Does an Education Degree Come With Super Powers?

According to Ron Clark, in this CNN story called What teachers really want parents to know, an education degree does, in fact, come with at least one super power. He writes:

One of my biggest pet peeves is when I tell a mom something her son did and she turns, looks at him and asks, "Is that true?" Well, of course it's true. I just told you.

See? Apparently, teachers are gifted with infallibility. We should believe everything they tell us about our children. He continues:

And please don't ask whether a classmate can confirm what happened or whether another teacher might have been present. It only demeans teachers and weakens the partnership between teacher and parent.

What about demeaning the child by not asking for his side of the story? What about the partnership between parent and child? Should we worry about weakening that? Clark says later in the article:

If your child said something happened in the classroom that concerns you, ask to meet with the teacher and approach the situation by saying, "I wanted to let you know something my child said took place in your class, because I know that children can exaggerate and that there are always two sides to every story. I was hoping you could shed some light for me."

I cannot believe the double standard that is so casually displayed here. Let me summarize:

• If any teacher tells you your child did something wrong, just believe it. The teacher would never lie or exaggerate.
• If your own child tells you the teacher did something wrong, make sure to get the teacher's side. Children can't be trusted.

But these pesky parents just don't get it, according to Clark:

They are ready to fight and defend their child, and it is exhausting.

He's right about one thing, it would be a lot more convenient if parents just believed everything teachers said. Convenient for the teachers. Not so much for the students, or for the parent-child relationships, which will last a lot longer than the parent-teacher relationships, if the parents are lucky.


I have some questions for Ron Clark: Should everyone have trusted the teachers who recently cheated on standardized tests? Should parents trust the teachers who sexually assault children? The ones who harass and demean and emotionally abuse children?

What If They Choose School?

Another question I expect to answer a lot as my kids get older:

Will you let your kids go to school if they want to?

The short answer: yes.

On Bullying

How do you really feel about bullying? What are the options for a bullied child? Please consider these two stories as another school year begins.

First, a fictional story about a girl named Mary...

Almost every day for a few years, Mary has spent many hours with Peter and his friends, who are very cruel to Mary. They call her terrible names, throw things at her, spit at her, destroy things that are valuable to her. She has started to eat meals in the bathroom when Peter is around, because it is the only place she can escape his torment. She believes she is worthless and has thought about killing herself. Peter has warned her not to tell anyone about the things he does to her or else he will only make it worse for her. He is much bigger than she is, so she has not said anything until now. Mary has finally come to you and shared her story, and she is afraid.

How do you feel about Mary? About Peter? What should Mary do? Do your answers depend on who Mary is, and what is her relationship to Peter?

Continue reading here for some of the possibilities.

School Confusion: Response To an Anonymous Comment

I received a very detailed comment on my Ten Ways For Schools To Confuse a Child post, so I thought I would address each of the Anonymous Commenter's points.


Here, I will include the original list item, followed by the comment in italics, and then my response. Here goes...

"You Can Do Anything You Want." Except That.

This is the second in a series of posts about an article from The Atlantic by Lori Gottlieb, called "How to Land Your Kid in Therapy." In the first one, I argued against the premise of the article, which seems to be that if your child ever goes to therapy, even if he only has wonderful things to say about you, you might be a failure as a parent.

Today I want to address an idea that is often expressed in our society, and is perpetuated by articles like this. I touched on this topic once before, in The Myth Of Permissive Parents. Here is a quote found in Gottlieb's article, from Barry Schwarz, a Professor of Social Theory and Social Action at Swarthmore College:

Most parents tell kids, ‘You can do anything you want, you can quit any time, you can try this other thing if you’re not 100 percent satisfied with the other.’

THIS IS A MYTH! It shocks me every time I hear it. This is NOT what most parents say. Let me alter it slightly for you with some of my own additions in bold: 

The Myth of Permissive Parents

Every few months, an article comes out about the Four Types Of Parents. This latest article calls the four types authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and uninvolved. 

Authoritarian parents run their families like dictatorships. Uninvolved parents are neglectful. Think "Anna" and "Zoe" from Choosing Your Guide. These are the extremes, and pretty easy to pick out. Any other category is much more complicated.

The verdict is almost always in these articles that the authoritative parents, described as having "high expectations" but also showing "a lot of warmth," win the contest. Basically, these are parents who tell their kids what to do, but maybe say it nicely, and still give hugs. They are supposedly most likely to have "children who are responsible, competent and have high self-esteem."

The thing I really want to address, though, is the idea permissive parents. As defined in the article:

Permissive parents want a warm relationship with their children, but don't have specific expectations for their children. They tend not to set clear rules or goals for their children or tell them what to do.

There is this myth about kids in our culture, that so many of them are spoiled, that they do whatever they want, get whatever they want. That permissive parenting is rampant. There are supposedly all these parents who don't tell their kids what to do. But according to this article, 97% of school-age kids go to school.

School Readiness

Remember the Ten Ways For Schools To Confuse a Child? Well, I'm pretty sure someone from the federal government read it and took my suggestions seriously. Because they are planning on taking one of the items on the list and running with it. Here it is:

Does Anyone Care About the Kids?

The Institute of Education Sciences has approved a $1.6 million study of the effects of stress on education. This is great! Right?! We will see how stressful the school environment is on the kids, and maybe some drastic changes will finally be made!

Oh wait... no, nevermind. The study is not about the kids.

When Am I Allowed To Hit Someone?

It seems like this is what our society tells us about hitting:

I don't think a child EVER deserves to be hit. But laws in the United States allow parents (in all states) and teachers (in 19 states) to use corporal punishment on children.

Why do we allow this?

Why are children not protected from being hit by adults, by their own parents and teachers?

Ten Ways For Schools To Confuse a Child

In case parents don't do enough to sufficiently confuse their children, teachers and school administrators can do their parts as well. We can all work together to make sure no child is left thinking the world makes sense.

Each of these items is worth ten points, with a few extra credit opportunities:

1. Punish him for something that is completely beyond his control, like being late for school because of traffic or because his mother overslept.
2. Make a really big deal about how important it is for kids to get physical activity, and then force him to sit still for 95% of the school day. *extra credit for giving excessive homework, leading to more forced sitting: 1 point for each hour

Hopeless

Hopeless is what I imagine two girls must have felt as they took their own lives last weekend. The fourteen-year-olds got together for a sleepover, and hanged themselves, leaving behind sad suicide notes and sadder families.

The girls had apparently been bullied at school. They were harassed about things like their weights and hair colors. What is a child to do when she is a victim of bullying?

Socialization: My Thoughts

In my last post, I asked some questions about socialization. Here, I share my responses:

How many people do you know who did not attend grade school or high school?

Before I had kids and started thinking about this for my family, I had never met anyone who didn't go to school. There was one person in college who was known as "the homeschooled kid" and all of his weirdness was attributed to that one fact about his past. Now that I am more involved in the homeschooling community (both locally and globally online), I know a lot of people who never went to school. I can say that in my experience, I have found about as much variation in all the usual social characteristics in the unschooled population as in the schooled population.

Are you basing your opinion of unschooled people on a handful of families you have met, or maybe haven't even met but have only heard about? That is like forming an opinion of an entire country or race of people based on the same limited knowledge of them. I was guilty of it too.

Think about the five most antisocial people (by your own definition) you have ever met. Did they go to school?

Survey: Socialization

Even with my limited experience as someone planning not to send my kids to school, I can tell you with some confidence that the most common objection people have to this idea is regarding socialization. As in: How will your kids get socialized?

I used to be one of these people, so I am not here to pass judgment. I used to have the same concern. Now I realize that for me, it was a pretty automatic thing that popped into my head like a reflex when I heard the word "homeschool." I don't remember being taught to have this concern, but it got in my head somehow. Maybe because people told me that was why I was in school? I don't know.

I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I am going to assume that almost everyone who voices this concern is legitimately worried about my children. Worried about how they will learn to socialize without school. Worried that my children will grow up to be weird, or mean, or too shy or awkward, or I don't know what else.

So here are some questions for you about socialization. Think about them. Think about the reflex answers that pop into your head for some of them, and then really think about how you feel. If you want to. I would love to hear your answers if you are inclined to share. Use the "Anonymous" option if that helps.

What If They Choose School?

Another question I expect to answer a lot as my kids get older:

Will you let your kids go to school if they want to?

The short answer: yes.

A Simple Solution To the Cheating Problem

I recently found another article by "parenting expert" Dr. Michele Borba called Raising Honest Kids Despite Cheating Epidemic. In it, she cites nine reasons why kids cheat, a few ways to tell if they are cheating without directly asking them, and six ways you can stop it.

Doesn't that sound complicated? What if I told you there is one simple way we can stop all kids from cheating? It's true. Here it is:

Physical Fitness Testing Is Asinine

Check out this article from the Los Angeles Times, entitled Only 1 in 3 California students make the grade in physical-fitness test. According to the article, "The 2010 test scores show that 28.7% of the students in grade five, 34.6% in grade seven, and 38.5% in grade nine rated as "fit" in all six areas of the test." Another article on the Huffington Post says these numbers are "indicative of a growing health hazard for kids nationwide."

Is this a joke?

Mary's In Trouble. What Should She Do?

This is a story about Mary.

Almost every day for a few years, Mary has spent many hours with Peter and his friends, who are very cruel to Mary. They call her terrible names, throw things at her, spit at her, destroy things that are valuable to her. She has started to eat meals in the bathroom when Peter is around, because it is the only place she can escape his torment. She believes she is worthless and has thought about killing herself. Peter has warned her not to tell anyone about the things he does to her or else he will only make it worse for her. He is much bigger than she is, so she has not said anything until now. Mary has finally come to you and shared her story, and she is afraid.

How do you feel about Mary? About Peter? What should Mary do? Do your answers depend on who Mary is, and what is her relationship to Peter? Let's think about some of the possibilities...

Make Sure They Learn the Right Things

When talking about unschooling with people who are new to the idea, there is another question that usually follows Aren't there things everyone needs to know? It goes like this:

How will you make sure your kids learn the right things?

The short answer is: I can't. I will explain. But first let's talk about school.

Things Everyone Needs To Know

One of the common questions about unschooling and its lack of curriculum:

Aren't there things everyone needs to know?

I'm not sure about that. When pressed to answer their own question, most people say things like "basic math" or "how to read" and then have trouble thinking of much else. Even if I conceded that these two things were absolutely necessary for every person to know, that would hardly justify me sending my kids to school, as schools try to teach a whole lot more than just those things.

What Makes a Good Teacher?

We need teachers. More importantly, we need good teachers. Because for most children today, school is a reality. As long as school is required for most children, for 180 days a year, for thirteen years, it would be ideal if they could have amazing teachers to spend all that time with.

Thinking about all of the teachers I have ever had, I realized that most of my favorites were math teachers. This is not a big surprise, since math was my favorite subject. I didn't mind going to math class or doing math homework, because I liked it. I understood it. It didn't take much effort for math teachers to connect with me because I was already connected with the material. But what other things did all of my favorite teachers have in common?