first fourteen in fourteen

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to school or not to school?

Okay, ladies and gents, prepare yourself for a bit of a challenge to (your, our) conventional thinking. Not of the theological variety, though it could certainly accord with good theology (depending on your level of critical thinking). This one's about the education of our children...one subject on which I've done a fair amount of difficult reflection. You home school moms may find this especially poignant (certainly if you're like my friend Angela, the army private-turned-eager home school mom who now teaches Latin to at least one of her four sons). Following is a brief excerpt (followed by a link to the full article) of something written by a 30-year veteran of several public schools on the isle of Manhattan in New York. I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn't seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren't interested in learning more. And the kids were right: their teachers were every bit as bored as they were. Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teachers' lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there. When asked why they feel bored, the teachers tend to blame the kids, as you might expect. Who wouldn't get bored teaching students who are rude and interested only in grades? If even that. Of course, teachers are themselves products of the same twelve-year compulsory school programs that so thoroughly bore their students, and as school personnel they are trapped inside structures even more rigid than those imposed upon the children. Who, then, is to blame? (Read the rest here.) This post is dedicated to my ex-wife, a co-laborer in "project Immanuel Dean." K ~ I am listening. I do feel what you feel.