I am listening more as I decide what I want to do after leaving professional education. Today, one of the men in my Bible class who also teaches at my home school was talking about a comment that an uncle of his who is a retired superintendent of schools,had made. It was this: he said that if people loved their kids, they would homeschool them or send them to a private school.
Marion is an economically depressed little town, and the "best" private school here costs $4500 a year. I assume there is a reduction in price if you send more than one kid, but still, that is a lot of money. Even if the voucher system were to work, you would be left with a shortfall that would make such an education out of reach for a lot of middle-class families.
So what do you do? And where does the responsibility lie with us as Christians? In my particular school, there is such increased gang activity and such a lack of respect for other human beings in general, not just teachers, that I do not think my body could take the stress of returning to the "regular" classroom. Yet I have a burden for the students who are there.
I think that particularly in economically depressed areas, but really everywhere, there are a lot of parents who are doing the best they can just to pay the bills and they don't have a lot of time or maybe the knowledge they need to teach their kids the everyday things that they need to know. The parents do not monitor learning or homework, and thus those things become the problems of the schools. And while I think the No Child Left Behind Act starts with a good premise, that being that we should make sure every child gets an education and that there need to be standards, I do not think such a goal is reachable through the government alone. The government, however, is the only thing our President theoretically has control over.
How do we reach the families, the parents who may or may not have had a good parenting example or a good education, and make them aware of their part in the success of their children? How do we reach the children, many of whom have seen too much of the "gimme" attitude and really don't know any other way to cope? How can the schools make the most of the time they have with kids and, harder yet, how can they teach what kids need to know in a way that won't be undone when those children return to homes with parents that don't know or don't care?
This same man, the one who talked about the superintendent, made me aware of an incident in my home school which is really upsetting. Our school is a middle school, and one of its girls came to school with a perfume bottle filled with gasoline and a lighter, intending to douse someone who had upset her. Those are the kinds of things public school teachers deal with on a fairly regular basis. And such emotional chaos, which does NOT come from within the school, interferes with the education of the child who is upset as well as his classmates. If, as Christians, in order to love our children we homeschool them or send them to private school, whose is the burden of loving the ones who are left in the public school?
Marion is an economically depressed little town, and the "best" private school here costs $4500 a year. I assume there is a reduction in price if you send more than one kid, but still, that is a lot of money. Even if the voucher system were to work, you would be left with a shortfall that would make such an education out of reach for a lot of middle-class families.
So what do you do? And where does the responsibility lie with us as Christians? In my particular school, there is such increased gang activity and such a lack of respect for other human beings in general, not just teachers, that I do not think my body could take the stress of returning to the "regular" classroom. Yet I have a burden for the students who are there.
I think that particularly in economically depressed areas, but really everywhere, there are a lot of parents who are doing the best they can just to pay the bills and they don't have a lot of time or maybe the knowledge they need to teach their kids the everyday things that they need to know. The parents do not monitor learning or homework, and thus those things become the problems of the schools. And while I think the No Child Left Behind Act starts with a good premise, that being that we should make sure every child gets an education and that there need to be standards, I do not think such a goal is reachable through the government alone. The government, however, is the only thing our President theoretically has control over.
How do we reach the families, the parents who may or may not have had a good parenting example or a good education, and make them aware of their part in the success of their children? How do we reach the children, many of whom have seen too much of the "gimme" attitude and really don't know any other way to cope? How can the schools make the most of the time they have with kids and, harder yet, how can they teach what kids need to know in a way that won't be undone when those children return to homes with parents that don't know or don't care?
This same man, the one who talked about the superintendent, made me aware of an incident in my home school which is really upsetting. Our school is a middle school, and one of its girls came to school with a perfume bottle filled with gasoline and a lighter, intending to douse someone who had upset her. Those are the kinds of things public school teachers deal with on a fairly regular basis. And such emotional chaos, which does NOT come from within the school, interferes with the education of the child who is upset as well as his classmates. If, as Christians, in order to love our children we homeschool them or send them to private school, whose is the burden of loving the ones who are left in the public school?
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