YOUR CHILD NEEDS TO BE IN SCHOOL

 

 

 

 

Tricia Smith Vaughan
February 18, 2006
NewsWithViews.com

The actual quote from the caring mom was, "Your child is so brilliant; he needs to be in school." Now, I'll add here that yes, I have always been attracted to guys with high SAT scores, when I believed that indicator was a sign of intelligence. And yes, my son's dad is a pretty smart fellow, complete with a good SAT score to show for it. My guess, in the interest of full disclosure, is that any brilliance my children have comes from their dad. My job, besides giving birth and nursing, is to make sure that the brilliance is not dulled to a semi-shiny patina, as the government schools tend to do with intelligence.

And here's another thing: I think that most children are brilliant. Truth be told, yes, I married a smart fellow, but I think that most fellows produce smart children. I think that most children start out brilliant and I think that our government schools, and their resulting chaos, make our brilliant, freedom-loving children into much less than what God intended.

Despite her good intentions, the mom's words cut me just a bit. I winced and stayed silent. The mother seems like a very nice person, and I don't believe that she said what she did to be mean; she said it because she believed it.

Many moms and dads believe as she does, that children will somehow be deprived if they are not heavily schooled. I have received e-mails that state how my children are somehow missing out because they are not enrolled in a government school, that I am indeed depriving them of childhood memories by teaching them at home. As we all know, children will have no memories unless they step into a school building.

I also have heard comments such as, "Are you going to homeschool him all the way?" It's as if at some point, I'm going to give up and say, "I'm giving my children over to the governmental agents to teach. No, really, I want them to take sex surveys and learn fuzzy math. And while I'm at it, let's make sure that they think of the U.S. Constitution as a document that changes with the whims of Supreme Court Justices."

The truth is that I love to help my children learn. And the nasty truth of the matter, the one that most moms and many dads don't want to admit is that teaching children what they need to learn takes much less time than schools portend. Or perhaps it should be pretend. I'd be pretending that heavy schooling is necessary too, if my pension relied on it, as does the retirement of those who teach in the school system.

Learning takes time, yes, but it doesn't take six to eight hours of sitting in a classroom each day. I became familiar with efficient learning when I began college. Suddenly, I had to figure out things for myself. I spent five or six hours in class each week, but most of my learning was done by, well, me. It took me a couple of years, but I finally figured out that I had to read and figure out math problems and memorize things by myself. Eventually, I graduated with honors, a real surprise to me at the time. In the meantime, I learned to teach myself, the only way to learn anything.

And guess what the most important lesson I learned was: Only I can learn! No teacher or principal or government official or parent or boyfriend or spouse can make me learn. I alone am responsible for my own learning.

And here's a sneaky secret that I've learned only in the past few months, since I committed myself to helping my own children learn: Our little blessings learn easily by themselves, if left alone.

Let me say that once again: If we leave our children alone, they will learn!

For those of you who are thinking it's not good to place a child all alone in a closet for his or her early years, that's not at all what I'm suggesting. Of course it's nice to be surrounded by books and it's great to experience life as much as possible. "Always take your baby with you," our pediatrician told us on one of the first few visits after our oldest son was born. And we have. He's been from coast to coast with us, as have his brothers. And we read to him. And we talk a lot about things. If I don't know the answers to his questions, we'll look them up, either on the Internet or in the library. And we sing the alphabet and talk about numbers and addition and subtraction. As many parents are beginning to learn, almost all parents can do these things with their children.

If I can help it, I will never allow my children to sit in a classroom, competing with other students and soaking in the knowledge that someone else wants them to have. My children tell me what they want to learn and I listen. Without any force or confinement, they will learn what they need to know. If you think this method sounds weird or lazy, keep in mind that the person who heads the human genome project, Francis S. Collins, was taught at home by his mother in Virginia. He and his four brothers were allowed to choose what they would study. The only rule to their homeschooling was that they all had to agree on what subject they would be learning at a particular time.

I know; this kind of thinking goes against what all the commercials and politicians tell us, although I suspect that a freedom fighter such as Congressman Ron Paul would agree with me. If we listen to mainstream media, heavy schooling is the only way to raise a child. I recently read a book called What's Going On In There? to learn more about a child's brain; I learned what was going on, but I also learned that I was cheating my children by not sending them to a "high-quality child care facility," as the author herself had apparently done with her own progeny. Most books tout the benefits of outside education, completely ignoring or downplaying the benefits that parents can give their children.

Needless to say, few mothers anymore believe that we're smart enough to teach our own children. The pressure to make our children well-schooled has resulted in a nation of mothers who are so intent on having children that are academically superior that we start looking for preschools days after we conceive our first children. What we're missing is the obvious: Children are born learners. They don't need flash cards in the womb or supposed socialization in an institution; they need the loving guidance of parents who care for them. Forcing them into a government school at age five or six or making them "ready-to-learn" at age three or four merely drives our children to be neurotic. It teaches them nothing at all about true liberty.

A truth that we don't want to realize is that children do not need to be poked and prodded and forced to learn. With a bit of guidance, some good books, and interesting conversations, most children can learn to read and do mathematics, the true basic skills needed for any higher learning. Children need only to know that learning is important, and to be given an opportunity to learn, ideally from their parents. They do not need to be forced into learning with twenty other students and a teacher who is paid to care for them.

Compulsory education is one of the biggest lies that the government has sold us. After all, how can we possibly have a free society if our children are forced to go to school? Unfortunately, Americans have been conditioned to believe that the only way to learn is to send a child to school, and the more time spent in confinement, the better. John Taylor Gatto, former New York Schoolteacher of the Year, sees it differently:

"Sweden, a rich, healthy, and beautiful country, with a spectacular reputation for quality in everything, won't allow children to enter school before they're seven years old. The total length of Swedish schooling is nine years, not twelve, after which the average Swede runs circles around the over-schooled American. Why don't you know these things? To whose advantage is it that you don't?" (John Taylor Gatto, www.spinninglobe.net/condunces.htm)

To whose advantage, indeed?!? And yet, most Americans have no idea about what Gatto says. In fact, most Americans believe that no one could read in colonial America. The reality is that farmers were reading in the fields, according to Gatto, and they weren't reading the pabulum that passes for information today. They were reading philosophy and the Bible, texts that today's college students are barely able to read.

Most Americans, however, refuse to believe that less education is more. Most parents believe that teaching reading is an arduous process, something that only a state-certified teacher can do. Most parents have no idea how harmful whole word reading instruction is to their children and yet, they allow teachers to indoctrinate their children with reading instruction that depends on whole word's close kin, the look-say method. These children will grow up with the reading skills that some of my college freshman had when I taught a few years ago. With such low reading and writing skills, it is no wonder that most Americans have no idea what our Constitution really says.

Instead, many parents opt for convenience, their own personal convenience: Parents clamor for the governmental offerings of full-day kindergartens and year-round schools. In addition to providing the parents with eight hours or so each day away from their child, these schedules allow parents the illusion that more schooling will make their children smarter. The truth couldn't be further from this myth. Entrusting your young child to a government school is one of the biggest mistakes that you can make:

"Only a desperado would blindly trust his children to a collection of untested strangers and hope for the best. Parents and school personnel are just plain natural adversaries. One group is trying to make a living; the other is trying to make a work of art called a family. If you allow yourself to be co-opted by flattery, seduced with worthless payoffs such as special classes or programs, intimidated by Alice in Wonderland titles and degrees, you will become the enemy within, the extension of state schooling into your own home. Shame on you if you allow that. Your job is to educate, the schoolteacher's is to school; you work for love, the teacher for money. The interests are radically different, one an individual thing, the other a collective. You can make your own son or daughter one of a kind if you have the time and will to do so; school can only make them part of a hive, a herd, or an anthill." (John Taylor Gatto, www.spinninglobe.net/condunces.htm)

And the time involved is not as long as one might think. How long do the administrative parts of school take? The lunch breaks? Roll call? Homework checks? Assessments? When people teach their children at home, learning becomes more efficient, more economical. Children learn the way they are supposed to, not the way some mercenary government official believes that they should.

When you tell me that my children are suffering from not being confined in a school all day, I know you mean well, but please, don't worry that my children aren't being heavily schooled. They're learning what their father and I desire for them, what we have desired since before they were born: to be free, to be independent, to love learning, and to think for themselves. It's way more than they'll ever learn in a government school. And who knows? Their love for learning and desire for true freedom may one day help bring this country back to its true Constitutional roots. Let's hope so!

References:

1. www.spinninglobe.net/condunces.htm
2. www.deliberatedumbingdown.com
3. www.johntaylorgatto.com
4. www.beverlye.com
5. www.universalpreschool.com

© 2006 Tricia S. Vaughan - All Rights Reserved