Glenn Reynolds: Nobody ever got shot or pregnant from online or home schooling
In his newest USA Today column, Professor Glenn Reynolds (author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself) shares his thoughts on modern alternatives to the traditional school approach.
…Public schools were designed to be rigid. Back in the 19th century, when Massachusetts Board of Education Secretary Horace Mann toured Europe looking for models of public education to import to America, the one he chose came from Prussia. Inflexibility and uniformity were Prussian specialties, and when Mann brought Prussian-style education to America, those characteristics were seen not as a bug but as a feature.
School was practice for working in the factory. Thus, the traditional public school: like a factory, it runs by the bell. Like machines in a factory, desks and students are lined up in orderly rows. When shifts (classes) change, the bell rings again, and students go on to the next class. And within each class, the subjects are the same, the assignments are the same, and the examinations are the same, regardless of the characteristics of individual students.
The approach used for his daughter’s schooling is a great example of blending new with old.
My daughter did most of her high school online, after spending one day in ninth grade keeping track of how the public high school she attended spent her time. At the end of eight hours in school, she concluded, she had spent about 2½ hours on actual learning.
Switching to online school let her make sure that every hour counted. The flexibility also allowed her to work three days a week for a local TV-production company, where she got experience researching and writing for programs shown on the Biography Channel, A&E, etc., something she couldn’t have done had she been nailed down in a traditional school. And she still managed to graduate a year early, at age 16, to head off to a “public Ivy” to study engineering. Did she miss out on socializing at school? Possibly, but at her job she got to spend more time with talented, hardworking adults, which may have been better. (And, as a friend pointed out, nobody ever got shot or pregnant at online school.)
Our experience with the flexibility offered by online schooling was a real eye-opener: You tend to take the restrictions imposed by the public school system for granted, as part of the background, until suddenly they’re gone. I predict that over the next few years, a lot more eyes will open. Public schools will have to work hard if they are to keep up.
Comments
What I love about an article like this is that there are exellent points made that counter the anti-home schooling crowd:
1) Socialization: His daughter may not be socializing with teenagers as much, but is that so bad? Being a teen is a Euro/US construct that came about in the 20th century – before that you were either working towards a trade or involved in serious study. This 3-8 years of perpetual adolesence is, IMO, while fun to get to go through, not a maturing process.
His daughter got to work and socialize not as much with kids, but with adults. Again, I don’t see this as a problem, but as a plus. If she’d been totally denied socializing with her peer group, then that would be different, but she wasn’t.
2)Because schools can’t teach values (except basic vanilla ones) being home schooled allows the passing along not only of values, but WISDOM.
3) Comparing and contrasting to the (great analogy) factory produced student versus an education tailored to a specific student is, again, a great compare and contrast.
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But here’s the thing that most impressed me: he is LIVING the values he teaches. Meanwhile our politicians are often sending their kids to private schools and / or have tutors, but want to spend more money on public schools and keep the current failing system in place, while keeping the effects of it away from their own children.
Socialize with adults AND younger children. Humans evolved in multi generational social groups, not feed lot style age coherts.
Public schools are past their expiration date. Those who value knowledge get educated, the rest mark time in public schools waiting for their participation awards and then wonder why they can’t get jobs.
I would certainly recommend upending the “education system” and replacing it with online and home schooling. We homeschooled two of our kids. We did this with several other church families so there was a community of friends to ‘hang’ with – other students and parents.
Your child can learn more in a shorter time frame and is also able to go down “learning trails’ when something interests them. They can also have Sherlock Holmes’ ‘discovery’ moments. Plus, self-discipline happens because the student is now in more control of their learning.
Yes, there is also some parental prodding and directing but the rewards are worth it.
I believe that what makes it hard for many families to do this type of schooling is the onerous gov’t defined economy that drags every last cent and the last bits of human effort out of parents. Kids are then sent to public schools because a ‘sitter’ is needed and school district taxes have to be paid. So, both parents work. This should not be.
IMO we need to do what is done in Belgium : a voucher is given to the student’s family, and the money follows the student. In this way the schools are directly responsible to the parents.