From USA Today, psychiatrist Dr. Robert E. Kay on home schooling:
"In its debate on schools and homework, USA TODAY might have mentioned those who never go to "school" at all: the home-schoolers. They, in my view, are on top of the heap socially, psychologically, physically, intellectually and academically.
As for children in traditional schools, coercion, homework, testing, report cards and a forgettable curriculum tend to make those passive, bored and sullen kids "hate" school, their teachers, learning, books and then their parents.
What's more, about a third of college graduates are proficiently literate, down from 40% in 1992, according to the latest National Assessment of Adult Literacy.
The solution — stop schooling and start educating by:
• Abolishing all quizzes before those necessary final exams.
• Stimulating students with lessons involving art, music, theater, sports, museums, good books, periodicals and technology, along with math games, choral reading and assisted writing.
The only "problem": I, and many prison guards, are then apt to be unemployed!"
Tee hee...Yup, as Daryl suggested, there seems to be scope for a new HE epithet: "Do a Psychiatrist Out of a Job - Home Educate".
LOL! My psychotherapist FIL talks repeatedly about the clients he helps who wouldn't be there if they hadn't been coerced by their parents. Coerced to wean from the breast too early, coerced to follow a particular career route, coerced into millions of things. He talks a lot, also, about how that coercion can be very subtly done, and doesn't have to be 'do this or I'll spank you' - it's often an unspoken 'do this or I won't love you'.
ReplyDeleteOf course, teachers and examiners would also be out of a job if we all HE'd - maybe that's the real reason a lot of them (not all though!) are so anti-HE - they're frightened of people realising how potentially unneccessary their jobs are!
I don't agree, though, that psychotherapists would be out of a job if we all home edded - as loads of parents who home ed are pretty coercive and damaging anyway!
ReplyDeletePlus there are umpteen other traumas...
Also teachers could still work by sharing their skills on a one to one basis or with small groups of interested kids. They could then earn money too by using the skills they teach simultaneously - more like a uni.
Prison guard jobs might go down though!
D