My homeschooling journey began two decades ago, when my third grader was clearly struggling, so I talked with his teacher about the possibility that he could be dyslexic. My husband recognized signs from his own school days, although no one realized what the problem was in his case and he was just left to flounder and feel stupid. The teacher was a young, hip, popular "fun" guy, who completely ignored my concerns and remarked that he himself had only gotten Cs and Ds in college so we shouldn't get too stressed about how our son was doing!
We started over that fall at home, with actual grammar, phonics, solid boring repetitive math (which is actually the only thing that works), along with history, art, Spanish, and a host of extra curricular activities. Lo and behold, both of my sons graduated, with honors, from a top university, and my youngest even went back and got his Master's in Education. (I remember him coming home one day from a 400 level English Lit class and remarking that he was the ONLY student in his class who had ever read - or even heard of - John Steinbeck or Ernest Hemingway!)
Yes, the public school system is irrevocably broken! It is overstaffed with activists and bureaucrats, and there is precious little real education that happens there! One of the main reasons that I supported George W Bush in 2000 was that he promised to disband the Federal Department of Education, only to completely renege on that within the first few months of his Presidency, with the ridiculous "No Child Left Behind" legislation, which was the beginning of two decades of over centralization and under education! I do not believe the system can be saved - it must be completely dismantled and rebuilt, brick by brick, from the bottom up, by PARENTS and local communities!
Thank you for writing your experience. Public schools surely need help. Our upcoming post on the need for education to be local, small and including of wellness will reference yours.
My homeschooling journey began two decades ago, when my third grader was clearly struggling, so I talked with his teacher about the possibility that he could be dyslexic. My husband recognized signs from his own school days, although no one realized what the problem was in his case and he was just left to flounder and feel stupid. The teacher was a young, hip, popular "fun" guy, who completely ignored my concerns and remarked that he himself had only gotten Cs and Ds in college so we shouldn't get too stressed about how our son was doing!
We started over that fall at home, with actual grammar, phonics, solid boring repetitive math (which is actually the only thing that works), along with history, art, Spanish, and a host of extra curricular activities. Lo and behold, both of my sons graduated, with honors, from a top university, and my youngest even went back and got his Master's in Education. (I remember him coming home one day from a 400 level English Lit class and remarking that he was the ONLY student in his class who had ever read - or even heard of - John Steinbeck or Ernest Hemingway!)
Yes, the public school system is irrevocably broken! It is overstaffed with activists and bureaucrats, and there is precious little real education that happens there! One of the main reasons that I supported George W Bush in 2000 was that he promised to disband the Federal Department of Education, only to completely renege on that within the first few months of his Presidency, with the ridiculous "No Child Left Behind" legislation, which was the beginning of two decades of over centralization and under education! I do not believe the system can be saved - it must be completely dismantled and rebuilt, brick by brick, from the bottom up, by PARENTS and local communities!
Yes, I agree with all of this. And it's a position I never thought I would hold before lockdowns.
We supplemented with French, and my kids loved counting un, deux, trois, quatre, etc...
The readers had stories from Robert Louis Stevenson, greek mythology, etc.
My middle son named a hamster we bought for him after Athena. Never would have happened without the homeschooling.
Thank you for writing your experience. Public schools surely need help. Our upcoming post on the need for education to be local, small and including of wellness will reference yours.
Why Public Schools are a Lost Cause
https://davidgoodwin.substack.com/p/why-public-schools-are-a-lost-cause
Part II: Public Schools are a Lost Cause
https://davidgoodwin.substack.com/p/part-ii-public-schools-are-a-lost
Part III: Charter Schools are Public Schools
https://davidgoodwin.substack.com/p/part-iii-charter-schools-are-public
Add to this The Underground History of American Education
https://mhkeehn.tripod.com/ughoae.pdf
And: The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America
https://mpnl.org/Dumbing%20Down%20of%20America.pdf
public schools have been unsuitable for children since they began as the common school movement in the mid-1800s