ADVICE FOR PARENTS: INVESTIGATE HOME-SCHOOLING BY MARY MCGARR
ADVICE FOR PARENTS:
INVESTIGATE HOME-SCHOOLING
By Mary McGarr
Printed in the Katy Times on August 20, 1997 [Updated on September 13, 2014]
After a year’s worth of
pertinent articles, hard work by many local figures, and efforts statewide, one
would hope that parents would be seeing the depth of the problems confronting
their children with regard to the School-to-Work (STW) initiative.
I believe that such is the case, but I am also disappointed quite
regularly when I do not see parents storming the doors of what used to be
“public” schools.
Frustrating as it
is, especially when the TEKS recently passed under the leadership of the Jack
Christies and Mike Moseses of the world, I still have hope that common sense and
wisdom will prevail.
In the meantime, I have some
unsolicited advice for parents.
If I
were in your shoes with young children once again, I would investigate and
become part of the rather large home schooling movement in our area and the
nation.
I would not let my children
attend any “public” elementary school in Texas as they currently exist.
Homeschooling appears to be parents’ last means of providing an academic
education for their children and keeping them from becoming ideologically
confused.
When I was elected to the
Katy ISD Board of Trustees in 1991, I knew only one family that home-schooled
their children.
Now there are
hundreds in KISD alone and thousands in this county and others.
Homeschooling is an option that any
family can have. I am now aware
of an organized group of homeschooling parents in the Katy area that numbers in the
hundreds. That's truly a sign that a great many parents care about the academic
educations of their children and are willing to step up to do something to make sure their
children get the education that they need.
I recommend homeschooling as
an alternative to “public” schools for the following reasons:
1.
The education currently being provided in Texas public schools contains
little of an academic nature.
Children are not taught to read using phonics
(regardless of the hype, reading instruction is still whole
language-based).
Children are not
taught to be mathematically apt. The thrust of learning is hands-on, process and
low level.
No one in these “public”
schools seems to know what “academic” really means.
2.
The “public” schools are deep into manipulation of a social nature.
Children spend most of their school time learning to get along with
others, becoming “globalized” by studying everyone’s culture but their own, and
being drilled in the concept that the federal government is the answer to all
their problems.
3.
The “public” schools are getting ready to be all things to all people.
That concept was never the intent of a “public” education. The schools
should exist to provide an opportunity for academic learning.
Anything else is the province of other entities.
4.
A stop watch on academic learning in any elementary school reveals that
about 45 minutes of actual academics occurs on average on any one day. (At
least that's the amount of time on academic task I recorded when I was a substitute
teacher.)
If parents spent an hour and a half on homeschooling efforts every day,
their children would receive twice the academic education they are currently
receiving!
5.
Parents, no matter their level of education, are eminently more qualified
to teach their own children, especially until grade nine.
Teachers who hold elementary education degrees have had NO or very little
required academic college course work. (Elementary teachers are not at fault
here, for if they wish to teach, they are required to obtain an elementary
education degree, and the college course work is purely methodology without
academic substance.
As college
students, teachers do not take “math” courses, they take “math education”
courses.)
Any academic course work
for an education degree is at the option of the student. Until colleges of
education clean up their acts, people who want to be teachers are at their
mercy. As a parent one is in a much better position to know what his own child
needs and to be his teacher.
At grade nine, if a parent feels unqualified to continue as the teacher, children should be sent to private schools. Finding private schools that are also not using Common Core materials or into the psycho-social teaching of attitudes, behaviors and work skills is difficult, but it can be done. Look for one that has ability grouping. If the demand increases, academically based private schools will appear in greater numbers. For a while, our high schools will be OK, but the pressure is on them to conform to restructuring initiatives, and as the older teachers retire, mindlessness will prevail. As soon as parents see block scheduling appear and ability grouping disappear, they will know it is time to get their children out. Unfortunately, since this piece was written in 1997, what I predicted has occurred, and high schools are no longer free from the mess that started in elementary schools. Even worse is the fact that now our colleges and universities have also started down the path of destruction.
My suggestions, of course,
require a change in family activities.
Most families base their economic survival on two parent incomes.
I would suggest that families should lower their standard of living so
that one parent stays home and teaches the children, and then returns to work to
support the private schooling.
If
people decide to have children, they are obligated to provide them with a proper
education, and this situation as described may be the only way that goal will be
accomplished.
I see some clear
responsibility for communities and churches to offer support to home-schoolers.
These groups could provide the social structure that should accompany,
not replace, academic instruction, and this structure could certainly be more
wholesome than what occurs in public schools.
There are huge networks currently in place nationwide to support home
schooling families, and there are true academic textbook and curriculum guide
suppliers galore.
I do not offer this advice in a frivolous manner. As a product of a very fine Texas public education from first grade through graduate course work, I have always supported Texas schools. In my lifetime I have worked diligently to support what I believed to be a very fine institution, but I can no longer support, and neither should parents, schools that have come to be so dismal, off course, and disappointing.