The New Family

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Writing instruction in our schools is terrible. We need to fix it.

 Columnist 
e Education Trust, a nonprofit that advocates for students from low-income households] collected 1,876 school assignments from six middle schools in two large urban districts in two states. The idea was to see how well English, humanities, social studies and science were being taught in the new era of the Common Core State Standards. The results are distressing and show that the instruction students are getting — particularly in writing — is deeply inadequate.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/writing-instruction-in-our-schools-is-terrible-we-need-to-fix-it/2016/08/14/a47b705e-6005-11e6-8e45-477372e89d78_story.html

FOR some parents primary and secondary school is just an enriched form of day care - a place for parents to send their children while mom and dad go to work. Others view educating their child as someone else's responsibility. For both, the lack of parental involvement can cause children to languish and fail to learn thereby falling behind their peers. No form of education, public, private, or alternative, can overcome parental apathy. In later years under-performing students tend to have more behavioral problems that disrupt the classroom. Some homeschoolers recognize this and decide to insulate themselves from it. A homeschooling parent is almost always a highly involved parent (for an exception see the unschooling movement).  

Monday, August 15, 2016

Common Ground Shared by Homeschoolers

HOMESCHOOLERS are a diverse lot. While the movement is typically associated with religious fundamentalists, many homeschool for secular reasons. Further, while homeschoolers tend toward the right side of the political spectrum, some on the left share homeschooling values too. Urban progressives want a good education for their children as do suburban conservatives. The common trait is a shared desire to provide the best opportunity and environment possible for their children so that they may reach their maximum potential. 

The following link is to a story in the August 15, 2016 Christian Science Monitor. 

Why more black parents are home-schooling their kids


Nikita Bush comes from a family of public school teachers: Her mom, aunts, uncles – nearly all of them have been involved in public education at some level.
But her own teaching career ended, she says, “in heartbreak” when she had to make a decision about where her own child would go to school.
After being reprimanded repeatedly for folding Afro-centric education into her Atlanta classroom, she left. Fifteen years and six children later, Ms. Bush leads a growing homeschooling co-op near Atlanta’s historic West End neighborhood. 
Despite the promises of the civil rights movement, “people are starting to realize that public education in America was designed for the masses of poor, and its intent has been to trap poor people into being workers and servants. If you don’t want that for your children, then you look for something else,” she says. To her, the biggest flaw in public education is a lack of character education, an "absence of a moral binding," that contributes to low expectations – and lower outcomes for children of color.

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Homeschooling News

DAD saw this recent article.

How Homeschooling Helped Propel Simone Biles to the Olympic Gold


BY TYLER O'NEIL AUGUST 9, 2016

"At age 13, Simone Biles broke down in tears. She had decided not to attend a normal high school, opting for homeschooling in order to practice her gymnastics."
...
"In 2013, she became the United States champion at the U.S. National Gymnastics Championships, and then went on to win the 2013 World Championships in Belgium."

"At the global event, she won four medals — two of them gold — and became the first female African-American all-around world champion. In 2014 and 2015, she held on to her title, and racked up 10 gold medals from those three world championships. At the Olympics, she has already won the gold medal with the women's Team U.S.A." 

https://pjmedia.com/parenting/2016/08/09/how-homeschooling-helped-propel-simone-biles-to-the-olympic-gold/

Competing at that level incurs opportunity costs. The more time spent preparing for competition reduces time available for alternative pursuits. 

Homeschooling can be a better alternative than traditional public school for exceptionally gifted children, even if that "gift" is mediocrity or even a disability. 

For Olympic athletes, child stars, and many other non-traditional children, homeschooling is the overwhelming option because it allows the student the flexibility to pursue non-academic excellence by adapting education curricula  to the student's schedule. Traditional schooling, both public and private, is largely inflexible because it requires students to adhere to its timetable for instruction, study, and other activities. 

At the other end of the spectrum, for students with disabilities like autism, highly involved parents with sufficient motivation and resources can provide a more suitable and highly tailored environment to meet their child's needs than can be found in a traditional classroom. It is not easy, but it is possible. 

But homeschooling merits little consideration for some, otherwise very caring, parents. For them excellence, of either the educational or non-academic variety, is not the primary purpose of schooling. For them the primary reason is structure. It is the requirement to adhere to a schedule imposed by authority. This, they reason, prepares the student to perform well at employment later in life. Non-academic and academic excellence is a nice supplementary goal as long as it is confined to the rigors of standard school days and hours. It must not interfere with the child learning rules and routines - the characteristics of a reliable employee. To them success in life is not defined in becoming a celebrated exception, but in attaining the mean. They tacitly believe that in pursuit of mediocrity, while their child(ren) may never achieve greatness, they are also immune from failure. They perceive that there is security in being within the range of + 1 standard deviation from the middle. However illusory this security actually is or is not is irrelevant to the much more frightening possibility of failure from non-conformance to socially accepted norms of traditional education. Hence, learning to be on time and prepared to work day in and day out is of far more important than lofty dreams or alternative pursuits. 

Dad believes the traditional schooling model is adequate for the majority of students and their parents. Most students are not going to compete at Ms. Biles level of proficiency.  Many parents lack the ability or desire to provide a non-traditional school environment. A smaller number of disadvantaged students are actually better off in the structure of a school environment than at home. However, he believes differently for his own children.