Why I homeschool

Something I've been thinking about lately.  One of the local schools here said they were going to have to release teachers after the senior year because they didn't have enough students.

Good.

I feel sorry for the individuals.  But for the school?  I'm happy.  Why should the populace accept such failure as we get at public education?  There needs to be a culling.  For people who's only answer is "spend more" it's time they learned to deal with the inadequacies of their methods.

For some reason, whenever I think of this I imagine either a teacher meeting with a dozen teachers lined up like the inquisition.  That occasionally vacillates towards a giant room full of people.

So, let's talk about the socialization program in school.  Let's discuss ages, curriculum, and time spent.  Well, there's speech class.  So socialization is taught in school at the very end to people who by and large are now phoning their effort in?   Great teaching job.  So if school isn't teaching proper social behavior, who is?  That would be the other students.  So you send your kids to school to learn how to socialize.  They are then taught by people who are also learning how to socialize.  And the teachers are doing what?

Guess no one ever thought of teaching power distance at an early age?   Yet that's more of a defining characteristic for success than intelligence.  Malcolm Gladwell spends an entire chapter on it in Outliers.  That is one of the greater definers of a person's ability to succeed in life.

I know a person who was trying to get into college.  Power distance defeated him until I gave him a pep talk.  The college kept telling him he couldn't go, but he didn't understand why.  I got him to ask until he know the answer and could explain it.  After all that fight, turns out his FAFSA was turned in late so he couldn't get federal aid.  If he couldn't get federal aid, he couldn't afford college (at least in his eyes).  Now there is an answer.  All it took was a little persistence and understanding of power distance.

And why is someone having to learn how to deal with people of greater authority at 20 as opposed to 5?  Why all the deferral?  Couldn't this have been easily taught in kindergarten?

It could have been taught.  But that's not the purpose of school.

So we've beaten up on the first idea of public school.  What about the rest of it?

What about those schools who profess their "quality of teaching"?  

And I ask: in comparison to what?  The children and adults of today have to compete on a global scale for many things.  Being the only shoemaker in town doesn't benefit you anymore.  Anyone can go on the web and order any individual item they want.  Unless your profession is in the trades, you need the ability to compete globally.  Even the trades aren't a good example.

Let me illustrate.  Company A has a preferred electrician.  The electrician does good work, and always fills the order as requested.  Unless that electrician stops performing, Company A will continue to hire that electrician anywhere that electrician is licensed.  150 miles away?  Pay the trip charge.  300 miles away?  Pay the trip charge.  Why?  Because you know the quality of work you are going to get out of that electrician.  And quality work is worth the extra expense.  So hometown electrician isn't competing on those big jobs with Company A because Company A is going to hire the same person over and over again.  Until that subcontractor pisses off Company A.  And the subcontractor knows it.  So that person makes Company A happy.

Once again, in comparison to what?  To the local schools?  According to Pearson, the United States is 14th overall, 11th in Cognitive Skills, and 20th in Educational Attainment.  So "best of the best" in America is still pretty pathetic in comparison to South Korea.  Or Japan. Or Singapore.

Unless you are being compared to the best, you are not the best.  The cream of the crap is still crap.

How do you solve that problem?  Pretty simple.  Eliminate stuff in the daily class load, and spend more time in teaching each skill.  Math goes from 45 minutes a day to 2 hours a day.  When was the last time a student was at the board solving a problem in American public school?   Once a week?  Once a month?  With homeschooling, that child is answering questions and getting direct solutions to problems every single class period.

What happens if one student falls behind in public school?   Nothing.  What about a lack of understanding?  Also nothing.

Until the student fails school and can't move on because they didn't understand material that built on other material.

In home schooling, the class never has to go on until the student understands.  Period.


There's probably more.  I'm sure there is.  But I'm done with the hippy failure mindset of the US.  Go out.  Be more than a conquer.

Opportunity abounds everywhere, yet many can't get beyond minimum wage.  What has the education system taught those people?  Why are they failing?

walking in the rain

Saturday,  I took a walk and got caught in the rain.

It was an interesting experience.

Normally, people avoid walking through the rain.  The instant a down pour starts, people scatter.  We can't stand the thought of being drenched and out in the cold.

As the rain hit, I realized I would be just as long to turn around and head home the way I came.  The path behind was longer than the path before.  So I walked on.

Years ago, I used to read a comic called Hound's Home.  The author made a comic where a person is desperately running to get away from the rain.  Only to make it home and take a shower.  The contradiction has stuck with me for more than a decade.

So I decided I wasn't going to pick up and go at any faster pace than I had been.  The rain started lightly, and I kept walking.  And I realized: despite the seeming trouble that I happen to be in thirty minutes from now I will barely remember any of the experience.

And the rain got harder.  I could see the house as I turned the corner.  There was an urge to break into a run.  I didn't.  And that realization hit again:  ten minutes from now, I'll walk into my driveway and stare at the rain, protected and observing.  Twenty minutes from now, I'll be playing with my kinds.  And thirty minutes from now, I will have completely forgotten about the rain.

And I was right.

And it happened just as I thought it was going to.

It made me realize that some of the darkest times in my life have suddenly just disappeared.  And then it's back to a sense of normalcy.  A place where nothing seems to be complicated.

The problems of the moment are the problems of the moment.  Nothing more.

When the moment passes, the problems will be gone.  The moment might be twenty minutes.  It might be two days.  It might be three years.

But one day, after slugging through the rain, you will realize you have walked into your carport, and the misery is behind you.

Keep walking.

observations

My wife had wisdom teeth removed on Thursday. I took a couple of days off from work to watch the kids.  During this period, I think I've made some strange but interesting observations.

I will start with a story or two.

I had one of my wisdom teeth removed in 2005, right after getting back from Iraq for the 2nd time.  It was part of that post deployment list of things you want fixed before you go off active duty.  I'd put wisdom teeth down at the end of the 1st tour. I budged at the point, just wanting to go home.

At the end of my second tour, I wouldn't budge on the tooth.  I have all four wisdom teeth, but only one didn't grow in properly.  There was a gap in between the tooth and the final set of molars.  I would have been messy down the road.  And I wanted it out.

Finally, the military capitulated and sent me over to the base dentist at Camp Pendleton.  Not much later, I was short one wisdom tooth.  I don't remember the instructions they gave me.  I just remember a couple of prescriptions and off I went.

11 years later, it's 2016.  My wife wants her wisdom teeth out.  Twenty minutes to numb the mouth, and twenty minutes to remove the two teeth and we're done.  We got our instructions and the prescription and we were out the door less than an hour after our appointment time.

My wife's family considers themselves medical experts.  They know everything there is to know about every single affliction.  On any given day, they will diagnose you with afflictions you have never heard of.  None of them are doctors, or even trained beyond basic medical care.  But they are medical experts.

They were very concerned with dry socket.  I have no idea what dry socket is.  It can happen after you get a tooth removed, I'm guessing.

Now here's the observation.  The medical professional who removed my wife's teeth didn't mention dry socket.  He didn't mention any specific issue.  He gave some simple instructions and sent us on our way.

Now this is the guy who has to treat the effects of mismanagement of the healing process in the mouth.  Everything I've heard from "experts" were not mentioned by the practicing professional. So the guy with the most experience and professional knowledge with didn't think it was important enough to mention this issue.

Only the amateurs were concerned with all these medical maladies.  The dentist had a success mindset.

My wife's family has a failure mindset.

The failure mindset finds every possible reason something can't succeed.  It point to specifics and tells good stories as to why something will fail.

Let me reiterate: the medical professional didn't think it was important.
The medical professional went to school to become a dentist.  He passed dental school.  He has been a practicing dentist in a dental practice for years.  He was asked to consult with one of the other dentists on the diagnosis while we were waiting for my wife's mouth to numb.  So at the very least the other professional dentists in the practice believed he was competent.  He didn't mention anything about failure.

How is it that the amateurs are often aware of every possible method of failure, but the professionals don't even contemplate how something can fail?

It's pretty simple.  The professional is aware of failure.  But the professional is also better aware of the likelihood of failure.  And he didn't feel the likelihood of failure was high enough to even bother mentioning.

It leads me to this idea: when starting something new, gather information.  But only enough to get started.  Because the more information you gather, the stupider and less likely you are to actually perform.

passivity.

The more I read, the more I realize that there is a wide variation between knowledge and action.  Reading is a very passive action.  Despite the vast potential of knowledge, most of the knowledge is just a gathering.  The gathering system usually doesn't have an output.  And without the output, the knowledge becomes a cesspool.  It goes in and just festers.

But that's just what successful seem to disagree with.  The system of input only doesn't really work.  It's just like the system of consuming TV.  Just a content input with no output towards any greater good.  And that output is what improves society.

I guess that's why someone said the greatest pile of innovation is found in the graveyard.  Most innovation dies without creation.  What could possibly happen if everyone created?

Who knows.  Really, it's a large pipe dream.  Too many people content to live with what others will give them, as opposed to working on creating something different and unique.  They are far too content to accept handouts.

The mass producers will continue to produce.  The consumers will continue to consume.

Perhaps there a chance that all this will change.

But that's unlikely.  The stakeholders have no motivation to change the system and in order to make it work better.

The other question is simple: how do you get the average person out of the consumption mentality and in to a creation mentality?