I am truly honored that my cousin visited this site and left a comment. It truly put the wheels in motion as I thought about what he had to say. I encourage you to go read it. It is under Let Freedom Ring. He says in his comment
"As Bourdieu puts it, individuals without capital are "condemned to live in a time oriented by others (which is truly alienated). This is the fate of the dominated."
I totally agree, but how do we get these capitals, and how do we free ourselves from this bondage of being the dominated?
We have incredibly different views on what education is. It may have something to do with the fact that he is well into his PhD and I am just starting my Bachelors degree.
But as such I am in a quandary. What is education?
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
- Mark Twain
Are schooling and education the same thing?
I am one of those people who went thru 13 years of formal "Education" and came out the other end with the Happy stamp of graduated and wondered to myself "what have I learned?" I could add a bit (I have gotten much better by working with my kids in arithmetic), I couldn't write very well, I couldn't take direction very well, I couldn't balance a check book. But yet whose responsibility was it to teach me these things? I can answer that question now, I was, I was responsible to teach myself those things.
"Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is." - Isaac Asimov
It has only been recently as I have studied what will be the best “education” for my children that I have learned that self education is the best kind. Never in my schooling career was I ever told it was up to me to become “educated”. It was up to me to memorize the facts that were going to be on the test, it was up to me to learn the teacher’s behavior so I could conform to it, it was up to me to care if I got my homework done that I cared nothing about and it interested me very little.
I can remember a time in high school when I believed I could write and I wrote a lot. Then came grade 11 English class. All I remember about grade 11 English class was that was the year I learned I couldn’t write because the teacher was anal about the form instead of the content. She never took me aside and said here’s how you do it. She just kept failing me. I still have issues about that to this day and it is 11 years later. I could have started over and been in her class again.
So I ask you what is education? Is it schooling? Is it memorizing facts to regurgitate for the test? Is it higher test scores? Is it learning social skills from the bully down the street? Is the law of the playground the best place to learn how to cope with other people?
These are questions I have at the moment. These are the things I think about a lot.
But this morning I had a bit of a ray of sunshine in my rather hectic day. I woke up to see my 8 year old daughter reading Charles Dickens. She was reading “Great Expectations” and she was asking me questions about it and I was asking her questions, and we had a discussion about Pip and all his money and it was phenomenal. So perhaps that is education.
Now I am not saying public school is the root of all evil. I know some really great people who were public schooled and came out educated, but these were the people who still had their love of learning intact and didn’t care what negative things a teacher had to say. But some of us whose only objective was to please and the teacher saying “not good enough” is very hurtful and discouraging. Public School is good for some and home school is good for some.
If “socialization” is your only objective to home schooling I ask you to ask yourself what are you socializing them for? If the job force is your answer than how is it that kids of the same birth year being put together in a class where everyone is competing for the teachers attention and affection similar to true life. It is as artificial as it gets. I have had many, many jobs where the people I worked with were not born in the same year I was. And guess what we still got along. I am venting now. I have been attacked a few too many times on this same note and have had to defend it one too many times. I have had too many negative responses to the comment “we home educate our children”. Why do people get so incredibly defensive about their choices? So you public school your kids, I home school so what? Why can’t we all just get along?
“I’d like to buy the world a coke in live in harmony.”
OK so to sum it all up what I am trying to say is make the right choice for your child because you studied it, not because that’s what everyone else is doing, or because, its what your parents did, but because you studied all the options and came up with the best choice for that particular child, be it home school or public school.
You are the expert in your home.
3 comments:
I am terribly sorry if you felt attacked: I was merely presenting work that I have been studying, which happens to present a case that runs counter to the one you make.
All I was saying is that you learn more at a public school than what you are being taught. That is, how to negotiate the public space where you bump up against people who are different than you. Those lessons are learned as a form of capital. Knowing how to act on the job is just as important as what you know about the job.
This knowledge is more than socialization; if effects the individual on a much deeper level, and effects how the individual shapes the world they live in.
The sad fact is that experiences like the one you encountered in Grade 11 are not uncommon. I had many such experiences that have stayed with me as well.
Yet, what you learn from that interaction is that the world is not always friendly, how to handle criticism, how to deal with negativity.
I remain - and the social scientific literature backs me up on this point - unconvinced that you will ever learn this in a homeschool.
The argument is often that "well, my kids go to these activities and church" - which is fine - your kids will learn how to encounter activity time and church time. There are no hard lessons in these settings.
So yes, you (like I) came out of school with the happy stamp, and we will never remember the lessons taught to us in grade 12 math or the anatomy of a frog... or what have you.
What we DO remember are the school dances, the days we skipped class and went to the coffee shop, our first crush, the evil gym teachers, the bully's and the people we perhaps bullied ourselves.
That is - we remember the people; we remember the social aspects; we remembered how to react and how not to react... on and on.
So perhaps there needs to be a balance - a heavy dose of self education (as what I am doing in my Phd - in sociology - no one tells me what to study, or when... if I don't do the work, I don't get the degree... simple as that. And yes. I have learned much more about the "knowable world" - that is, how to write, how to do high level math etc).
Yet, these social lessons are VITALLY important as well. These lessons can be tough, hurtful, savage even.
Again, I make these arguments not to attack you. Not at all. Yet, my career - as a sociologist, the training I have recieved - qualify me as someone who has the knowledge to make these arguments. That is, I am not merely reacting on a moral ground here (which I am sure you encounter all the time); I am reacting with reason, research, and insight into the social world.
Unfortunately, as a sociologist, this is the only qualification I have. I cannot and will not tell you that your descision to homeschool is good or bad; I cannot tell you about how this is going to psychologically effect your beautiful children.
Paul, I don't think Peggy was saying she felt attacked by you. To me, it looked like she was saying other ppl, maybe even ppl she considers her friends have questioned her decision to homeschool. And Peggy, I have no idea if you're a Dr. Phil fan, but I do remember him saying once on a show of his that home schooling, up to Gr. 8, does not have a negative effect on children. At least I think that's how he worded it.
That last comment was me, Kim.
Post a Comment