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?

The Next Revolution

The next revolution will be in energy, but I don't think it will be in the way people think.  Many of the current revolutions have come things that were commodities and were innovated in the off-commodity market to create a new product.  Phones and Internet are great examples.

With energy, you have two issues.  One is storage, and the other is creation.  Both need answered.  With current energy creation methods, you create way more than you need, and force it down the path (the electrical grid).  In 99% of cases, all the energy isn't used and it just burns off somewhere.  Where?  I haven't a clue.  In that 1% case where you don't have enough energy going down the path, you have brownouts.  So you want to avoid the brownouts by forcing too much energy down the path that will never get used.

So, that comes to the second problem: storage.  If you have too much energy coming down the path and you don't just dissipate it into the air, then why not store it?  Storage could easily come in the form of individual homes and municipality wide storage.

Now the problem has been explained.  What are you going to do with all that new energy?  The better question is: what can't I do now that new energy is going to solve?   Almost anything.

Giant mechanical robots?  Need new energy.  Space ships that are worth a darn?  New energy.  Flying cars?  New energy.  Laser blasters?  New energy.

Because the big problem with most of these technologies is the ability to produce sufficient energy to make it work.  A giant robot is easy, just so long as you leave a tether on it.  But who wants a giant robot that is tethered to a cable?  Diesel engines are nice, but they are incredibly inefficient and need to be exceptionally huge to produce the kind of energy you need.  And after creating that huge engine, you need a place to put all that fuel.  Where is all that going to go?

And I have a distinct feeling that an institution is not going to create this new form of energy.  It's probably going to be someone pissed at paying their electric bill, trying to deal with the next fuel crisis.  Because solving rocketing heating costs by building a new technology is very likely.  Revolution usually happens when the issues with the existing system become so onerous that someone starts looking for an answer.

If it's going to be American, then the cost of fuel prices will necessarily have to skyrocket to create a sufficient pinch.  When gas prices were jumping towards $5 a gallon, people talked constantly about 100 mile per gallon cars. At $1.25 a gallon, people don't even think about it.  So the issue is likely to be solved by someone from Africa.  It's that need issue.  When you don't have a power grid, you don't have the issue of dealing with regulation.  And if you can create power in Africa, then you can solve lots of issues.

It's that lack of alternative that causes such amazing growth.  When there is no other option, a new option must be created.

And I have no faith that government is going to fund or create the next energy revolution.  They think wrong.  And you have to solve the thinking issue before you start solving any other issue.

Which leads in to why I think people should get out of debt and get on Thrive.  More energy to solve your issues and more money to experiment to create the world you want.