Several of the comments make valid points:
- the credentialing process serving to exclude truly qualified and motivated people from teaching;
- the true purpose of taxpayer-funded mandatory, government-run education being indoctrination in obedience to government;
- the value of acquiring one’s social skills in a variety of venues with a variety of ages;
- the value of love and time being superior to formal credential in results of teaching.
I would like to add to these that I challenge the conclusions of studies which show that children’s academic achievement is related to the level of education of the parent. I take issue with the causal relationship which is falsely asserted. My own father had an 8th-grade education, which was respectable in his day. I graduated with high honors (magna cum laude) with an engineering degree, and each of my siblings obtained a comparable level of academic success.
I and my siblings went through the public schools, but we are all home-schooled. Prior to University, what we learned, we learned at home and at the library. We learned very little in the classroom, except how to appear to pay attention, how to pass notes surreptitiously, how to regurgitate what the teacher wanted to hear, and other questionably useful skills.
It seems obvious to me that a teacher-student ratio of 2:1 or even 1:4 (typical range for home-schooling families) is superior to what could be feasibly funded by taxpayers (1:20 is a commonly-cited goal). Even if taxpayers could and would agree to fund a teacher-student ratio of 1:4, the teachers would not on average be as dedicated to each student’s well-rounded development.
A long-time friend of mine holds an advanced degree in nuclear engineering, and worked for many years at the highest technical levels at an operating nuclear power plant. She worked on a practical level daily with atomic and nuclear physics. Her understanding was both academic and verified in real-world experience. When she retired, she earned a teaching credential and landed a job teaching high school physics.
She lasted one year, and that was a giant effort for her to complete the full year. Not because of the students; they loved her, and praised her for making the science real and relevant. It was because she was frequently being “corrected” in her understanding of physics by an administrator whose training was in, you guessed it, education. This man’s comprehension of nuclear physics stopped short of knowing how to pronounce the word “nuclear”, yet he was her superior and had the power to mandate that she teach errors instead of facts. She just could not stand this travesty for long.
I propose that “Education” be abolished as a degree emphasis in all taxpayer-funded universities, and that the teacher credential process be utterly revised to welcome all the highly-qualified people who want to make a difference in our taxpayer-funded schools. As for home-schooling, it’s not “here to stay”; it’s always been with us. It’s not mentioned in the Constitution because home schooling was the NORM in the time of the founding of the United States of America. It is vital to the future of this country that home schooling remain an option that parents may choose without fear of governmental interference and kidnapping of their children.
