Homeschooling
My son is 3yrs old and I get raised eyebrows and comments ranging from 'That's great!' to 'What's wrong with public school?' when I tell people that I plan to homeschool. Well, I don't PLAN to homeschool, I've been doing it all along.
I'm proud that he already knows as much as most 1st graders, and at his young age, I still have the freedom to keep a loose curriculum schedule. We have impromptu learning sessions throughout the day... some days not at all, but most days. He can count to 10, he can do basic addition and subtraction, he knows probably 90% of his letters, the names and sounds they make by sight, he can spell quite a few small words, including his name, (and signs the letters as he does so) - yes, I'm bragging a little.
It's just SO fulfilling for me to have this level of involvement in his education and I could not bear the thought of giving that up. I am so disappointed in our public educational system and I don't feel it's so much the teachers who are to blame. The ones I have spoken to, especially the kindergarten/elementary teachers, have gotten to the point where they are basically burnt out with their own frustration of the system. No money, little freedom for creativity, no ability to discipline in the classrooms... I shudder when I think of what this is doing to our kids.
Arts and music programs have been dropped due to lack of funding, while 'sports programs' flourish. How that benefits our children, I do not understand. The infamous 'no child left behind' program, which sounds like a good thing, actually serves to make sure that the children at the lowest end of the spectrum no longer get the special attention they need to make whatever progress they are able, while children at the highest end of the spectrum are not challenged to excel. I have been told that this lack of segregation according to ability, helps to prevent a 'cast system' in the schools, but I disagree. There will always be a 'cast system' based on something, whether it's the children who are rich and can dress in stylish clothes, or who always have the newest gadgets, to kids who are popular in the sports arenas, or whatever that particular 'popular' group is composed of. When I was in school, the so-called 'elite' or 'gifted' kids, were not necessarily the popular ones. We were the geeks and nerds who basically stuck together for the most part. There was the issue of children ending up in the 'gifted' program based, not so much on their abilities, but on the insistence of influential parents... and that happened a lot. But, I think that would be easier to repair than what is happening now.
I recently spoke to a Kindergarten teacher, from a local school, who told me that she had been cursed out, had knives pulled on her, been stabbed with forks, spit on and other various forms of assault... and that the ONLY recourse available to her, as far as discipline, was to tell the child to 'go sit and think about what they had done'. And this is in KINDERGARTEN!! She said they weren't even allowed to use the phrase 'time out'. And she was a young woman, attractive... she seemed like she would care about the children, but she was strongly disenchanted and was thinking of changing careers. Who could blame her?
I remember my kindergarten days as sitting around these round tables, with those funky old plastic chairs made for kids. We would color, do projects with glue. Make turkeys from our hand, sing songs, play learning games, etc. But even though that environment would probably be 'fun' for my son, he wouldn't be really getting an education as such. I feel as if, by sending my son to public school, I would be immersing him in a culture of children who would teach him poor values, leave him open to abuse from other children and then still have to educate him at home... and it would only cut down on my time to do that.
Plus, I would miss him. I do not want someone else to raise my child for me. People act as if Homeschooling is such a radical idea, but people were doing it for thousands of years. We existed a very long time without the current trend of sending our children away to someone else for the biggest part of the day, and although some children were uneducated and public school does serve a purpose in that regard, some children were still taught to read and do their math and possibly just as important, they learned trades from their family at the same time.
As a person who is self-employed, it's also important to me that my son be a part of that, and grow up understanding that he can work for himself rather than being tied to the yoke of working for some corporation, pouring his life down the drain. I hope he has the skills to be an artist and possibly make his living doing something creative instead of something tedious and boring.
Homeschooling is not for everyone, but I have known, from the time before I was pregnant, that this is what I would want to do if I ever had a child. I'm looking forward to every minute of it.
I'm proud that he already knows as much as most 1st graders, and at his young age, I still have the freedom to keep a loose curriculum schedule. We have impromptu learning sessions throughout the day... some days not at all, but most days. He can count to 10, he can do basic addition and subtraction, he knows probably 90% of his letters, the names and sounds they make by sight, he can spell quite a few small words, including his name, (and signs the letters as he does so) - yes, I'm bragging a little.
It's just SO fulfilling for me to have this level of involvement in his education and I could not bear the thought of giving that up. I am so disappointed in our public educational system and I don't feel it's so much the teachers who are to blame. The ones I have spoken to, especially the kindergarten/elementary teachers, have gotten to the point where they are basically burnt out with their own frustration of the system. No money, little freedom for creativity, no ability to discipline in the classrooms... I shudder when I think of what this is doing to our kids.
Arts and music programs have been dropped due to lack of funding, while 'sports programs' flourish. How that benefits our children, I do not understand. The infamous 'no child left behind' program, which sounds like a good thing, actually serves to make sure that the children at the lowest end of the spectrum no longer get the special attention they need to make whatever progress they are able, while children at the highest end of the spectrum are not challenged to excel. I have been told that this lack of segregation according to ability, helps to prevent a 'cast system' in the schools, but I disagree. There will always be a 'cast system' based on something, whether it's the children who are rich and can dress in stylish clothes, or who always have the newest gadgets, to kids who are popular in the sports arenas, or whatever that particular 'popular' group is composed of. When I was in school, the so-called 'elite' or 'gifted' kids, were not necessarily the popular ones. We were the geeks and nerds who basically stuck together for the most part. There was the issue of children ending up in the 'gifted' program based, not so much on their abilities, but on the insistence of influential parents... and that happened a lot. But, I think that would be easier to repair than what is happening now.
I recently spoke to a Kindergarten teacher, from a local school, who told me that she had been cursed out, had knives pulled on her, been stabbed with forks, spit on and other various forms of assault... and that the ONLY recourse available to her, as far as discipline, was to tell the child to 'go sit and think about what they had done'. And this is in KINDERGARTEN!! She said they weren't even allowed to use the phrase 'time out'. And she was a young woman, attractive... she seemed like she would care about the children, but she was strongly disenchanted and was thinking of changing careers. Who could blame her?
I remember my kindergarten days as sitting around these round tables, with those funky old plastic chairs made for kids. We would color, do projects with glue. Make turkeys from our hand, sing songs, play learning games, etc. But even though that environment would probably be 'fun' for my son, he wouldn't be really getting an education as such. I feel as if, by sending my son to public school, I would be immersing him in a culture of children who would teach him poor values, leave him open to abuse from other children and then still have to educate him at home... and it would only cut down on my time to do that.
Plus, I would miss him. I do not want someone else to raise my child for me. People act as if Homeschooling is such a radical idea, but people were doing it for thousands of years. We existed a very long time without the current trend of sending our children away to someone else for the biggest part of the day, and although some children were uneducated and public school does serve a purpose in that regard, some children were still taught to read and do their math and possibly just as important, they learned trades from their family at the same time.
As a person who is self-employed, it's also important to me that my son be a part of that, and grow up understanding that he can work for himself rather than being tied to the yoke of working for some corporation, pouring his life down the drain. I hope he has the skills to be an artist and possibly make his living doing something creative instead of something tedious and boring.
Homeschooling is not for everyone, but I have known, from the time before I was pregnant, that this is what I would want to do if I ever had a child. I'm looking forward to every minute of it.