Comments on: How Even the Best Schools Harm Our Kids: A Teacher’s Story

By: Student Teacher

Student Teacher — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 04:51:02 +0000

I agree and disagree on some things. Right now, I am a student teacher in a poor elementary school in Washington. I work with 5th graders who are all good, but not trained socially. I do agree that homeschooling is better and lots of time is wasted in the public school arena. Because most of these kids’ parents don’t teach their children consequences, I have to teach them, which stops instruction. As for “wasting time standing in line,” they must learn to be orderly when walking in the hall or they’ll end up running into somebody else and cause a lawsuit (some Welfare parents are well-versed in this). But honestly, I want out because I can’t deal with working with 22 kids, some with behavior issues, some with autism—I can’t be effective for ALL 22 students at any given time. If I’m telling the autistic kid to pick up his pencil and write what is on the board, the genius girl in the class is silent reading when I could be challlenging her even more. I feel like a failure, to tell the truth. I would much rather dodge a school full of kids who need boot camp and work with kids that want to learn, like 1-on-1 tutoring or homeschooling.

By: Donna

Donna — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 03:54:49 +0000

Home schooling is not stressful enough? Are you joking? What could be more stressful than having your mother as your instructor? You want to know what stress is? Think of how stressed out you would be if your mother was your boss at work. If you made a mistake you might not get fired, you would just disappoint the woman that breastfed you as an infant. I’m 15 years old and I’m homeschooled. I live at my school. My teacher fixes me supper at night and has the authority to ground me from the telephone, the television, the computer, my ipod and the stereo. Please don’t misunderstand; I am glad my parents homeschool me. I’ve heard that in public school you are not allowed to the bathroom without first asking permission. Barbaric! What kind of jobs are they training public schooled kids for?

Anyhow, I digress. The most important thing my instructor/mother could have taught me was how to learn things on my own. It is not the instructor’s job to learn, that is the student’s task. The teaching methods of the college instructors become irrelevant. The only thing I need to know is the task. Learning is my responsibility.

By: Tamara

Tamara — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:43:12 +0000

In my somewhat limited experience (my own and that of my older child) the stress of school did not toughen us. It broke us. It destroyed our ability to trust and our confidence in ourselves.

It is too late for me to undo all of the damage that elementary and junior high school did to my ability to form relationships. My eight year old has been hospitalized for what used to be called a nervous breakdown…I can only hope that bringing him home, along with therapy and carefully supervised social interactions can undo some of the damage for him.

By: mari

mari — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 16:19:06 +0000

that is a great article coming from soon to be mom… only some questions to post….
until when the home schooling ended? how will you prepare your kids to live in outside world when they are starting to grow up and need other person aside from the parents and siblings…
i just read also same article from pangilinan clan, having her 3 kids doing homeschooling and same with the article that is wrote also gave me an inspiration…

thanks…

By: Guardian Angel

Guardian Angel — Tue, 13 May 2008 12:12:46 +0000

Would you recommend any homeschool makati area?

By: Elena H.

Elena H. — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 20:13:07 +0000

Great points to consider. Well written.

By: francie

francie — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 06:09:54 +0000

Crystie, Thanks much for your input, especially the “Toughen Up” comment, Ohhh, how many times I have heard this…One part of me thinking “Ok, yea, that’s all good and fine,” then after rethinking,I knew it just isn’t everyone’s reality, “it does not work for all children”, Yes, it can very much be a “mental torture” for some. They need a better way to handle stressful situations, one that works for them. It’s taught to them thru understanding, patience and from the people closest to them, usually their Mothers. That works just fine from my perspective. Thank you Beatrice for your articles, and to Crystie who tells it well through additional comments.

By: Crystie

Crystie — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 22:25:29 +0000

“School doesn’t teach you what to do about stress, but it helps build an immunity.” That sounds an awful lot like people who think a sensitive child needs to “Toughen up”. Realistically, that works sometimes, but most of the time it just a form of mental torture for the child. I agree with Beatrice, *children* who grow up as *children* not a public school captive will be able to handle stress better as an adult, because they are an adult not an adult who responds to stress like a child.

By: SoC

SoC — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 11:21:02 +0000

I see. I'll look forward to that next article. But I'm still curious about the stress issue.

School doesn't teach you what to do about stress, but it helps build an immunity. Homeschooling is done in a relaxed enviroment and when one teaching method doesn't work, you move onto another, more effective, one. This keeps the enviroment stress free and the child ready and willing to learn. This only becomes a problem at the high school or college level when not only does the teacher not have the time to find a more effective method (unless you convince the school of a mental handicap) and stress builds. Plus it may be an unfamiliar emotion giving it a multiplier on effectiveness.

However, to counter myself (not that it's about being right), I suppose you could teach your children to meditate or something-like which gives people resilience to negative thought and proclivity towards positive thought.

PS: If these issues will be answered in the next article, I'd be happy to wait.

By: Beatrice

Beatrice — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 06:56:44 +0000

Just for the record, I don’t mind at all that you disagree with me on the “socialization” part, but the fact that our children are forced to be around people their age MOST OF THE TIME is one of the biggest reasons I disapprove of institutional schooling, but it would take an entirely new article to explain why. I’ll email you when that comes out

As for how to shift children from homeschooling to the high stress real world, or even high school: If we think the world might be stressful for our high schooler, think how stressful it will be for our toddler!

Anyway, homeschooling does not lock the child up in the house. He experiences the world too, but with “parental guidance.” By the time you let him out by himself, he will be quite capable of handling it, and be better educated than his peers in knowing the right way to go through life, because he has been properly trained by his hopefully-wiser parents, NOT by his equally ignorant peers.