Aaron
As a kid, I attended a little backwoods elementary school in northeast Oklahoma. I remember kind and dedicated teachers, pathetically sparse resources, and crushing boredom as I begged my parents, year after year, to bump me ahead a grade.
Before I transitioned to high school, my dad got a job in Wichita, KS, and we moved into a house half a mile from the best high school in the state. I moved from academic squalor to a public school with better educational offerings than most private prep schools.
And that should have been awesome, right? The surprising thing was that, with just a few exceptions, I was still bored. I remember coming alive in Creative Writing just to fall asleep again in Trigonometry, dealing with bullies in the halls, and the constant distraction of all the senseless drama as I begged my parents, year after year, to just let me take the G. E. D. and be done with all this stupid schooling stuff.
That’s my background. And I’m here today to tell you why public school is the right choice for your kids.
Homeschooling
What I’m not going to say is that public school can, on its own, provide your children with all the education they’ll need to succeed in life. It can’t. I have my doubts that you can, either. There’s so much to know, so many aspects of knowledge, that education has to take place in multiple vectors at multiple locations.
That’s a complicated way of saying I believe in homeschooling. I just don’t believe it’s an acceptable alternative to public school. To really serve your children, you owe them both.
The Sandbox
This is my dad’s argument. It’s the same one he gave me in second grade, and again in high school, and it’s the same one he uses now.
If anything, what he’s seen through the years has only strengthened his resolve. In fact, when I asked his advice recently (and, mind you, I was asking what he’d recommend I do for these adorable creatures), he said:
If I had it do to over again, I’d enroll my kids in the roughest elementary school I could find.
Why? For one, public schools generally have access to more resources than all but the most elite private schools (and certainly more than most families do). More than that, though, it’s about socializing.
Socialization
I’m sure some of you are already rolling your eyes right now, just because I used the “s” word. But I may not mean it the way you’re thinking.
I’ve heard it said that homeschooled kids end up “weird,” that since they missed out on the sardines-in-a-tin-can social environment all their peers enjoyed, they can’t ever function normally in society. I know that’s not true. I know plenty of perfectly successful, socially confident people who came up through a homeschool system.
I’m not worried about your ability to teach your child manners. I’m more concerned about your ability to teach your child survival, and that was precisely the principle behind my dad’s argument.
Essentially it comes down to this: at some point in our lives, we’re all going to have to deal with some undesirable characters — bullies and thugs, petty tyrants, bores and drama queens. They’re a part of life, and if you want your children to thrive, your children are going to have to know how to manage these folks.
That’s what I was learning in high school, more than anything else. All those senseless distractions from the pursuit of pure knowledge…those were the point. And in my life now I interact with people on a daily basis who try to approach adult relationships with some of those same stupid high school perspectives.
The difference is that the consequences are so much bigger now. If I put a foot wrong with a bully or a thug I could end up with a gunshot wound instead of a swirlie. If I roll my eyes at the exaggerated problems of a drama queen or mouth off to one of those petty tyrants, I could end up in the unemployment office instead of the principal’s office.
Education is a far-flung thing. I understand the desire to impart knowledge, and I absolutely understand the desire to protect our children from pointless suffering (physical or emotional). Life happens through experience, though — through diverse experience — and for many of us, public schools provide the opportunity to experience a much larger and more varied cross-section of the community than we could ever find in our own families, neighborhoods, or even churches.
Book-Learnin’
Of course, if you didn’t know me, you might read all that and think I’m dismissing book-learnin’ as irrelevant. If you do know me (or know anything about me), you know that’s not the case. I’m all about book-learnin’.
That’s really what I was addressing at the top of this article, though. Basic education happens all the time. If you’re doing your job as a parent, you’re supplementing your child’s education constantly — whether that’s a public school education, a private school education, or a homeschool education.
That’s one of the major principles behind YourHomeroom.com, and we’ve put it to use in our family. Our kids won’t be going to any kind of school for years yet, but when they do they’ll show up knowing how to read and write, and at least a little bit of basic arithmetic. And it’ll be a mark of deep shame for me personally if they find a better literature education at any level of their schooling than I provide them to fill their idle hours.
When it comes right down to it, though, the real-world facts and the basic skills taught in elementary school can easily be taught by parents. It doesn’t even take a rigorous “homeschooling” program to convey that information (which is usually given as an argument in favor of homeschooling by its advocates — because homeschooled kids can learn so much more).
Most of elementary school isn’t about that type of learning, though. It’s more about the socializing, learning and adapting to basic group dynamics and authority structures. And by the time the balance shifts in the other direction — often a transition that occurs during middle school or junior high — the level of information-based education that public schooling provides at the high school level rapidly outpaces anything most homeschooling parents could provide.
Why the sudden change? I can answer that in one word: “specialization.” High schools provide science teachers to teach the science, math teachers to teach the math, and English teachers to teach the language arts. Whether or not they’re genuine experts in their fields, these people dedicate their careers to a particular focus, and that gives them experience and perspective that’s difficult to match.
Of course, there are other options — cooperative homeschools and community schooling, private schools and magnet schools that can compete on that very specialization — but access to any of those resources can be limited, unreliable, and often extremely expensive. Public schools are everywhere, nearly all of them staffed with kind and dedicated teachers who are anxious to provide part of your child’s education.
The rest is up to you. But then, it always was.
