Parents as Teachers

I don't know how it happened or why, but over the past few decades we have become subject to The Expert Syndrome. Individuals are no longer qualified to do things for themselves. This is true of everything from bandaging a simple cut to teaching your child to read. We can't do that because we haven't received the proper education; we aren't specialists. In short, we are no longer the experts on what's good for us.

I didn't realize how bad TES was until my sister and I had a casual conversation about me homeschooling my son. She asked all the usual questions. You know, what curriculum was I using, had I discussed this with other homeschoolers, and so forth. And then she said something that simply floored me: she said she would love to homeschool her children, but was afraid she wasn't qualified to do so.

I'm sure my mouth fell open, because my sister is one of the most intelligent women I know. Not only that, but she's a teacher herself, and a highly qualified one. She was nominated for Teacher of the Year not too long ago, has enough degrees to fill at least a whole sheet of paper, and is respected and loved by students and staff alike. Yet she felt unqualified to teach her own children?

This is the indoctrination we all must now deal with, the dogma of socialism that is now raging rampant in our nation. We are told that, as parents, we aren't good enough to educate our children. We don't know enough. We're not smart enough. And we haven't had the proper training. And if Barack Obama has his way with the implementation of his 0 - 6 program, we soon will not be good enough to even rear our children until they are compelled to attend government run schools.

I would tell you what I think of that, but I'd have to change this lens from a G-rating to something for adults only.

Ultimately, we must decide, as individuals and as a society, whose responsibility it is to rear and educate a child. The easiest answer is this: that the United States was founded on the ideals of personal liberty over governmental control, and that unless parents are violating the personal liberties of their children, it is up to parents to decide how to raise their children. This includes the method of education used, or even if the child will be educated at all.

Unfortunately, most people disagree with my take on the situation. The rationale is two-fold: first, that society as a whole has a vested interest in having an educated populace, and therefore all children should be educated to at least a minimum standard; and secondly, that a parent who withholds education is violating the personal liberties of the child, regardless of what the parent's intention might be. Thus, compulsory education is necessary both to the maintenance of the state and to the welfare of the child in question.

Call me paranoid, but I firmly believe that compulsory education is intended not to educate but to indoctrinate, not to uplift a child but to hold him into a place of servitude to society and government. If you don't believe me, examine these two questions:

1) Why is the war that took place between 1861 and 1865 called the Civil War when it was a conflict between two nations, and not two warring factions within one country? That's right, the Confederacy was a separate nation when Lincoln declared war. That's why you'll sometimes hear Southern hardliners calling it the "War of Northern Aggression". But what you're taught in school is different, yes? Very different, but don't get me started on that...

2) How much paperwork and busywork is your child assigned every day, as opposed to reading, discussion, exploration, and hands-on learning? My seven-year old brought home enough paperwork in a week to fill his backpack, and that doesn't count the homework. He sat at a desk every day for 5 hours, with half-hour breaks for lunch and recess, but only if he finished his schoolwork. It was mind-numbing, repetitive work devoid of content or real knowledge. And his experience is typical.

Schools are feeding our children lies and half-truths, and teaching them to be good little worker bees. Our children are being dumbed down, in the words of John Taylor Gatto, author of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. And why? Because an uneducated populace is more submissive than an educated one. Because children who are taught to think will question, and questioning government policy in an era of increasing governmental microcontrol leads to discord, and discord leads to revolution. And what does revolution lead to?

Two hundred odd years ago, revolution led to the founding of a new nation built on the freedom of the individual, a nation where people were independent and self-sufficient, where strict controls were placed on the function and size of government out of a genuinely earned mistrust. Today, we have a nanny government that fosters dependency and weakness, a government that feels safe wresting control of children from parents because it believes, and rightly so, that its populace isn't educated enough in the basic tenets of this nation to even understand what personal liberty means, nor to understand how a socialistic government violates every aspect of that liberty.

And the vehicle used to promote this lack of knowledge? Compulsory, government-funded education.

Education was an important focus for the social experimentation of the mid-twentieth century. Out with the old ways, and in with the new. The problem is that the traditional way of teaching children, even within a classroom, resulted in children who learned a set body of knowledge in such a way that it stuck with them. Ok, it was mindlessly boring and repetitive, but kids graduated from high school with a knowledge base deeper and richer than what most young adults today receive in college.

I look at the difference between the education my parents received and the education today's children receive and I wonder how it is that even though the public educational system has millions of dollars thrown at it every year, the youngest generation of school children learn less than children did fifty years ago. Educational models have changed between then and now, to the detriment of our children. Nearly one-third of all college freshmen must take a remedial education class. Amongst 17-year olds, two-thirds cannot read at a "normal" reading level for their age. The New York Times, which is the paper of record for the United States, is written on an eighth-grade reading level. I wonder how many of those 17-year olds can read well enough to understand it?

Part of the problem is with education theory and the way teachers are educated to fulfill their posts. No longer are teachers required to major in their chosen teaching subject; instead, their days are filled with classes on child psychology, group learning, and educational methodologies. Sounds good, in theory. These classes are supposed to teach these students how to teach, the idea being that a person who learns how to teach can teach any subject.

It works, sort of. Modern teachers manage, for the most part, to shuffle the children in their care from subject to subject. But if learning teaching methodologies instead of learning the subject to be taught really worked, then why are so many children falling through the cracks, dropping out of school, and generally not receiving the education they deserve? Why are so many children graduating from high school without the ability to read and write well enough to function in society?

I personally believe there are two reasons for this: first, children are segregated into classrooms almost solely by their chronological age instead of by the way they learn, by their developmental level, or by any other method that would be more natural. Secondly, the curriculum that is taught is so fractured and incomplete as to be meaningless; the worst part of this is the current trend of "teaching to the test", that is, teaching children the material that will be covered in standardized tests, since if a certain majority of children within the classroom don't pass that test, then the school could lose accreditation and funding.

The result is that children learn how to take tests, how to stand in line, how to keep up with their paperwork, how to suppress their questions and creativity, and they are rewarded for it. But our children don't learn the relevance of the past to the present. They don't learn why math is important to every day life. They don't learn how to criticize an argument without criticizing the person making the argument. This is the difference between schooling a child and educating a child: one is focused on teaching a child how to function in an institutionalized setting that more and more resembles a prison; the other is focused on not only teaching the body of knowledge a child must learn in order to function in the real world, but on teaching a child how to continue learning and to think critically about the world around them.

Which would you rather your child do: become schooled or become educated?

(Statistics for remedial education and 17-year old literacy rates are taken from Why Should Congress Abolish the Federal Role in Education? from the Home School Legal Defense Association.)

In her book The Well-Trained Mind, co-authored with daughter Susan Wise Bauer, Jessie Wise mentions something that has stuck with me since the first time I read that book, what Dorothy Sayers calls the "educational capital". Mrs. Wise goes on to say:

"We no longer teach our children the process of memorization, organization and expression--the tools by which the mind learns. The leftover remnants of those methods have carried us through several decades of schooling without catastrophe[...]. But sooner or later, the capital gets used up. My own children were faced with teachers who brought them down to the level of the class[...]. They spent seven hours every day sitting in desks, standing in lines, riding buses, and doing repetitive seatwork so that their classmates could learn what [my children] already knew."

One of the primary methods used to place children is by their chronological age, especially in the earliest years of their schooling. There are no placement tests to see if a child is ready to study basic math, nor focus groups to help them get ready. Children who already know how to read are placed in a class with children who can't even name and recognize the letters of the alphabet. And they are placed that way solely because an educator looks at their chronological age and assumes a certain developmental readiness.

We have been inculcated with age-developmental norms since at least the 1960s. Study after study, expert after expert, tells us that our child should be doing [fill in the blank] at a certain age or they're just not normal. Attitudes like this scare perfectly good parents into believing that they have somehow failed their child because he can't read Dr. Seuss at the age of 6.

This is like saying that you're a bad parent because your child is three inches shorter than the average child and five pounds lighter. You might feed your child three solid meals a day, with two or three snacks in between, but all the food in the world isn't going to make a child grow if it's not time for his body to grow.

The point is that children develop at their own pace. Just as one child might learn to walk at 10 months and another at 15 months, so does each child's brain develop differently from other children's. There is a range within each so-called "norm" where a child can fall developmentally and still be considered normal. Parents aren't always told this when discussing their child's overall growth with his doctor or teacher (although, I do believe such revelations are becoming more common). And educators usually fail to consider age-developmental ranges when placing a child in a particular class. Age trumps all.

Worse, children are forced to work at a set pace solely based on the average pace of the class in which they're placed. Children who need more time on a subject are given bad grades and told to speed up their pace. Children who need less time are either given more paperwork to complete (usually on exactly the same topic as the paperwork they just finished), or shuffled into a "gifted program" where they are given more paperwork. That is what happens in the best classroom; in others, children might be forced to work at the pace of the slowest students.

Either way, everyone loses. The kids who really need the help feel the stigma of being slower students. The kids who move more quickly through the material learn very quickly that doing so only results in the application of more work. Yes, there are children who learn well at whatever pace the teacher sets, but they don't usually make up the majority in most classrooms.

Here's an idea: why not sort children by their learning styles? Or by their readiness in each subject? Group those kids together and let them have at it. Ah, but there's a reason why schools no longer do this. It's called "self-esteem". If you place slower learners in one classroom, average learners in another, and gifted learners in yet a third classroom, then the students who aren't gifted will feel bad about themselves.

I think that's so much baloney, and is more indicative of how adults feel the need to label everything than how children will react to being placed in a classroom that meets their needs.

Citation for the quote used above:
Bauer, Susan Wise, and Jessie Wise. The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education in the Home. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004. 8-9.

Do you ever look at your children's textbooks and wonder how they can learn anything given the complete lack of continuity from one subject to another? I never thought much about this as a child, but now that I have a child of my own, it seems somehow unnatural for US History to be taught in bits and pieces every single year through the eighth grade (in the local school system), but never all at once until the eleventh or twelfth grade. How can children learn to make connections between one event and another? How can they learn to rationally discuss the consequences of, for example, the decision by the US to enter Vietnam? How can they learn to examine the far-reaching impact of the Magna Carta? (If you don't understand why I mentioned the Magna Carta as relevant to US History, you're probably a victim of our modern institutionalized educational system.)

The answer is that they can't. The current curriculum model encourages the most shallow dissemination of knowledge possible. Children may learn a little about a lot, but they never learn how to tie everything together. History is the subject most affected by this, but I've seen it in other subjects as well. By the end of second grade, my son had already been exposed to simple Algebra. It's not that I minded then (I thought it was great, being a big math geek myself), but now, in the fifth grade, there are huge gaps in his knowledge of basic math. Because he was pushed ahead before he was ready, he doesn't know his multiplication tables, he can't divide even the most simple numbers, and fractions throw him for a loop.

Of course, that's not the only reason my son has gaps in his knowledge of basic math, but it's a big one.

My son's last teacher gave the best illustration of why a fractured curriculum doesn't work. She used a brick wall as the metaphorical equivalent of a child's sum of knowledge. If there's a hole in the wall at one of the lower levels, then you can stuff all the bricks you want into the empty air above it, but until you fill in that lower level, none of the bricks will stick.

And so it is with kids. In order for children to know why the Monroe Doctrine was important, they have to understand what came before. They have to be able to follow those events through from one point in time to another. And they can't do that unless History is taught not in bits and pieces, not as unrelated events, but as an interconnection that started in prehistory with many events and cultures along that way that are still affecting us today. The same goes for every other subject; Algebra makes no sense if you don't know how to add, and you can forget learning about functions in Trigonometry and Calculus if you don't understand Algebra.

The current trend of teaching to the test only exasperates the situation. Teachers are forced to spend an inordinate amount of time teaching material they know will be included in standardized tests because if they don't and a majority of the children in their school don't pass the tests, then the school could lose its funding and the teacher could lose his job. I can hear readers questioning this: if a teacher does her job properly, then most children should be able to pass standardized tests anyway, as long as she teaches the approved curriculum.

It is a sad consequence of the No Child Left Behind Act that these tests have become the curriculum. School systems, worried about failing their students and losing accreditation, have put the pressure on teachers to produce, and the best way for teachers to produce is to pull their material directly from the tests. And it makes a lot of them mad. I've heard many teachers complaining about standardized testing, but they all agree: you gotta do what you gotta do.

Unfortunately, doing what you gotta do means leaving students with only the most basic grasp of any given subject, and given the zealous nature with which the current educational crisis is followed, that isn't going to change anytime soon.

I'm going to say something now that will have all of you scratching your heads in puzzlement: the institutionalized school setting (i.e. the classroom) isn't the "traditional" place of learning.

Say what?

It's a little known fact that compulsory education was not introduced in this nation until 1852, and then by the state of Massachusetts. At that time, the literacy rate in Massachusetts was 98%; in the 1980s, the literacy rate in Massachusetts was only 91%. Surprised?

I'm not. The "traditional" method of educating a child in the mid-nineteenth century was either in a one-room schoolhouse...or the home. Very few families had access to larger organized schools at that time, and those who did were generally either urbanites, moneyed, or both. The United States was then still very much a rural nation. Most families lived far apart on large tracts of land, often miles from the center of local government. That isn't to say that people were isolated; no, they were very active with their families, their communities, and with their church. But most rural communities could not afford to pay a teacher to educate their children, if they could find one willing to move into their area at all.

It was a very different way of life, one that has been all but lost to the modern populace.

The one-room schoolhouse in such communities was much like the homeschooling environment of that used in today's larger families. Children were grouped by grade or ability and taught the "three Rs" along with history, science and sometimes Latin. They received individual attention and help when they needed it and, for the most part, moved at a pace that was comfortable to them. The brighter students were allowed to work ahead; the slower students were encouraged to work harder.

And for the most part, it worked. The people of those days were hardly the ignorant, backward folk of modern myth. They were intelligent people who were involved in their communities and in their government, learned people who were interested in the world around them. And they read! The Bible mostly, it's true, but also the local newspaper and what we now consider the classics: Plato's Republic, Swift's A Modern Proposal, and other works whose messages transcend time.

For those who could not afford the tuition, home and education were one and the same. Parents read from the Bible to their children, and this is how one learned to read. Daily farm life yielded lessons in biology (the care of farm animals), botany (tending the fields), geometry (building structures), chemistry (in the kitchen), and a wide range of other subjects necessary for the survival of one's family. If possible, many families sent one child, usually an older male, to school, and he then came back into the home and taught his siblings what he had learned. Even amongst the least educated, most people could write and recognize their own names; they had to in order to conduct business, e.g. to buy land.

These methods of education all but disappeared with the advent of the Industrial Age, compulsory education, and school consolodation, the latter of which occurred by about 1960. All of these things, along with the introduction of Socialism as a political system, served to strengthen the control of the federal government in what had once been the purvue of the family and community. And it happened so gradually and over such a long period of time, most people didn't even notice that they no longer had the right to educate their children as they saw fit.

(Literacy rates taken from "Free" Education and Literacy, an article written by Barry Dean Simpson for Ludwig von Mises Institute and published January 28, 2004.)

While researching issues for a new libertarian blog I've started, I came across the web site for a group called The Alliance for the Separation of School and State. This group makes a compelling case for the expulsion of government, particularly the federal government, from the control of public schools. I urge each of you to visit their web site, read carefully through the information presented, and, if you so choose, sign their proclamation to remove public education from the purview of government.

Whatever one's opinion of the state of the educational system in the United States, virtually everyone agrees that it is failing. Literacy rates are falling, the instance of learning disorders is rising. And parents flounder as they try to keep up with what "The Experts" tell them to do in regards to raising their children.

Here's my take on the situation: Stop listening to the experts! They don't know your child. But you do. You were the one who spent nine months carrying him and 16 hours in labor before you could hold him for the first time. You were the one who stayed up all night, every night for a week while your child had the flu, watching over him and wondering why you couldn't just make it all better for him. You were the one who helped him walk and talk and go potty for the first time. And, chances are, you were the one who taught him his ABCs and read him his first book. You. Not a teacher, not a member of the government, you.

And it is you who holds the primary responsibility for your child's education. Whatever decision you make regarding how your child obtains that education, it is you who must follow up on it. No one else can do that.

The fact is that no one is more suited to tailor a learning program to your child than you are. You know what your child needs, you know how he learns, and you know where his interests lie. The farther away from your family a teacher is, the less likely she is to respond to your child's needs. Teachers must consider the needs of the whole above the needs of the individual. This is socialism at its prime. But you can put your child's needs first, and do it in such a way that instead of developing a self-centered mentality, he learns to put others first, to work to the common good of the family and the community, and to take an active and involved role in government. This is personal liberty at its prime.

Teachers must disseminate the curriculum dictated by the State. You can gather your materials as you see fit, controlling what your child learns based on your world view.

Teachers must worry about all their students, and sometimes must wash their hands of one student so that others don't suffer. You will never let your child fall through the cracks. You will nurture and guide her to the best of your ability, because you're her parent; you love her and you want to make sure she has the best opportunities available.

Allowing one child to move ahead or slow down in her work puts a tremendous burden on teachers, who often have twenty or more other students they must oversee. But you can do so whenever needed because you're there with her, day in and day out.

Making the decision to homeschool your child does not mean that you love him more than a parent who chooses to take advantage of the public educational system. Either way, no matter what your circumstance, take a personal and active roll in your child's education. Monitor his progress, discuss classwork with him, encourage him to read and study beyond what's required of him. Above all, make sure he's learning what he needs to know in order to not only survive but thrive in the modern Information age.

Because if you don't, no one else will.