system.

So perfectly true. I've thought at one point in time or another everything in that essay.

Damn that's good! I dropped out of college because I couldn't stand learning about things I had no interest or saw any practical value in....now I spend most of my time reading or studying on my own! LOL. This guy is right on so many points.


Speed

tag for when I have time

tagged

Excellent article.

An insider hammering away at the paradigms of the education establishment.

Lots of food for thought in that piece.

The first thing I teach is confusion. The second lesson I teach is class position. The third lesson I teach kids is indifference. The fourth lesson I teach is emotional dependency. The fifth lesson I teach is intellectual dependency. The sixth lesson I teach is provisional self-esteem. The seventh lesson I teach is that one can't hide.

Staff Sergeant Leavy, is that you?

That's really disturbing.

*cough* home-school *cough*

Homeschool.

Tagged - cause I want to send a copy to a friend who is the Principal of a private Christian Highschool.

I started to say something like: He’s just enumerating what every high school kid knows.


Now that I’ve thought about it, I’m pretty sure that he is just enumerating stuff that I learned in my junior year at college.  Around that time is when I started to focus on stuff I wanted to learn if I really was going to do my degree as a profession. With that focus, came the realization that what I wanted to learn… was not part of what my professor was being paid to teach.

Fortunately, most of them made allowances for people that wanted to get outside the box. As a result of that narrow “allowance” of their time, I was able to actually learn a thing or two while obtaining my $50,000 piece of paper.  

.
.
.
Thought provoking post! Thank you.

tag

This thread is already interesting even without all the hucksters chiming in.

Quoted: *cough* home-school *cough*

[flame suit on]  Yup, that's a good idea.   In a world that is radically changing to one where communication is the absolute driving force for everything, you want to keep your child at home, learning only the basics about human communication.  

I see kids who have been home schooled in my class from time to time.  My son, eleven, is even friends with one, who's dad works at my school.   That boy is very intelligent, but can't communicate with people to save his life.  He is so emotionally immature, I can't believe it.  

This is the same for almost every child that I see home schooled.   They have deep, deep trouble communicating with other people.   They feel isolated, and out of the loop.  Maybe I'm wrong, but in a world where success is dependent on good communication skills, home schooled students start off with a distinct disadvantage.   Think about how often in your work, what ever it is you do, you have to communicate with others.   What if you were piss poor at it?  Could you do your job effectively?  

I realize that the edcuation that you get at a public school is far from great, and there are those "social" moments that you really don't want your kids exposed to, but damn, kids that can't communicate are really scary to be around.

Of course what the hell do I know, I only do this for a living.   [/flame suit on]

tag

Of course, we could send them off to the sewers of public indoctrination where prayer is forbidden, fingers pointing at people are guns, and birth control is passed out more than cough drops....

I've got his book 'dumbing us down' ... interesting stuff.

tagged to forward a copy

thanks, good read.

He'll be fired for that.

Does this guy have long hair?

I heard him speak a few years ago,at a HOME SCHOOL CONFERENCE.
He actually encourages it.He's a most entertaining and informative speaker/writer.You OWE it to your kids to check out his books.


As far as maladjusted kids being the result of homeschooling,well,yes and no.

First off,lots of kids are homeschooled due to the fact that they were already having social problems in regular school.Just couldn't get along-misfits,oddballs,etc.So why would you expect a difference if the are now homeschooled?
Second,lots of homeschoolers CAME (this is changing rapidly)from very strict or out of the mainstream religious sects.Or whacked out,earth-muffin,hippie sects.Or,fill in the blank.
What do expect of these kids?
Around here,we have tons of homeschoolers,and a large portion are military kids.Moms homeschool to give the kids some continuity in their education.
With all that is going on in our schools,esp. with the leftist agenda,it was a no-brainer decision for us.  

tag for later

Quoted: Quoted: *cough* home-school *cough* [flame suit on]  Yup, that's a good idea.   In a world that is radically changing to one where communication is the absolute driving force for everything, you want to keep your child at home, learning only the basics about human communication.   I see kids who have been home schooled in my class from time to time.  My son, eleven, is even friends with one, who's dad works at my school.   That boy is very intelligent, but can't communicate with people to save his life.  He is so emotionally immature, I can't believe it.   This is the same for almost every child that I see home schooled.   They have deep, deep trouble communicating with other people.   They feel isolated, and out of the loop.  Maybe I'm wrong, but in a world where success is dependent on good communication skills, home schooled students start off with a distinct disadvantage.   Think about how often in your work, what ever it is you do, you have to communicate with others.   What if you were piss poor at it?  Could you do your job effectively?   I realize that the edcuation that you get at a public school is far from great, and there are those "social" moments that you really don't want your kids exposed to, but damn, kids that can't communicate are really scary to be around. Of course what the hell do I know, I only do this for a living.   [/flame suit on]

That's pretty funny.My former boss,at his retirement party,talked about perhaps getting into a mentoring program,or perhaps teaching high school science.A coworker's husband,a TEACHER (and later Green party candidate),started shouting,"What makes you think you are qualified to teach? Do you have a degree in education?" Ben allowed that no,in fact,he did not,but perhaps his time as a Ranger (Vietnam),Masters in Forestry,Masters in Fisheries Management,and 30 plus year experience IN THE REAL WORLD would count as something.Dude wasn't swayed a bit.Way too typical of a lot of the teachers out there.    

Quoted: That's pretty funny.My former boss,at his retirement party,talked about perhaps getting into a mentoring program,or perhaps teaching high school science.A coworker's husband,a TEACHER (and later Green party candidate),started shouting,"What makes you think you are qualified to teach? Do you have a degree in education?" Ben allowed that no,in fact,he did not,but perhaps his time as a Ranger (Vietnam),Masters in Forestry,Masters in Fisheries Management,and 30 plus year experience IN THE REAL WORLD would count as something.Dude wasn't swayed a bit.Way too typical of a lot of the teachers out there.

How true.
Plenty of people out there with teaching degrees that can't teach for shit.  Like everything else I guess. And plenty out there with all kinds of knowledge and experience who might be great teachers.

Kind of ran into that myself. Thought about doing teaching now that I have quit medicine.  I won't bore you with all my credentials but I have a considerable knowledge of science and math that is very broadbased and comprehensive.  Excelled in physics, chem, biology, medicine and mathematics. Marine Corps Vet, Microbiologist, MD.  You'd think that would be in high demand. LOL.  

I live in a fairly remote rural area and I am sure that doesn't help but I can only imagine the advantages to kids to be taught by someone such as that.  Most science teachers leave a considerable amount to be desired in my experience. They just don't do a good job of tying it all together and connecting it all to the practical world.  It is also my experience that only those I have known with a deep understanding are able to do so.  Sure would have been nice if my kids had someone like that to teach them.  

I did have one school contact me last week and want me to take a course to get on their sub list.  I'm thinking about it but I am no longer as interested as I was.  We'll see.  

Quoted: How true. Plenty of people out there with teaching degrees that can't teach for shit.  Like everything else I guess. And plenty out there with all kinds of knowledge and experience who might be great teachers. Kind of ran into that myself. Thought about doing teaching now that I have quit medicine.  I won't bore you with all my credentials but I have a considerable knowledge of science and math that is very broadbased and comprehensive.  Excelled in physics, chem, biology, medicine and mathematics. Marine Corps Vet, Microbiologist, MD.  You'd think that would be in high demand. LOL.   I live in a fairly remote rural area and I am sure that doesn't help but I can only imagine the advantages to kids to be taught by someone such as that.  Most science teachers leave a considerable amount to be desired in my experience. They just don't do a good job of tying it all together and connecting it all to the practical world.  It is also my experience that only those I have known with a deep understanding are able to do so.  Sure would have been nice if my kids had someone like that to teach them.   I did have one school contact me last week and want me to take a course to get on their sub list.  I'm thinking about it but I am no longer as interested as I was.  We'll see.

The funny thing, and most misunderstood part about teaching, in my opinion, is the amount of subject knowledge needed to be effective.  

I agree that there are so many teachers out there that know far too little about what they are teaching, and are very ineffective.  That said, I've seen quite a few who have masters, or even doctorate degrees in their subject, but are absolutely incompetent in the classroom too.  

You know what the key is?   It isn't the knowledge base, although that is one important key, it's classroom management.    Is the person able to manage the classroom in an effective manor, or is it a chaotic mess?    Can the person foster a learning environment, where students are not afraid to fail, or challenge themselves?  The funny thing is, teachers are only trained in this area with just the basics.   I am always amazed at how little teachers are taught about how to manage the classroom.   I was shocked at how little I knew, when I started.   It was like being fed to the wolves, with pork chops tied to my ankles.

I agree that qualified people should be able to teach, even with out a "teaching degree".   My wife would make an excellent science teacher.   She has degrees in Microbiology, and Medical Technology, and probably most importantly, she has good management skills.   She would love to do it, too.  Maybe someday the unions won't make it so hard for "non-teachers" to work in the classroom.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: *cough* home-school *cough* [flame suit on]  Yup, that's a good idea.   In a world that is radically changing to one where communication is the absolute driving force for everything, you want to keep your child at home, learning only the basics about human communication.   I see kids who have been home schooled in my class from time to time.  My son, eleven, is even friends with one, who's dad works at my school.   That boy is very intelligent, but can't communicate with people to save his life.  He is so emotionally immature, I can't believe it.   This is the same for almost every child that I see home schooled.   They have deep, deep trouble communicating with other people.   They feel isolated, and out of the loop.  Maybe I'm wrong, but in a world where success is dependent on good communication skills, home schooled students start off with a distinct disadvantage.   Think about how often in your work, what ever it is you do, you have to communicate with others.   What if you were piss poor at it?  Could you do your job effectively?   I realize that the edcuation that you get at a public school is far from great, and there are those "social" moments that you really don't want your kids exposed to, but damn, kids that can't communicate are really scary to be around. Of course what the hell do I know, I only do this for a living.   [/flame suit on] That's pretty funny.My former boss,at his retirement party,talked about perhaps getting into a mentoring program,or perhaps teaching high school science.A coworker's husband,a TEACHER (and later Green party candidate),started shouting,"What makes you think you are qualified to teach? Do you have a degree in education?" Ben allowed that no,in fact,he did not,but perhaps his time as a Ranger (Vietnam),Masters in Forestry,Masters in Fisheries Management,and 30 plus year experience IN THE REAL WORLD would count as something.Dude wasn't swayed a bit.Way too typical of a lot of the teachers out there.

Perhaps he should have said "Those who can't...teach"

Not true for all, but definately true for some...

.

I went to college at a school with a lot of education majors.  I was always shocked at how little they were required to study take for certifications in various subjects.  It is a miracle your average science teacher understands that the Earth is round.

cool, thanks

tag

tag

ETA: link to the guy's website.

tag for when my eyes aren't burning for sleep...

I attribute a lot of my success to the fact that I was only subjected to 9.5 years total (including kindergarten) of any form of education system.

Quoted: Quoted: How true. Plenty of people out there with teaching degrees that can't teach for shit.  Like everything else I guess. And plenty out there with all kinds of knowledge and experience who might be great teachers. Kind of ran into that myself. Thought about doing teaching now that I have quit medicine.  I won't bore you with all my credentials but I have a considerable knowledge of science and math that is very broadbased and comprehensive.  Excelled in physics, chem, biology, medicine and mathematics. Marine Corps Vet, Microbiologist, MD.  You'd think that would be in high demand. LOL.   I live in a fairly remote rural area and I am sure that doesn't help but I can only imagine the advantages to kids to be taught by someone such as that.  Most science teachers leave a considerable amount to be desired in my experience. They just don't do a good job of tying it all together and connecting it all to the practical world.  It is also my experience that only those I have known with a deep understanding are able to do so.  Sure would have been nice if my kids had someone like that to teach them.   I did have one school contact me last week and want me to take a course to get on their sub list.  I'm thinking about it but I am no longer as interested as I was.  We'll see.   The funny thing, and most misunderstood part about teaching, in my opinion, is the amount of subject knowledge needed to be effective.   I agree that there are so many teachers out there that know far too little about what they are teaching, and are very ineffective.  That said, I've seen quite a few who have masters, or even doctorate degrees in their subject, but are absolutely incompetent in the classroom too.   You know what the key is?   It isn't the knowledge base, although that is one important key, it's classroom management.    Is the person able to manage the classroom in an effective manor, or is it a chaotic mess?    Can the person foster a learning environment, where students are not afraid to fail, or challenge themselves?  The funny thing is, teachers are only trained in this area with just the basics.   I am always amazed at how little teachers are taught about how to manage the classroom.   I was shocked at how little I knew, when I started.   It was like being fed to the wolves, with pork chops tied to my ankles. I agree that qualified people should be able to teach, even with out a "teaching degree".   My wife would make an excellent science teacher.   She has degrees in Microbiology, and Medical Technology, and probably most importantly, she has good management skills.   She would love to do it, too.  Maybe someday the unions won't make it so hard for "non-teachers" to work in the classroom.

I wouldn't count on it.
The NEA is a very powerful organization which is also a left wing socialist one. They are not likely to give up the stranglehold on the profession any time soon. Further, they must make sure that only those suitably brainwashed into socialism are given the opportunity to indoctrinate our children. It would be nearly humorous if it weren't all so sad.

I thought it would be an opportunity to give something to the kids and make a little spare cash. Less interested now as I said and while I am still considering it I will probably do something else.

Tell me how private schools are any different.  What he's talking about are symptoms of modern pedagogy.  There's no separation between 'government run' and 'private' here.  And it's nothing compared to the Jesuits!  

Quoted: Quoted: How true. Plenty of people out there with teaching degrees that can't teach for shit.  Like everything else I guess. And plenty out there with all kinds of knowledge and experience who might be great teachers. Kind of ran into that myself. Thought about doing teaching now that I have quit medicine.  I won't bore you with all my credentials but I have a considerable knowledge of science and math that is very broadbased and comprehensive.  Excelled in physics, chem, biology, medicine and mathematics. Marine Corps Vet, Microbiologist, MD.  You'd think that would be in high demand. LOL.   I live in a fairly remote rural area and I am sure that doesn't help but I can only imagine the advantages to kids to be taught by someone such as that.  Most science teachers leave a considerable amount to be desired in my experience. They just don't do a good job of tying it all together and connecting it all to the practical world.  It is also my experience that only those I have known with a deep understanding are able to do so.  Sure would have been nice if my kids had someone like that to teach them.   I did have one school contact me last week and want me to take a course to get on their sub list.  I'm thinking about it but I am no longer as interested as I was.  We'll see.   The funny thing, and most misunderstood part about teaching, in my opinion, is the amount of subject knowledge needed to be effective.   I agree that there are so many teachers out there that know far too little about what they are teaching, and are very ineffective.  That said, I've seen quite a few who have masters, or even doctorate degrees in their subject, but are absolutely incompetent in the classroom too.   You know what the key is?   It isn't the knowledge base, although that is one important key, it's classroom management.    Is the person able to manage the classroom in an effective manor, or is it a chaotic mess?    Can the person foster a learning environment, where students are not afraid to fail, or challenge themselves?  The funny thing is, teachers are only trained in this area with just the basics.   I am always amazed at how little teachers are taught about how to manage the classroom.   I was shocked at how little I knew, when I started.   It was like being fed to the wolves, with pork chops tied to my ankles. I agree that qualified people should be able to teach, even with out a "teaching degree".   My wife would make an excellent science teacher.   She has degrees in Microbiology, and Medical Technology, and probably most importantly, she has good management skills.   She would love to do it, too.  Maybe someday the unions won't make it so hard for "non-teachers" to work in the classroom.

The interesting thing about most university professors at top universities (the Harvard, Stanford, U. Penn, Michigan, MIT, Washington, Princeton, etc.) is that they have NEVER received ANY instruction in "teaching" or education.  They are just really smart people, who are experts in their fields, and who FIGURED OUT how to teach.  I don't know anyone among our faculty, or collegaues I know at other top universities that have ever taken a class on teaching or education, yet all do well in the classroom.

Kind of illustrates just how useful it is to spend years in college getting an "education" degree - what do they even take in terms of classes, and do during that kind of a major?  

The reality is that teaching is really not that difficult.  Sure, there are the occasional instructors who suck ass, and have a hard time at it, and of course you pick up some tricks along the way, but it is generally considered pretty easy - shown by the fact that university professors that fail at research generally step down to teaching schools, or switch to teaching jobs.  While I consider the research component of my job devilishly difficult, I consider the teaching easy (and I consider the three months out of the year that I teach a "vacation" from my real job, the research)

Quoted: Students are encouraged to tattle on each other or even to tattle on their own parents. Of course, I encourage parents to file their own child's waywardness too. A family trained to snitch on itself isn't likely to conceal any dangerous secrets. I assign a type of extended schooling called "homework," so that the effect of surveillance, if not that surveillance itself, travels into private households, where students might otherwise use free time to learn something unauthorized from a father or mother, by exploration, or by apprenticing to some wise person in the neighborhood. Disloyalty to the idea of schooling is a Devil always ready to find work for idle hands.

What's wrong with that?

Quoted: [flame suit on]  Yup, that's a good idea.   In a world that is radically changing to one where communication is the absolute driving force for everything, you want to keep your child at home, learning only the basics about human communication.

You know nothing about home-school.

All of the home-schooled kids I've met are polite, well-spoken and interested in learning.  You may be confusing being polite with lacking social skills, and in this culture that's not surprising.  Kids are expected to curse every other word, to talk back, to butt in, and everything else.  If they don't they're lacking social skills.

Most home-schooled kids interact with other home-schooled kids, and get to know other adults as PEOPLE, not as some faceless authority figure.  This helps them mature.  Being taught a bunch of random, PC'd factoids by a bunch of strange adults who don't give a whit about the kid's future, and spending the rest of the time learning about life with a bunch of other immature kids with no supervision, all the while being away from the parents except for a few moments before bed, is very bad for a child's growth.

I see kids who have been home schooled in my class from time to time.  My son, eleven, is even friends with one, who's dad works at my school.   That boy is very intelligent, but can't communicate with people to save his life.  He is so emotionally immature, I can't believe it.

Good ol' anecdotal evidence.  Where would we be without it?  I suppose kids in school ARE emotionally mature?  HA HA HA HA!

This is the same for almost every child that I see home schooled.   They have deep, deep trouble communicating with other people.   They feel isolated, and out of the loop.  Maybe I'm wrong, but in a world where success is dependent on good communication skills, home schooled students start off with a distinct disadvantage.   Think about how often in your work, what ever it is you do, you have to communicate with others.   What if you were piss poor at it?  Could you do your job effectively?

How many home-schooled kids do you know?  I know a lot.  In fact, my six siblings and I were home-schooled our entire lives (until college).  Sure, there are going to be some home-schooled kids who lack social skills and are quiet and don't talk much, but that is certainly not the rule.  I was like that, but I blame Asperger's syndrome much more than home-schooling.  There are always some factors that you don't see on the surface.

I realize that the edcuation that you get at a public school is far from great, and there are those "social" moments that you really don't want your kids exposed to, but damn, kids that can't communicate are really scary to be around.

That's your problem, not theirs.  If they can't communicate well but they are good, successful people, who are you to judge them?

Of course what the hell do I know, I only do this for a living.

What, you're a teacher?  Conflict of intrests.  

You may teach for a living, but my entire school-aged LIFE was spent being home-schooled and interacting with other home-schooled kids.  I think I know a bit more than you on the subject.

The very system he describes worked well for me and most of the students with whom I went to school.  Out of 200 students in my highchool class, 199 went to college.  I only knew two students who dropped out before graduation.    It worked for my parents and their generation.  

I'm not saying that there couldn't be improvements to the exisiting system or that some things may be inherently problematic in public ed, but this guy makes it sound like these are all new issues.  

How can an educator not approve of homework?  I learned a lot from homework.  

Some form of free-market system in public schooling is the likeliest place to look for answers, a free market where family schools and small entrepreneurial schools and religious schools and crafts schools and farm schools exist in profusion to compete with government education. I'm trying to describe a free market in schooling just exactly like the one the country had until the Civil War, one in which students volunteer for the kind of education that suits them, even if that means self-education; it didn't hurt Benjamin Franklin that I can see. These options exist now in miniature, wonderful survivals of a strong and vigorous past, but they are available only to the resourceful, the courageous, the lucky, or the rich. The near impossibility of one of these better roads opening for the shattered families of the poor or for the bewildered host camped on the fringes of the urban middle class suggests that the disaster of seven-lesson schools is going to grow unless we do something bold and decisive with the mess of government monopoly schooling.

I couldn't agree more and have long felt that the free market in education was the answer to the challenges facing both education and the nation.

I did ask my son who did very well in HS and is now a freshman in college.
What did they do well?
He couldn't really answer that.
What did they do poorly?
"They didn't push me hard enough to develop decent study habits."
The gist of the conversation we had was that they were taught a lot of watered down, PC crap geared towards the least common denominator.  No surprise there, of course.

Quoted: The very system he describes worked well for me and most of the students with whom I went to school.  Out of 200 students in my highchool class, 199 went to college.  I only knew two students who dropped out before graduation.

That's awesome. I would say that the school system you went to was likley in the top few percent.

It worked for my parents and their generation.

Public school education has changed a helluva lot since my generation.

I'm not saying that there couldn't be improvements to the exisiting system or that some things may be inherently problematic in public ed, but this guy makes it sound like these are all new issues.

Some are. How much worse it has become is the issue, I think. PC, watered down crap all to often.
Remember also, that anyone in the public school system now has nothing to compare it to. And you are also competing only with people doing the same thing in the same system as you.  Lacks perspective IOWs.

American education really takes place in college for most all and many are ill prepared for it when they get there.

I have had the privelege of taking care of plenty of foreign exchange students and they have all stated, universally and without exception, that our school system is a joke. Granted there are shining beacons of how it should be done out there, but they are not the norm.

How can an educator not approve of homework?  I learned a lot from homework.

I didn't get that at all. Perhaps I missed something as I skimmed it for the most part. I think the point he was trying to make was that our priorities are messed up.
No doubt, everything else seems totally backasswards these days, why should education be any different?  And having been a product of the public education system(HS grad '76) and higher education as well as hving 2 grown kids, one in college now, I can tell you it has its shortcomings.

Truthfully, I am just as worried-angered-puzzled as anyone about the current state of affairs of the public education system.  

I live in Georgia and GA is routinely ranked 49th or 50th.  I live in Chatham County and Chatham County is routinely ranked last in GA.  I pay taxes for the worst of the worst public ed system and I have a 9 month year old son. I doubt I'll have enough money to pay for private ed so I am worried and concerned.  

I read in our paper that 33% of our county's 6th graders get suspended from school.  That  stat nearly made my knees buckle.  That's a lot of behavioral problems.  These kids are undisciplined.  I largely blame the parents for this.

Yep. I always blame the watered down PC crap they are teaching too so that less people are offended and more students pass.  I largely blame educators and their politician adminstrators for this.   I blame the schools for not focusing on basic knowledge more.There is a lot to be said for rote memorization of facts, vocabulary, history, math.  Yes, critical thinking is important too, but until you have the facts or ideas, you can't critique anything.    

But I don't blame  the state of education on teaching multiple subjects during the day (his lesson of confusion), tracking students in classes (his lesson in position),  having to ask students to stop working on something and returning to it later/tomorrrow ( his lesson in indifference),  that they should obey people I tell my child to listen to (his lesson in emotional dependency),  that kids should learn from people who know more than them (his lesson in intellectual dependency),  that kids learn that their self-esteem should be basedon performance and behavior (his lesson in provisional self-esteem), and that kids are watched by adults (his lesson in learning they can't hide).  Its true that all these things could be detrimental if used that way, but there is nothing inherently wrong with them either. The thing about homework being surveillance is tinfoil hattery.

The best private schools do all of the above even more than public schools.

Having said all that -- unless I figure out a way to earn more money or move, there is a good chance that my wife will be homeschooling our boy.  

Quoted: How can an educator not approve of homework?  I learned a lot from homework.

You shouldn't need to "learn" from homework.  The information/concept should be learned in class and provide an interest in the student to learn more on their own.  Currently homework is just review work.

Quoted: Quoted: *cough* home-school *cough* [flame suit on]  Yup, that's a good idea.   In a world that is radically changing to one where communication is the absolute driving force for everything, you want to keep your child at home, learning only the basics about human communication.   I see kids who have been home schooled in my class from time to time.  My son, eleven, is even friends with one, who's dad works at my school.   That boy is very intelligent, but can't communicate with people to save his life.  He is so emotionally immature, I can't believe it.   This is the same for almost every child that I see home schooled.   They have deep, deep trouble communicating with other people.   They feel isolated, and out of the loop.  Maybe I'm wrong, but in a world where success is dependent on good communication skills, home schooled students start off with a distinct disadvantage.   Think about how often in your work, what ever it is you do, you have to communicate with others.   What if you were piss poor at it?  Could you do your job effectively?   I realize that the edcuation that you get at a public school is far from great, and there are those "social" moments that you really don't want your kids exposed to, but damn, kids that can't communicate are really scary to be around. Of course what the hell do I know, I only do this for a living.   [/flame suit on]

I am the School Resource Officer for the school system in the city where I work.  I will print off a few copies of this and have some of the teachers read it.  

As for home schooling, I saw its effects a few months ago.  There was a 6th grader who was cought with a knife in school.  He was showing it off trying to make friends.  He had been homeschooled, but Mom and Dad didn't file the right paperwork to show a cirriculum.  They had to send him to public school until they got things straightened out.  The kid had no social skills whatsoever.  None at all.  He had no friends - mainly because he was so irritating.  He could be arrogent, rude, or very klingy/needy for attention.

However, he was absolutly brilliant.  He knew damn near everything.  I had to put effort into stumping him.  He was in a classroom with kids ranging from 6-12 grade.  In our school, when kids get suspended out of school they actually have to go to school from 3pm - 7:30 PM.  I am present during this time to supervise the OSS kids along with the alternative Education Program - basically the shitheads who can't make it in regular school, often due to dicipline problems but sometimes due to academic issues.  

This 6th grader could answer common questions that even the seniors didn't have a clue about.  Simple things like our Constitutional rights, our governemnt, basic geography, etc.  All the class together couldn't name all 7 continents, but this homeschooled 6th grader knew all of them along with the oceans - which the other kids collectively didn't know.  What's the second longest river in the world? - He knew it.  What's the capital of China?  He knew it.  What are the 9 planets in order? He knew them - in order.  How many moons does Mars have?  "Two" -and without hesitation.  What are their names? "Phobos and Deimos".  The kid knew it all.  What's the capital of Peru?  "Lima".  Who was our 4th President? "Madison".  It went on and on.  I could stump him, but I actually had to think about it.  And he's only 12!

Having seen just how fucked up our schools are - in many ways it's as much due to the parents as the schools - I will be VERY hesitant to send my kids to public schools.  There is absolutly no reason at all our public school kids can't be like the little homeschooled kid academically speaking.  Unfortunatly, with all the liberal/PC/NEA bullshit it'll never happen.

So whats the better way?


-K  

Quoted: This 6th grader could answer common questions that even the seniors didn't have a clue about.  Simple things like our Constitutional rights, our governemnt, basic geography, etc.  All the class together couldn't name all 7 continents, but this homeschooled 6th grader knew all of them along with the oceans - which the other kids collectively didn't know.  What's the second longest river in the world? - He knew it.  What's the capital of China?  He knew it.  What are the 9 planets in order? He knew them - in order.  How many moons does Mars have?  "Two" -and without hesitation.  What are their names? "Phobos and Deimos".  The kid knew it all.  What's the capital of Peru?  "Lima".  Who was our 4th President? "Madison".  It went on and on.  I could stump him, but I actually had to think about it.  And he's only 12!

I could have answered all of those questions in 3rd grade. I am totally serious and not bragging, The point is how far our schools have sunk if that is how it is now.  Dammnnnn

However, I will say that my 3rd grade teacher was a total bitch who singled me out for harrassment due to my family's religion.  I hate her guts to this day.
However:

Because of this I spent almost everyday in the school library where I read about the human body, the solar system, space travel, biographies, esp the Presidents...as well as having to pass all my tests and complete all of my homework.   I spent most of my time with my nose in the Encyclopedia Brittanica.  What can I say? Worked out okay and beyond everything else I learned to teach myself at an early age.  Sure paid off in college and medschool. I still remember showing up for tests only in college and others getting pissed when I would show the following period to pick up my test and having the highest grade in the class. Test after test....

In second grade I was drawing maps. Of EVERYTHING. When still in gradeschool we'd go on trips and my Dad would just hand me the maps while he drove.

Maybe I was a geek
But I was also very good in sports.

Having seen just how fucked up our schools are - in many ways it's as much due to the parents as the schools -

Totally due to the parents. All the rest is to make accomodations for behavioral problems and losers thanks to piss poor parenting.  
Show me a screwed up kid and I will show you lousy parents. In HS there may be exceptions but not in Elementary School.

I will be VERY hesitant to send my kids to public schools.  There is absolutly no reason at all our public school kids can't be like the little homeschooled kid academically speaking.  Unfortunatly, with all the liberal/PC/NEA bullshit it'll never happen. So whats the better way? -K

Hold parents accountable in some way.
Stick behavior problems in a separate class to waste their f'ing time and teach the ones who aren't all fucked up instead of this least common denominator crap. The world needs burger flippers and janitors also.
Teach the basics first, try to tie it together. Give the kids a framework to hang it all on and in particular really reinforce reading skills at an early age.  Kids cannot read for shit anymore. It is pathetic.
Teach them HOW TO LEARN, how to teach themselves.

Just a few starts.