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  • DR. J

    Filed at 6:25 pm under by dcobranchi

    Julius Blumfeld, writing on Brian’s EdBlog, has a great post about wasting time:

    One of the lessons of home education is that full time formal education for children is largely a waste of time. If things are taught at the right age for the child, the entire primary school curriculum can probably be mastered in about six months (albeit spread over a number of years). So why not cut the school day from seven hours to two and let children decide which classes they want to attend and at what age?

    There are of course many reasons why this is unlikely to happen any time soon. But perhaps the main reason is this. Although dressed up as places of learning, the primary function of schools, especially government schools, is child minding – keeping children off the streets while their parents do other things. Far from efficient teaching and shorter school hours being a desirable goal, it is probably the last thing most parents want.

    Yep. We have 50 million prisoners here in the US. Of course, we call them “students.” Read the whole thing.

    One Response to “DR. J”


    Comment by
    traci
    December 20th, 2003
    at 2:36 pm

    Daryl,
    Very Well said, & the real trick is knowing just when the child is open to learning a new concept. My daughter learns things as she is ready & masters things that I thought were complex in a day. Last night she was playing a computer game w/ DAD & learned dbl & triple digit addition/subtraction in an hour.. just because it was fun & she wanted to get to the next level. I wasn’t thinking about getting to teaching that till later in the year & even then it would have been an advanced idea for her grade. I don’t want to push her but sometimes I need to run to keep up w/ her.

    Here’s an article from our local paper that had me rolling on the floor this morning.
    Parents Learn to be Teachers at Home.
    delawa...b.html
    This is a pilot program to get parents more involved w/ their kids in the public schools… not homeschooling. Over a thousand $ to teach parents that they can teach their kids to read at home w/ cereal boxes, road maps, canned goods etc… (& the school is taking serious credit for this accomplishment)

    DUHHHHHH!!!!This is what we’ve naturally been doing since birth… My daughter’s curiousity…”what does that say?” made her an early reader. & it didn’t cost us $1000.

    One quote at the end of the article from a teacher really hit home…”The real benefits(of this program) go beyond family time together. When parents get involved, the child sees how important school is & how important education is.”
    To which I say “ditto” Every homeschooler knows that.
    Now if a few of those parents wake up, take the next step & realize that they don’t need the school system… More prisoners( kids) will be free. Isn’t a scream the public schools that are so anti-homeschooling could actually be fostering the seeds of their own demise.:)Shhh don’t tell em