Posted on 06/02/2008 1:55:29 PM PDT by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
My #2 son plays trumpet as well. He only finished with a 4.33 GPA. His girlfriend was the valedictorian with a 4.86 GPA. My son wrote the valedictorian speech as he was better at writing prose of that variety. He's a former Marine and CA real estate broker now.
The pathology described by the author isn't see in homeschooling. Yet,...homoschooled adults show superior “socialization” as children and as adults. They are more likely to vote, be a community volunteer, attend church, marry and stay married,...etc. ( The studies are on the HSLDA web site.)
Nearly all the socialization skills needed to survive high school must be unlearned if an adult is to have success in business, and in the home, extended family, and community. Thankfully humans are adaptable and most make the transition.
Treating children like prisoners, marching them about to the sounds of bells, segregating them by age, teaching them subjects in a lockstep manner, all contribute to the formation of cliques. In prison they are called protection gangs.
If you treat kids like prisoners you will get prison social pathology.
Please read post #83.
Very sweet picture.
Yeah, it is. When she joined the Academic Team in 10th grade, someone asked her if she was afraid of being labeled a nerd - she said "Nope, I'm already a band geek, it's not like I have social standing to worry about." That's pretty much her whole high school career, she didn't worry about standing, just her friends and the ability to talk with people she liked without worrying about having the 'right' cell phone or 'right' purse. Nat is just Nat...and she's not worried about what anyone on this world thinks about her as long as she is true to what she believes in.
Funny how high school isn't the 'real world' is it? Nerds do quite fine in areas where results are prized, not appearances.
>>Anyone been watching the program “Big Bang”? I love
>>nerds....They’re “mockable”.
My favorite comedy show!
The Big Bang Theory:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=a2ZaOBOaH-0&feature=user
http://youtube.com/watch?v=PGT71Zv2tGU
http://youtube.com/watch?v=mpRkj6SwhvI&feature=user
“It’s not as if he was the illegitimate son of a 3rd shift convenience store clerk and a Somali wet nurse.”
Is that you Rowan Atkinson?
Doing stupid stuff like that is what flags a person as a geek.
If there are only a hundred kids per grade and the culture is that bad, then it’s time for you and your neighbors to vote the school board out and get some folks in there who are willing to do their job.
“Accurate to some degree, but I think he overstates his case for effect. The environment he describes may be typical of the larger public schools (my limited experience suggests this may be true) but not of all schools, everywhere.”
But I don't think that he says that all this absolutely universally true.
In describing schools, he ultimately makes this statement:
“If you stop there, what you're describing is literally a prison, albeit a part-time one. The problem is, many schools practically do stop there.”
Although he generalizes, his generalizations admit of exceptions.
The difficulty is that most children are actually educated in large public schools. In my own state of Maryland, around 70% - 80% of the population resides in the six or seven largest jurisdictions. Each of these jurisdictions has a large school system with tens of thousands of students. Several of these systems have more than 100,000 students. And the high schools typically number 1,500 - 3,000 students.
Most children are educated in large public schools. Thus, the author's comments apply to a high percentage of students in the United States.
sitetest
But parents have to want to do something besides warehouse their children.
I think some parents are sticking their fingers in their ears and chanting, "La la la I can't hear you" because they don't want to make the hard choices that ensue when you get out of the 'free' public schools (but have to continue paying for them). But that's what parents are supposed to do.
-Is that you Rowan Atkinson?
No. Why? Has Mr. Atkinson been lifting my material?
I agree.
I was a persecuted nerd in secondary school (amazing how different elementary school was!), though I wasn't that smart (neither am I that successful now). I also wasn't part of any "nerd group"--especially any that used drugs. My experience was that drugs were for the cruel popular kids (who were also often the smartest students).
American compulsory education is a sad, flawed, broken institution that cripples a lot of lives. How it can be fixed, or even if it can be, is beyond me.
Thanks for posting the article.
::Smacks forehead:: Duh! There you go! Problem solved!
I mean it!
Home is really the very best place to be. To conscript children away from their homes and families for twelve years seems like something out of a totalitarian nightmare.
Who said anything about ‘girls gone wild’ types? That’s a strange thing to raise since I didn’t raise anything like that. There are very attractive women of good substance - many of them don’t take off their t-shirts for free booze,
Both the bully/jock types and the nerdier types very often manage to remain in the hole. The nerds don;t necessarily have a leg up in that department.
It is complex, no question. Either charm and brains are in fact quite common.
“I think some parents are sticking their fingers in their ears and chanting, ‘La la la I can't hear you’ because they don't want to make the hard choices that ensue when you get out of the ‘free’ public schools (but have to continue paying for them). But that's what parents are supposed to do.”
I agree that many are sticking their fingers in their ears, but in some cases, it isn't that they don't want to make the hard choices, but they can't see their way to any choices, hard or otherwise, other than the local public school.
I know many parents in my parish who would love an alternative to the local public schools. But around here, the alternatives are: expensive parochial schools; very expensive private schools; and homeschooling.
Part of the problem is that many folks in my parish have been generous with life, and have had four, five, six, eight, nine or more kids. Some of these folks choose homeschooling, but others can't afford to miss the second (or third) income. With a half-dozen or more children, in a high cost-of-living area, it isn't surprising that these families absolutely can't forgo the wife working.
I'd been thinking today of one family that I know. They sent their older kids to the local Catholic school. But now that they have eight or nine (I lost count a baby or two ago), it just doesn't work. He works two jobs, she works one job. So, public schools it is.
Years ago, when I was a kid, the local Catholic school charged full tuition for the first child, half for the second, and either one-quarter or nothing for the third, and if you were fortunate enough to have four or more in the local Catholic school all at once, numbers 4 through n went for free. And tuitions were low. My last year of high school cost my parents a couple of percent of their middle-class household income. My son's first year next year at the same high school will be about 15% of median household income. And it's one of the less-expensive high schools in the archdiocese.
Others have said it, I won't be the first. The Church asks us to procreate them, but no longer wishes to help educate them.
It's true that some folks just don't want to make much of a sacrifice to do what's really needed. But other folks just can't.
sitetest
I don't think this is true at all. Skill sets find new applications and adapt to new circumstances. high school socialization skills don't have to be unlearned for adult success. I don't buy your point at all.
I think some of the so called nerds are unpopular in school because they don’t have a lot in common with the average student. When most of the other kids are talking about girls and sports the nerds are discussing computers and calculus. I’m sure that a lot of them are just quiet kids who like to keep to themselves. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Thank you! :0)
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