Feb 16, 2006 12:35 pm ugh, that last paragraph is chilling.
good find dB.
Interesting view of US schools
Posted on Feb 16, 2006 12:04 pm
dbmasters
Administrator Since: Apr 03, 2002
www.thememoryhole.org/edu/school-mission.htm
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Feb 16, 2006 12:35 pm ugh, that last paragraph is chilling.
good find dB.
Feb 16, 2006 01:05 pm We homeschooled our daughter from 6th through 12th. We pulled her out of school in 6th grade because of those same reasons... She entered college with a high grade on the ACT (a perfect score on the Trig section) and graduated with a 3.6 GPA.
Feb 16, 2006 01:08 pm We have been discussing home schooling ourselves, my wife is a teacher, I have some reservations about home schooling, but they are starting to weigh a lot less on the scale.
Feb 16, 2006 01:16 pm The only difficulty is making sure you get the kids into some of the activities going on at the local school. Otherwise, they can be outcast. Public schools here in Idaho must (by law) allow homeschoolers to take whatever classes and join in any activities they want. A very favorable state for homeschools. There are homeschool co-ops too that share curriculum, do workshops, do joint classes, go on field trips, etc.
Feb 16, 2006 01:17 pm Yeah, we have those kinds of things here in Minnesota as well...I have heard some parents even take roles of teaching many kids subjects they are better at than other parents and things like that...which is really cool.
Feb 16, 2006 01:24 pm We even managed to homeschool while both my wife and I were working full time. Luckily, work is the University of Idaho and they never had any problem with me bringing my daughter to work with me. She had a UI library card at 14, and was taking classes here at 15. We also enrolled her in a dance school, childrens gymnastics, things like that.
Feb 16, 2006 01:50 pm I've seen some of the same problems in homeschooling. The singer/guitarist in my old band was home schooled for the last part of high school and being the geek that I am I read some of his text books... most of them were outdated by a couple decades...and the psychology one had a number of definitions that were just _wrong_ ... of course he graduated with an A in most courses.
I think a lot of the blame has to be put on the students... there is no reason for anyone above middleschool to not know where the US, UK, China, Russia are located...
I'm a terrible student, I'm happy to get a C in any math course...and I even failed 2 college courses... but that never stopped me from scoring above 1000 on the SAT when I took it in _7th Grade_
I also think our culture had drastically changed in the past 50 years shedding a lot of self reliance.... In a Linux vs Windows debate I actually heard a guy say to the hood-welded-shut argument "It's not like you fix your own car when it breaks down." ... we live in a society where people don't know how to remove a couple nuts to change a car tire... or change oil...
I think youth need programs to develop not only team building but self reliance... like Scouting/4-H ...
Feb 16, 2006 07:18 pm I have some major issues with the way schools are run. I always have, especially while I was going through them.
It's funny now that I'm in college... I feel as though I'm learning far more than I ever did in High School, and at the same time I feel a lot less pressure. One of the many problems with our school systems today is that they discourage students from learning about things that interest them by forcing them to memorize loads of crap they don't care about. All the wrong things are emphasized. There's no explanation for anything-- You're just taught to take it as it is. Instead of being taught how to write with proper grammar, we're taught to write persuasively on issues that we don't care about in very restricted formats that aren't even used in the real world. They teach us to be blindly opinionated instead of realistic and analytical.
I could go on and on but it's not going to make a differece. You get the idea.
Feb 16, 2006 07:24 pm One thing I reciently came up with is that I feel we have educational priorities of teachers backwards (I think) a lot of teachers go to college for a degree in education... but not in the subject they wish to teach. Imy Highschool Algebra teacher got his degree in phys-ed... sure didn't make him a very good math teacher.
Feb 17, 2006 10:11 pm That would explain why they now teach math in such and assanine fashion. I cannot comprehend how a kid could even biggin to uderstand or figure out problems the way they teach them to. I can solve them with my old fashioned math skills without issue. I even had a teacher mark several of my youngest sons problems wrong on his homework once. Needless to say, I called her out on the carpet infront of the school principal and other staff members. Then made her show me exactly what was wrong with his answer. She tried to explain he had not figured the problem correctly. I asked if the answer was correct though to which she stated yes. Again I asked why it was marked wrong when the answer given was correct. She started to sweat as did the principal, knowing that his answer indeed was correct. But they still stated he did not figure the problem out correctly. I lost my temper and began to let them know what I thought of this new math they were trying to teach. In the end he got an A as they did not want to deal with it. But now he is in junior high and the way they are teaching simple algebra is insane. The books themselves are completely out of this world.
Feb 18, 2006 09:22 am that brings back memories of my early algebra classes... I always did slope intecept (y=mx+b) in my head. The teacher (also the band director) was reviewing us with a barrage of problems which I would answer immeadiatly... one of the jocks finally yelled "Damn it Sam! I Don't even have my calculator on yet!"
That was the last math class I got an A in because afterwards they graded on "showing the work" and I always thought of math as being self-evident so I had problems with some of the larger expressions because nobody bothered to explain that factoring during "foil" is pretty much guesswork. I thought there was a system to determin the factors that I always missed.
Feb 18, 2006 10:46 am An advantage homeschool has over public school is that they can use any texts and as many as they want. We were fully aware of the possibility of errors (especially in history books) so we made sure we purchased several. And being in the US, we picked up some European ones just to balance the views. Most of the work assigned to our daughter was composition-based. No memorization, no multiple choice tests, in fact no tests in history at all. Everything was a composition. They were all completed using MS Word, Excel and paint programs. Graded on grammar, spelling, format, research, accuracy and readability. In college every research paper she did received an A...
Feb 18, 2006 10:06 pm That sounds like it was a winning idea DungBeatle. I wish I had the time to try that with my kids.
Feb 19, 2006 09:18 am I have to admit, it was rather time-consuming... Problem was, she was getting straight A's in elementary school, but at the same time being punished for poor behavior. In fact, she was even kicked out of school for a few days for her disrespect for the teachers and administrators. And she was not a hoodlum! She just didn't do what they wanted and would talk back if she disagreed. Plus she was having real problems with the other kids. We knew we had to do something or she was going to be difficult to handle. It all worked out! It gave her freedom from the system, a chance to get away from bullies and other problem kids. It turned her around. As far as I'm concerned, we had no other choice...
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