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>There's also not enough emphasis on motivation. The emphasis is on passing tests. If you're motivated, you can learn anything. My problem with education is th

>There's also not enough emphasis on motivation. The emphasis is on passing tests. If you're motivated, you can learn anything. My problem with education is that there is no 'one-size-fits-all' policy. Some kids fail hard in a structured system that puts emphasis on passing tests, other thrive in it but fail in a less structured 'find-your-own-motivation' system. Like a pendulum we just keep swinging back and forth and realize we keep missing a portion of the kids. I don't know how you fix it because it's expensive to tailor education to a kid. I guess it's all up to the parents.

codingdave 11y ago
Your last sentence is exactly how you fix it - as parents, you are responsible for each child's education. We have, at times, homeschooled each child, and also sent each of them to school, exactly because of the issues you and the other comment raised. They went to kindergarten to learn how to listen to people other than their parents and make friends. My social daughter came home for 6 months, then went right back to public school. My introverted and shy son came home for 2 years, and is going back to school this coming year because we're not doing well at teaching him... we see our failures there, and don't want to exaggerate them any more. Plus, he wants more friends, too. We expect they will probably all skip jr. high, as they will be old enough to learn on their own, and the social scene is just painful at the age, and then I'll leave it to them if they want to do the high school experience, or just get a GED and move on to other adventures in their teens. There also are online teacher-led schools in most states now. Both private and public There are home schooling groups that meet together so each parent can teach a groups of kids in their areas of expertise. There are online curriculum you can purchase, and hard copy curriculum. On short, there are choices. Many, many choices. As parents, we need to help our children find the path that is right for each one of them, and it is a more complex decision than a one-time choice to either home school or attend the public schools. As in most things, a middle ground is often a better, if more complex, answer.
- zanny 11y ago
  > I'll leave it to them if they want to do the high school experience This is incredibly valuable, I think. The option to leave a toxic environment. My best years in public education were the year I broke my knees and was deemed unfit to attend class for the second half of the year - necessitating a three day a week visit from my science teacher to give me an hour of tutelage. Not being around my insanely hostile 8th grade peers got me a semester of straight As and I got the highest score in the class on the algebra one final without even being there. The other best year was 12th grade, when I took 4 AP courses and study halls. I'd be with good instructors, small class sizes, and peers who were as motivated to succeed as I was. Even honors programs are the domains of parents shoving their kids into the classes through brute force of aggravation with the principal - they just don't want to hear that their kids do not want that, they need their kids to be in honors classes. And they end up ruining those classes for any teacher that gives a damn and for the kids who are there of their own will. The only important thing to take away is that even an 18 year old is making incredibly short sighted mistakes. If I ever have kids, they would need to consistently want to either reenter school or leave it to make such a switch of their own volition. It has to be a decision not only made over the long term but its ramifications need to be absorbed over such a term. I would almost certainly never throw them through the public school imagination crusher, unless I had incredible faith in the school. I'd rather go bankrupt hiring private tutors and getting them peer exposure at recreation centers and extracurriculars.
jessaustin 11y ago
I guess it's all up to the parents. It would be no panacea if most children's education were up to their parents, but it would be a marked improvement on the current USA public schools model, which is, "We teach one way and if your kid can't learn that's her or his problem." Always vote for more school choice.
- macspoofing 11y ago
  It doesn't have to be an either-or. Even in a crappy school district, parental involvement will play a huge difference!!
  - skolor 11y ago
    There's quite a bit of research to support this[1]. Basically, regardless of any other factors, increased parental involvement consistently shows better performance. [1] https://www.nea.org/tools/17360.htm https://www.nea.org/tools/17360.htm
- SiVal 11y ago
  Homeschooling in the US works out much better now than it did in the time the article describes, because the government did something out of character: it actually returned some liberty to parents that it had taken from them. When parents were once again allowed to homeschool their own children legally, a diverse free market in educational resources re-emerged--one that had flourished in the early days of the country. Now that there is no longer a reason to operate secretly, homeschooling parents can seek out other parents with similar homeschooling objectives and cooperate. Among the first to do this were religious parents, but every year the percentage of homeschoolers who do it for religious reasons declines. More and more parents are doing it for reasons such as wanting to give their bright kids more advanced classes than the schools are willing or able to provide (that's my own incentive), or to more effectively deal with a child's specific educational needs, or to allow a child to have a "career" (e.g., acting or sports) while still a minor. Even those of us sending our kids to public schools benefit from this market in homeschooling options. We would be able to benefit a lot more if the "progressive" politicians employed by the teachers unions to keep the decision-making power and money they have wrested from the people from ever reverting back to parents weren't so numerous and well-funded. Many of us, for example, would love to switch to a partial public / partial private arrangement where our kids could sign up for some of the school classes without being forced to take all or none (while paying full price either way). For example, we might choose PE, sports, and drama (for social), science (for lab facilities), and math (parents might not know it well enough) from school, but choose to do English at home, programming online, art at a local art school, and Chinese from a parents' collective. (And I would be willing to continue paying full fare for the public school while using only part of its program if the remainder were rebated, not to me, but to low-income families in the form of educational vouchers they could use outside school.) We can do many of those things after school, but the problem is how late "after school" is each day, and how much time after school has to be wasted on useless school homework, because of the requirement that if our kids want any of the benefits the school offers, they are forced to take it all (as part of the political strategy to make opting out of any of the government-controlled system as painful and impractical as possible.) My kids' desire for the social experience of school and my desire that they get excellent educations result in a very long day for them, and I would cut out more than half of their school classes (and even more of the homework) if I were free to do so and give it to my kids as play time. Full socialization from partial school, higher-quality education from the free market, plus more play time? Still illegal in most states.

codingdave 11y ago

Your last sentence is exactly how you fix it - as parents, you are responsible for each child's education. We have, at times, homeschooled each child, and also sent each of them to school, exactly because of the issues you and the other comment raised. They went to kindergarten to learn how to listen to people other than their parents and make friends. My social daughter came home for 6 months, then went right back to public school. My introverted and shy son came home for 2 years, and is going back to school this coming year because we're not doing well at teaching him... we see our failures there, and don't want to exaggerate them any more. Plus, he wants more friends, too. We expect they will probably all skip jr. high, as they will be old enough to learn on their own, and the social scene is just painful at the age, and then I'll leave it to them if they want to do the high school experience, or just get a GED and move on to other adventures in their teens. There also are online teacher-led schools in most states now. Both private and public There are home schooling groups that meet together so each parent can teach a groups of kids in their areas of expertise. There are online curriculum you can purchase, and hard copy curriculum. On short, there are choices. Many, many choices. As parents, we need to help our children find the path that is right for each one of them, and it is a more complex decision than a one-time choice to either home school or attend the public schools. As in most things, a middle ground is often a better, if more complex, answer.

zanny 11y ago
> I'll leave it to them if they want to do the high school experience This is incredibly valuable, I think. The option to leave a toxic environment. My best years in public education were the year I broke my knees and was deemed unfit to attend class for the second half of the year - necessitating a three day a week visit from my science teacher to give me an hour of tutelage. Not being around my insanely hostile 8th grade peers got me a semester of straight As and I got the highest score in the class on the algebra one final without even being there. The other best year was 12th grade, when I took 4 AP courses and study halls. I'd be with good instructors, small class sizes, and peers who were as motivated to succeed as I was. Even honors programs are the domains of parents shoving their kids into the classes through brute force of aggravation with the principal - they just don't want to hear that their kids do not want that, they need their kids to be in honors classes. And they end up ruining those classes for any teacher that gives a damn and for the kids who are there of their own will. The only important thing to take away is that even an 18 year old is making incredibly short sighted mistakes. If I ever have kids, they would need to consistently want to either reenter school or leave it to make such a switch of their own volition. It has to be a decision not only made over the long term but its ramifications need to be absorbed over such a term. I would almost certainly never throw them through the public school imagination crusher, unless I had incredible faith in the school. I'd rather go bankrupt hiring private tutors and getting them peer exposure at recreation centers and extracurriculars.

jessaustin 11y ago

I guess it's all up to the parents. It would be no panacea if most children's education were up to their parents, but it would be a marked improvement on the current USA public schools model, which is, "We teach one way and if your kid can't learn that's her or his problem." Always vote for more school choice.

macspoofing 11y ago
It doesn't have to be an either-or. Even in a crappy school district, parental involvement will play a huge difference!!
- skolor 11y ago
  There's quite a bit of research to support this[1]. Basically, regardless of any other factors, increased parental involvement consistently shows better performance. [1] https://www.nea.org/tools/17360.htm https://www.nea.org/tools/17360.htm
SiVal 11y ago
Homeschooling in the US works out much better now than it did in the time the article describes, because the government did something out of character: it actually returned some liberty to parents that it had taken from them. When parents were once again allowed to homeschool their own children legally, a diverse free market in educational resources re-emerged--one that had flourished in the early days of the country. Now that there is no longer a reason to operate secretly, homeschooling parents can seek out other parents with similar homeschooling objectives and cooperate. Among the first to do this were religious parents, but every year the percentage of homeschoolers who do it for religious reasons declines. More and more parents are doing it for reasons such as wanting to give their bright kids more advanced classes than the schools are willing or able to provide (that's my own incentive), or to more effectively deal with a child's specific educational needs, or to allow a child to have a "career" (e.g., acting or sports) while still a minor. Even those of us sending our kids to public schools benefit from this market in homeschooling options. We would be able to benefit a lot more if the "progressive" politicians employed by the teachers unions to keep the decision-making power and money they have wrested from the people from ever reverting back to parents weren't so numerous and well-funded. Many of us, for example, would love to switch to a partial public / partial private arrangement where our kids could sign up for some of the school classes without being forced to take all or none (while paying full price either way). For example, we might choose PE, sports, and drama (for social), science (for lab facilities), and math (parents might not know it well enough) from school, but choose to do English at home, programming online, art at a local art school, and Chinese from a parents' collective. (And I would be willing to continue paying full fare for the public school while using only part of its program if the remainder were rebated, not to me, but to low-income families in the form of educational vouchers they could use outside school.) We can do many of those things after school, but the problem is how late "after school" is each day, and how much time after school has to be wasted on useless school homework, because of the requirement that if our kids want any of the benefits the school offers, they are forced to take it all (as part of the political strategy to make opting out of any of the government-controlled system as painful and impractical as possible.) My kids' desire for the social experience of school and my desire that they get excellent educations result in a very long day for them, and I would cut out more than half of their school classes (and even more of the homework) if I were free to do so and give it to my kids as play time. Full socialization from partial school, higher-quality education from the free market, plus more play time? Still illegal in most states.