Good Morning Everyone!,
I hope and pray that there are several more people ‘out there’ that agree with the content of this discussion than the ‘membership’ roles or sign up(s) currently indicate.
One thing I am almost positive of is that there is a greater number of parents who are (A) currently or have already been Home-schooling and are like-wise Home-schooling or plan to start this year.
In any event, as a parent who has educated my 4 children from day one and going forward, they each finished through highscooland started taking college courses at our local community college by the time they were of that age and my first child, JohnCaleb, started when he was merely 15 yes old.
The point being is that it (home-schooling) is doable and pays off for them when out looking for a job.
5 replies on “STRANGER DANGER”
One of my children is a public school teacher in a small town of 20,000. My kid has a Masters Degree in Special Education and has taught in large cities, suburbs and now this town. We have talked about what is going on in the schools and how it sounds like a mess. Policies put in place by the state combined with the disastrous emotional conditions of many of the kids coming to school have turned many public school classrooms into little more than day care and the older and more physical these kids get, especially the ones with absentee parents and are raised on the streets, the more dangerous it becomes for everybody, including teachers. Last year my adult kid was assaulted at school by a student.
I am not an extremely emotional person but when I hear some of the stories of the baggage some of these (less than 10 year old) children are coming to school with it breaks my heart. Some of these children have a huge emotional hole to dig themselves out of to even begin learning. Unfortunately entire classes are being impacted.
I have my own opinions about state taxing and education bureaucrats making social engineering policy and general allocation of funds for education but that is a book. Bottom line for me is that there are still good teachers out there but the system (and much of our society) is horribly broken and if my wife and I were doing it now we would be home schooling for sure.
Buck S,
Thanks for reading my comment and then taking the time to formulate an appropriate response. I am fully aware and even sympathetic to the challenges that good, decent teachers face in their classrooms these days and even going back a number of decades as my Dad was an educator in the public school system here in CT for just over 40 yrs before taking an early retirement buyout. How he raised 8 of us on a teacher’s salary still amazes me as I have only raised 4 on a semi driver’s pay. My oldest being 28 and youngest 15, 3 sons and 1 daughter (I know, it’s quite a spread but that’s a story for another day.)
Homeschooling; this is clearly not an approach to educating that my 1st wife (their mother) and I took lightly. We began discussing the whole education issue prior to the birth of my oldest and at that time there weren’t as many resources for parents who had limited education but we found and settled on one that was faith-based and aligned with our personal faith beliefs. It was the best we could find at the time and turned out to be better than we expected. We submitted our kid’s work and it was corrected and graded by individual teachers kind of providing the best of both worlds. The program served us and our kids well and the 3 older ones “graduated” high school by age 16. My youngest is still in school and has 3 yrs to go. Also, he is the only one who we felt necessary to put into the public school system as we, my 1st wife and I divorced when he was 9 and going to live with her full-time and she has had to go to work full-time even in spite of the nearly $1800.00 per month in child support which I have never failed to send. Not even one time, one month did I miss sending that money and often sent the amount twice in a month over the years when I could. (I have some good investments.)
In closing, I want to say that I think it is awesome your adult child is a teacher and has even pursued their own education to a Master’s Degree level. I do believe that choosing to become a teacher and then some are more of a “calling” than a simple choice. There has to be a genuine and strong desire to help mold the experiences of children in a positive manner through being an educator. I have sincere respect for those who look at their teaching careers in this way and think they are the “good ones” out there who are worth every penny they earn and whatever perks that come with that pay. Take care and may God bless you both!
Nice note Peter. Huge respect to your dad, I bet he made a positive impact on a lot of kids through 40 years. Plus raising 8 of his own, WOW. Your kids sound like they are doing well too. Graduating early and taking college classes at community college, fantastic. I am sure they will be well prepared to make the best use of it if they chose to go on to a 4 year program.
Anyway, my very best to you and your family. God Bless you all.
I sincerely believe that the salvation of our civilization lies in homeschooling.
Agreed. I will be at least to some degree especially with all of the potential curriculums available these days via the internet and so on. The one thing I would love to see happen is that if a parent decides they want to homeschool their children they should receive some form of tax relief as they will not be taking advantage of whatever the state provides. At the very least, if not a tax relief then they should be allowed to take advantage of some of the benefits the state education system provides.