I am a homeschooling mom...

[agilebrit]

And I will not wank. No, I won't. Not there, anyway. Eh. *grabs a tissue and cleans up* Seriously, I couldn't let that go.

However, all you have to do is look at the "quality" of fic at FFN to see the sort of "education" that public schools are churning out. Semi-literate snowflakes who bristle at the merest hint of criticism? Pretty much.

Yeah, not in my house. Da Boy already gets corrected if he doesn't capitalize "I" or the word at the start of a sentence, and he's seven. And I don't think I'm stunting his creativity.

Comments

[whirligigged.livejournal.com]

I was going to comment similarly when you posted about Drillbit Taylor, but I ended up going on for too long and deleted it - I've committed the same fault here. Please excuse my inability to form concise comments! I keep going over and adding things to clarify. XD

I've attended public school since I was six, and I do want to defend public schools a little. Movies like Drillbit Taylor are not going to be an accurate portrayal of anything resembling real life. You know this, obviously, but I do want to confirm that things like that - the bullying, the total apathy of the faculty? Would never happen in my high school, nor the middle and elementary schools I attended. I can only speak for my own city's school system - I'm just south of Boston. There's varying education quality, yes. I'm also of the opinion that homeschooling is great for the same reason that smaller college classes are desirable to prospective students. It's personalized to fit the students' needs, more time is devoted to the individual student, and without a twenty-five student class who all need to learn the material, the pace is accelerated.

I still feel public schools are undeserving of this very poor reputation. Do we have unintelligent, often semi-literate students? Yes. Obviously. There is no placement test to get into public school. With large student bodies, there is going to be a range of intelligence within that body. There are also those students who are Harvard, Brown, or MIT-bound.

I watch my teachers make an effort every single day, and I do bristle when I see it implied that every single one of them sits on their hands all day and let the kids pee on each other or something. They reach out to the kids they see struggling in classes and grades. What it boils down to most of the time isn't the quality of the material, it's that in public schools it's up completely to the student to accept the teacher's efforts or not, because unlike in homeschooling, there are many other students who require that teacher's attention as well.

I feel a little at a loss here, because I'm certain you were aware of all the points I attempted to make above. What I tried to get at is that I'm getting the vibe that intelligent people who attended public schools are being viewed as the exception, while I know from personal experience that's not the case at all. I'm not saying the smart kids are the rule, but neither are the truly dense ones - who I really do think are in the minority, but I don't have stats or IQs so I won't go there - and there are far more intelligent public school students than popular culture (let's not talk about shows like The Hills, okay?) would have anyone think, I suppose because kids going out party hard are more exciting than kids reading or watching the SciFi channel with their friends in the living room on a Friday night (also assuming that smart kids don't party, which, come on).

I'm going to admit, I don't see what the particular problem is here (in regard to the post you linked). I think either the post was edited to be less offensive before I got to it, or perhaps what you were talking about were the rude comments about homeschooled students? All I saw in the post itself was a very defensive rant about the negative generalizations that tend to be made about public schools.

I do hope this doesn't sound like an attack, toward either you or toward homeschooling. It isn't meant to be in the least. It is, however, and forgive my defensiveness, me bristling quite a bit at the criticism - forgive me. While public schools are certainly deserving of some criticism, I don't think they are deserving of the attitude that the education they provide shouldn't garner any respect, and I do feel it's a bit of a put-down, unconscious or not.

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

Hey, I went to public school and got a pretty decent education. Of course, that was over 25 years ago, and from what I've seen, the entire climate has changed. I realize that "Drillbit Taylor" isn't necessarily "reality," at least not in every school, but I also think it's reality enough in some schools to be a problem. One of the commenters in that post said that her brother got beat up by three kids on the playground, was witnessed by her mother, and the playground monitor basically shrugged and said "They have to learn to work this stuff out for themselves." And heaven forbid a kid actually defend themselves against bullying by fighting back--they'll get suspended quicker than the kid doing the actual bullying. A kid right here in Utah was arrested recently for taking a gun to school because he was being bullied. Not that I think he should take a gun to school, but he also shouldn't feel as if he needs to resort to such an extreme measure because none of the adults is doing anything about it.

I'll admit that I have a knee-jerk reaction when people bitch about the "social retardation" aspect of homeschooling, which is where the wank is in the comments on that post. Da Boy is a pretty self-assured 7-year-old who plays with kids of all ages in the neighborhood. And I'm looking at it from the standpoint of what's best for my kid and what we can do to facilitate it. I've seen what the public schools here produce, and he's going into one over my dead body. The sad thing is that Utah public schools are considered some of the best in the country--our test scores are good and everything. And yet I went to work with people who didn't know the difference between "they're" and "their."

It's down to the kids caring, and the teachers making sure they care by creating consequences if they don't. And from what I've seen (it may be different where you are), the consequences have disappeared. A kid can still get an A on a semi-literate piece of trash because correcting her will stifle her creativity. This is utter twaddle to me, and I won't put up with it in my kid.

I also realize that this is partially the parents' fault as well. The Hubby went to a school where the teachers were physically threatened if they looked like they were going to fail a kid, and I can't imagine that it's got much better where he was. We have parents who won't let the teachers do their frelling job, and teachers who are so jaded that they don't care anymore. 'Cause, you know, it's not like they'll get fired for incompetence or anything--the union protects them from that.

And you, my dear, are an exception. You care about your grammar and your spelling, whereas many of your contemporaries don't. Just look at the dreck that FFN is filled with. You'd die before you published something that didn't capitalize "I" or a story that spelled Rogue's name wrong. And if someone gives you crit, you don't go off on them like they just stomped your favorite puppy. Too many high school kids think they're above crit, and "it's just fanfic anyway." This attitude frosts me.

And don't ever worry about a comment that's "too long." I welcome them. *hugs*