bostonbubble.com

[GenXer]

Again, the premise is wrong. It's not a choice between a free for all and a totalitarian dictatorship. I plan to teach my kids to be able to teach themselves. Even if they are not Einsteins, I think they'll do much better than most HS kids - who are used to being spoonfed with a pre-determined curriculum. So in that sense, they'll be much freer than the free ones - they'll actually know what they want very early on, because they are not going to be sheltered. They'll live in the real world as adults much sooner. On the other hand, they will be exposed to many more subjects, and will eventually be expected to perform much more complex tasks - there will be none of that 'its too complicated' attitude. Calculus at 10? No problem! It depends how you teach Calculus. Chemistry at 12? No problem! Matlab and matrix math? Hey, you can teach a 12 year old some basic matrix math. The question is, how do you do it? I believe that only by understanding how your own kids learn can they be taught more efficiently at home than at any of the best schools. Motivate them, get them interested early on, and that's all it takes. Even if the kid is not going to be a genius, they will learn a lot more a lot better and a lot faster doing it their way.

[Boston ITer]

[Kaidran]

Actually I think there is supposed to be an abstract brain development phase around 12 that is necessary to fully understand complicated algebra.

Other than that my opinion has not really changed on individual motivation of a teenager but I dont want to go around the argument circle again.

[Xenos]

I am impressed with the energy and passion shown in the course of this thread. As someone well into the process of educating kids, I would offer an important insight: you don't know what your kids will be like, what there talents will be, and so you will have to account for a lot of unpredictable variables when the time comes.

And kids do not end up being predictably like their parents.

I have one child with a talent for languages, and a passion for antiquity. Wants to study classics in college, and to teach Latin - she would benefit from a very traditional education. Another wants to study science, and is so quick that conventional HS would be a waste. Probably going to homeschool him starting at grade 7 and then put him through community college by age 18. Another kid who is a bit slow, and really needs all the services a public educational system can provide in order to keep up. I am not a speech therapist or an occupational therapist.

They are all great kids - we love 'em all. But what sort of education they get is going to be based around their needs, not my more long-term concerns about which schools are best or most worthwhile. I really don't have much choice in the matter.

[balor123]

Yeah that would be my biggest concern. I met a woman two weeks ago who has four kids. Three became engineers. The last changes oil for a living.

At those young ages I worry about motivation.

[john p]

What is kind of funny is that we have so many meaningless professional jobs out there that we don't spend much money on doing or building things. I know guys who are writing reports about the bridges that need to be repaired. They were built in the 30's to the 50's and they had a 40 year life cycle, so we have a lot of work to do. Instead we just write reports showing how bad they need to be repaired instead of repairing them because we don't have the money to actually do the work.

Think about it, a huge portion of what we use is manufactured overseas, what work are we actually doing? We're letting our built environment crumble, we don't make anything, we're mostly just a bunch of takers exploiting other nations. We all want universal health care and child labor laws and unions, but we all send our dollars over seas to nations that pollute, exploit the poor, stomp on human and social rights, etc. etc. It's just kind of funny that we still have the conversations about how great Wellesley's schools are, I mean what are these kids going to actually contribute to society? It is very funny. Al Gore gets a Nobel Peace Prize regarding global warming, yet he lives in a 10,000 square foot house that uses 20 times the amount of electricity than the average American household (whom he says are too wasteful), and this house gets a Green Building Council Platinum LEED's Award. And none of the eggheads throw the penalty flag! I mean we send these kids to school to be intellectuals and they are intellectually dishonest when they sit idle and promote LEEDs when it is giving their top award to a grossly wasteful building. The eggheads that I see are mostly dishonest and use their intellectual skills to attack the truth tellers and defend the status quo. What is the point of having all these eggheads if they have no values or backbone? You have to be an egghead to think that we can spend our way out of our debt because you know you can manipulate others. Basically, today, education is used to manipulate others because we don't have the money to do the work that engineers design which is why so many are getting their MBA's.

I'm just saying, be honest about what you want for your kids. Don't bullshit people by saying that you want your kid to do this or that, when you really want them to have a financially comfortable lifestyle.

I bet that at least one, most likely two out of the three engineers is working on something that will never be built; at least the kid changing oil has actually made an impact. I work and know people that have no concern whether what they design ever gets built. They care less about being a fruitless member of society, in fact they prefer not to have their work built because it exposes their mistakes and incompleteness. For a society of 310 million people we have been grossly unproductive because we're in so much debt. Only a grossly unproductive society would elect someone with such little experience, and only someone with such little experience could believe that you can spend your way out of financial trouble.

Even on a cultural level, think how many english and film majors there are out there and how bad most movies and television programs suck. I wonder why the focus on all these wonder kids is what they will know versus what they will be able to do.

[john p]

Another thing, a great example of what I'm talking about is the Auto Industry. When the American Automakers decided to make crappy cars so that we would be forced to buy a new one every 60,000 miles it ruined the careers of engineers who were building their careers to delivering a better car. Their efforts hit a wall of sleazebags who wanted to build crappy cars so they were 5 year dixie-cups.

In these cultures, the engineers were less than a commodity, they were a nuisance and a risk to the goal of planned incompetence. The lightweights took over the cultures of these companies and in time, their toadies took over and we're on the third or fourth generation of lightweights and poisoned industries that aren't aligned with the constructive values to succeed. This is why the automotive industry couldn't adapt, because they didn't have quality individuals in their pipeline that were empowered to make a difference. They chose lightweights and those lightweights chose other lightweights and they ignored the talented people.

[Boston ITer]

[Kaidran]

I think the problem is Gore is an environmentalist, not Jesus. I would personally like to see a lot more politicians that actually understood science and engineering.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/gorehome.asp

I have a 12 year old Ranger, 150k and running well. The US car maker problem was making them mostly big and inefficient.

[GenXer]

Of course nobody can predict what the kids will turn out to be. This is exactly ther eason NOT to give them up to be butchered by the public school system. Let them develop on their own with some guidance. And if anything, I would not want to have one kid in public school and another one at home. This would be very unfair. Many, many homeschooling parents have kids with ADD, ADHD, Autism, Aspergers, you name it. Somehow they all figured out that for their slow kids, the school system is actually making it much worse. This is just an observation, and of course, individual results may vary.

As far as structured approach, nobody said that some subjects can't be taught that way. Obviously, the parents have to structure it in such a way that a kid can learn best. Once they are good at learning, they can take a college class and do just fine. I wouldn't impose structure unless that's that makes the kids do best.

The point about them actually learning to do something is well taken - that's the purpose of a home education. Kids can learn everything, from cooking, cleaning, learning to understand chemicals in the products around them, repairing things inside the house, repairing cars, yard work, gardening, hunting, building stuff, etc. How many classes in HS allow you to build stuff at all?

All they'll see around them are MOTIVATED people and other kids who are also interested in learning. They will completely miss out on the 'culture', but they will nevertheless be a lot more cultured as a result.

[Kaidran]

I guess I'm old school in thinking that school is about the hard (defined) subjects Math, Chemistry, English etc.

All the other things you listed cooking, gardening, building things etc are very valuable but I would be doing them anyway, out of school hours. My 3 year old already knows how to make pancakes and has a good handle on bread. None of our seed have germinated though.

I think you are wrong in your assumption that parents who don't home school have no role at all in teaching their kids anything.

[Boston ITer]

[Kaidran]

I'm not sure how old your kids are Boston ITer but I would guess Xenos has a much clearer picture than GenXer or I have. Actually having children of the right age would allow him to see how things work directly.

[GenXer]

[Boston ITer]

Kaidran, I think it's clear that neither GenXer nor I are qualified to speak for Xeno's child.

What we're speaking of, since we've logged a lot of road miles and with peers, relatives, and other families, is that the school systems, for the most part, is more concerned with themselves than the attendants.

The system didn't want that girl to study 4-5 languages because that's not on their agenda, however, she did it anyways and still did well enough for Stanford and Penn. The result, however, was a spiteful and embittered 17 year old, not a healthy graduate.

The best corporate metaphor would be human resources. How often has HR dropped the ball on someone you knew? And at the same time, did they even protect the management from frivolous lawsuits either?