I Think You Misunderstood…

Oh man! I loved Zorro as a kid. I’d totally join that church!

This Athe, you mean?

Wow, I grew up as a Zoroastrian and I didn’t even know it! (I, too, loved Zorro as a kid.)

I’m shocked by your views on education, David. A growing number of parents, including me, are choosing to homeschool our children because schools have taken to teaching to the test and there is no room for critical thinking and creativity. The parents I know who send their kids to public and private schools see the same problems, but for various reasons do not feel like they can homeschool. US parents do care about their children’s education and the ones I know spend a lot of time and money trying to supplement their education outside of the classroom. I have yet to meet a parent who was blase about education, but many of them feel like they can’t do anything themselves because they haven’t been certified. Schools have never and will never be able to teach kids everything they need to know and parents need to have the confidence in their own abilities to educate their children. Throwing all the money in the world at schools cannot change this fact.

As far as what kids learn about religion in school, I personally choose to teach my kids about lots of different belief systems, but I don’t think the public school is the place for that. I doubt I heard either the term agnostic or atheist in school and certainly didn’t at home, but as I was taught how to think critically and given the tools to research how to answer my own questions I was at some point able to discover these terms used to describe the belief system I’d already developed on my own.

Home-schooling is such a touchy subject. While I think it’s true that the school systems often leave parents wanting more for their children, I also don’t think home-schooling is always the answer. There are always alternatives, like Liberal Arts schools, and various other magnet schools, that specialize in things like languages and the environment. If a parent doesn’t have those schools at their disposal that is really unfortunate. In my experiences I have seen too many untrained parents home-school their kids creatively. Teachers go through a lot of training to do what they do. I would never trust my child’s entire education in my hands, or my husbands. That would just be presumptuous. Home-schooled kids more often than not lack proper social skills, which is my area of study. That’s an entire blog post in itself, so I’ll stop here.

The point is not to totally bash home-schooling. I just would never recommend it. From the kids I’ve worked with, I will have to say I completely agree with David. That is not to say though, that parents should stay out of the child’s education altogether. I agree that a kid’s education should be supplemented. Give your kid music lessons, encourage art and critical thinking in your home. Get rid of your T.V and encourage reading and teach your kids about the religions of the world without bias.