I attended public and private schools, as well as being home-schooled by my mother. From my experiences, private school and home-schooling were the best ways to go. To me, public school was a big joke and waste of time. I would spend around seven hours a day at school, mostly socializing, with maybe a couple of hours devoted to studying. The worst part was, when I got home, I still had to do homework to make up for the time I spent “learning” at school. I remember classes full of kids who were disrespectful and unruly, with the teachers barely able to maintain control. I remember everything had to be done in groups – group projects, studying in groups, and even group tests – so that the failing kids could still get a decent grade and pass. Of course, everyone passed, no matter what. If they didn’t pass, it might hurt their self-esteem. I had enough of all of this, and asked my mom to please let me be home-schooled in high school. This way, instead of spending seven hours learning useless junk and even more time making up the work in homework, I could spend four hours a day learning quality material and devote the rest of my time to doing more productive things like volunteering and learning new skills. My mother does not have teaching credentials, but I managed to learn enough to score a 24 on the ACT test, which is higher than many of my friends who have attended public or private school their whole lives. A few years ago, I enrolled in the local community college, where I was able to take the English and math classes that “count for credit,” instead of the ones that prepare you for the classes that actually count. What is that? I thought that when you graduate from high school, you are supposed to be ready to take college classes that “count”. But I guess a lot of kids spent too much time messing around in high school to actually learn anything. Lastly, I couldn’t believe the poor English and grammar skills from the other students in the college English classes that I took. We were asked to proof read our classmates’ essays, and I told my teacher that I thought this was a college class, not a sixth grade class. I wondered how in the world these people even graduated from elementary school, let alone high school. So if our government wants to penalize someone for failing to teach our children, let them penalize their own government-funded public school systems.
By the way, all of this self-esteem junk that has been fed to children, which started with my generation in the eighties, might it partly be linked to the higher numbers of depression and anger seen among young people today? I mean, think about it. Kids are fed that they are number one, always a winner, that they can be whatever they want, no matter what, and that no one should stop them. Then, top that off with lack of discipline and no respect for anyone but themselves. What happens when they graduate from high school, go into the “real world”, and possibly for the first time in their lives experience rejection and/or discipline and correction? Might this have something to do with depression and anger setting in?
