Why I’m Homeschooling My Kid in Science Next Year
It’s no surprise to me that Colorado’s public school system is not good. I mean, I’m a product of the Boulder Valley School District and I can tell you first hand that it’s not great at preparing one for college, or anything for that matter.
So, it shouldn’t come as a big shock to me that I need to pick up the slack for what my sons are NOT learning about science in school.
My first experience with just how bad things were occurred back in the early 1990’s. I was giving a presentation to some 5th graders when I asked the question: “When did the United States first land a man on the moon?”
No one raised their hand. In fact, most didn’t know we had ever been to the moon, and of those that did know, a substantial fraction doubted that we were there at all (parents were probably moon-landing-hoaxers).
And I have a TON of stories like that.
Fast forward to this last school year. My 7th grade son is a very good student, gets A’s in just about everything. He LOVES science, especially astronomy (imagine that) and he and I have great conversations about what the universe is like and what it’s like to be a scientist. He eats that stuff up so I know he does his best in his science class.
Yet, throughout all of last year, his grade in science was C-. In every report card.
Photo Credit: Lost In Scotland
Technorati Tags: astronomy education, becoming an astronomer, csap, homeschooling, no child left behind
He was devastated because he knew how important science is to me and he always thought he knew science better than all of his classmates (and I agree with him, I’ve met some of those kids. Let’s just say critical thinking doesn’t come naturally to them).
Getting that C- consistently really took a toll on him, he couldn’t understand what was going on. He really knows his stuff and always scored well on tests.
Naturally, I talked to the teacher to investigate.
It turns out my son IS a good student, DID understand the material and WAS way ahead of the other students in his comprehension of the material.
BUT, he couldn’t organize his science notebook.
“I’m sorry, he can’t organize what?”, I asked.
“His science notebook. He failed the notebook checks. They were worth 100 points each, almost 80 percent of his grade.”, the science teacher calmly explained with a huge smirk on her face.
“What does that have to do with science?”, I asked, but by then I knew what was going on and that I wasn’t about to get anywhere. I left the teacher conference furious.
I’m all too familiar with this kind of teacher. She was a stickler for organization. All materials had to be inserted in the notebooks EXACTLY and each item had to have the name in a certain place, with the information outlined EXACTLY as specified.
Now, I understand the need to teach kids organizational skills, I really do. But to make it 80% of a grade?
What this teacher really wanted was the students to do all of her work for her. She didn’t want to have to search through reams of paper to try and figure out what the student knew. She just wanted to open the notebook and start checking off the existence of items, each containing the proper words so she could get through the grading as fast as possible.
She wasn’t the slightest bit interested in whether or not the kids learned anything, only that the notebooks were in proper order.
This isn’t all though folks, not by a long shot. I mean, I could let that go if that were the only issue because he would get a different, and hopefully more competent teacher next year.
But in Colorado, all students are required to take the Colorado Student Aptitude Test (CSAP), as part of the Leave Every Child Behind Act. This means that all school year until March, but especially from January to March, my kids are getting immersed in that test. The teachers do NOTHING ELSE but teach that test.
Then, after March, when the pressure is off, the teachers pretty much coast through April, May and the first part of June. This is the only time when my kids have a real chance at getting a useful education, and it’s wasted because “Whew, we’re done with that test.”
The CSAP is the only thing that is actually measured, so everything else, like the actual education itself, is ignored.
I simply cannot allow my kids to come out of the education system in Colorado without learning basic science and developing their critical thinking skills. As a parent, I take full responsibility for my kids education, so I’ll do it myself.
So, every Tuesday and Thursday of the next school year, I’ll be pulling my then 8th grade son out of class for his last period (along with his friend and three other homeschooled students) and teaching them science.
How can I do this? Why would the school let me take the boys out like that every week? Because so long as the boys are in class for a certain percentage of the school day, the school gets the credit for them and they get paid. The principal told me that’s all they care about: getting paid. I could do whatever I wanted with them in science as long as they met certain minimum knowledge standards.
Standards they do NOT hold themselves to, by the way.
No problem though, I can meet those just by spending one hour in front a telescope with them.
The two days I’ll have them at home will be spent teaching, discussing and working on science topics with assignments to do on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I picked those two days to meet because of the seemingly infinite number of three day weekends the kids get in school for ‘planning days’ and other holidays. This would minimize any missed days due to that bullsh*t.
So now, I get to spend the rest of my summer planning a science curriculum for my son and his friends. You can bet it’ll be heavy on astronomy, but I can guarantee you that, based on what I’ve seen so far, they’ll be WAY ahead of their classmates by the time I’m done with them.
And I couldn’t care less about the state of their goddam notebooks.
Unfortunately, this is not an unusual tale. It is science teachers like this who are the reason that some of my college students who have always made A’s in science can’t pass the introductory sciences courses in college. Most likely the problem is that the teacher who is teaching the science class is not a scientist, but rather was an education major who took science for education majors in college. I’d dare say that your son probably knows more science than she does.
Yes, this is an excellent point. I’m sure this teacher got the job because of a couple of classes she took while getting her teaching certificate.
You know more than most how poorly prepared our kids are for college, I too was woefully unready for college just out of high school, I had to go through much to get myself ready.
There is no way in hell my kids won’t be getting a good science background before they apply. Even more importantly though, they need to be taught HOW to do science. They need to know how to ask questions and look for answers; what questions are worth pursuing, and to recognize bad analyses when they see it.
I want kids who grow up to be adults who think for themselves…
Thanks for the feedback AstroProf, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you and what you do for your students.
I think this is a great idea, and one more parents should consider. So many parents leave it up to the public school system to dictate what their kids should know and the best way to go about teaching them. Parents know their kids far better then a teacher ever could. Unfourtently, many parents are happy with the cookie cutter education system, many parents are happy letting their kids learn just enough to get a decent job and barely get by in life. Sorry, I guess I’m hitting rant stage. I should really consider switching to decaf. Just wanted to let you know that I think you’re doing a very valuable service not only for your kids, but for the extra ones you’ll be taking on as well.
I work with people very much like this teacher and they really make you want to jump off a cliff some days.
I can build elaborate and elegant software and correct the mistakes of a half-dozen other programmers, but some chair warmer three cubicles over can tell me my project isn’t completed because I didn’t fill out a form that isn’t even relevant to my project? “Just put N/A for all the fields on the form.” I have to fill out the GUI form for a piece of software that runs strictly on the server with no UI?
Yup.
I know exactly how you feel. Too bad that’s the way it is. Maybe your kid should be in that class AND learning from you, since he needs to know how the real world works, eh?
How the real world works was brought into the Physics class by a superb teacher who had us all doing experiments: UK, Grammar School, 1952-7. Real experiments: 1954-7.
You must be planning experiments; measuring errors; relating to theory and virtual experiments… Good homeschooling.
You’re all missing the point. Schools are preparing our children to enter the real world, which is all about pointless bureaucracy and pleasing authority- or, at least, avoiding the attention of said authority as much as possible. Kudos to this science teacher for effectively conditioning a whole new crop of semi-conscious rule-followers!
I think with the recent decline in anything valuable to the growth of society and escalation of greed.This has caused the areas responsible for providing youth with the skills and knowledge to improve society to no longer be available. Wouldn’t surprise me if the Government was some how involved what with recent happenings. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
I won’t even address this teacher’s problems, but I would like to address something in the original post that sparked this conversation:
I don’t care if students don’t know who landed on the moon, or even when or if it ever happened. Actually, I do care, but I see it as a Social Studies issue rather than a Science Education issue. I suspect that the teacher described has colleagues that would be happy if their students knew all kinds of “Jepordy!-style” information, but couldn’t form or identify an investigable question. This may be an even bigger problem in science teaching and, sadly, it is a problem that exists among teachers who actually have degrees in science and not in teaching — i.e. many High School teachers.
What we need –because everyone is not capable of supplying their own children with the science learning that they don’t get in school–is a partnership between scientists and educators that will provide the education community with priorities, approaches, strategies, techniques and rationales for effective science teaching and learning. This has been started in the National Science Education Standards (NSES) that were meant to inform state and local bodies as they develop standards, benchmarks and guidelines. Unfortunately the NSES often gets lost in the translation if local education authorities are not enlightened.
We all have to do what is best for our own children, but I hope that doesn’t mean a withdrawal of all of the voices of reason from the debate.
You are one crazy boulder mother. I do mean that literally. I am also a product of the BVSD and unlike you I found my time in high school very beneficial to my college experience. And your comments about the CSAP could not be any farther from the truth. Teachers do not just teach students material that is on the test, in fact I never had one class that just focused on the CSAP. If you think that home schooling is the best alternative to public school, then have fun when you children are socially isolated when they get to college. You think that you have all the right answers but what makes you think that you are above the school system that statistically has one of the highest graduation rates as well as placing more students into college then any other district in the state.
I feel bad for your kids
Knight
I completely agree to your points here. In fact, I would dare to go even further and say that all the compulsory schooling is doing that – destroying young lives.
It’s a shame that many people consider school to be a necessary step in a child’s life…
For me, events like this don’t even look exceptional anymore, because I’ve completely understood the basic philosophy and target of compulsory schooling: to control people through formulaic means.
Going to school is like going to war. Only that the damaging effects of school are much greater.
Dare I point the following 20/20 report on education:
http://bestdocumentaries.blogspot.com/2007/10/stupid-in-america-full-2020-documentary.html
@Knight
Serious did you read the full post. The author is talking about taking their son out of 1 class at school at the end of the day 2 times a week. Hardly creating a socially isolated child. Also I see this home school argument all the time and quite frankly its false. Parents who care enough to home school their children care enough to make sure they also get plenty of social interaction. School isn’t the only place one can get social interaction.
I wish the author all the best.
the major issue as far as i can tell, is the drive for “standardization”. the only skills that are worth a damn that you are even exposed to in school, are critical thinking, and synthetic thinking. but how the heck do you _test_ for that? heck, you cant even JUDGE the thinking ability of someone else, unless yours is markedly superior.
the real budding luminaries will find a way to their calling regardless of how the system is designed to their disadvantage. the system really does (coarsely) correspond to “the greatest good for the greatest number”… it is unfortunate but true that this greatest good equals “maximize the odds of a second generation imbecile getting a job”. as evidence for this, i point you in the direction of our university experience, which despite the positional advantages it enjoys over public education, again spews the overwhelming majority of its graduates into the world without the most rudimentary training in actual independent thought.
sorry for the length of the diatribe :)
This kinda mentality in the my teachers was what led me to drop out of highschool. 6 years of the Bullsheet was enough for me. I’m now getting my GED and going on to college after.
When I read that you son loves science but got barely-passing grades, I first thought it was an “impedance mismatch” problem. The easiest way to flunk a multiple-guess test is to know the subject better than the author of the test and spend a lot of time trying to guess which wrong answer the author believes.
Sorry to hear that his problem was even worse. That Notebook crap is nothing new. Throughout middle and high school, I was bedeviled by teachers who would spend most of the class period filling the chalkboards with an outline of the textbook, then grade you on how pretty a copy you made. I have dysgraphia, so writing continuously for more than a minute or two is literally painful. I escaped from high school only by dint of three sessions of summer school. Not because I didn’t understand the material, but because I just couldn’t grind out the required volume of writing. This was in the mid-sixties, so even if I’d had a portable typewriter, I wouldn’t have been permitted to use it in class. Needless to say, college was right out of the question.
I taught 3rd grade for 4 years and majored in science – BA in anthro, Master’s in elem. ed. Our school did amazing things when it came to science teaching; one teacher built a working go cart with his class, another took walks to a nearby pond to get samples of water to look at under microscopes, we had a teacher who organized a young astronauts club and Carolyn Shoemaker and Harrison Schmidt were key note speakers at different meetings. This is a public elementary school in Albuquerque, not a city known for amazing funding of anything. Here’s why this worked:
1) The teachers were all nerdy and LOVED science themselves and constantly self educated.
2) The principal “looked the other way” when it came to using some prescribed science text from the district. ONE teacher relied on it and used workbooks. We were all allowed to teach science and other subjects in our way, just in accordance with the published district standards.
3) We cared and weren’t burnt out, and kids could see our own enthusiams for science, math, literature, world events, etc and enthusiasm is contagious, as is apathy, in your son’s teacher’s case.
So good things are happening in public education, but I agree that teachers who aren’t educated on what’s important or correct, for that matter, need either more education or a different line of work.
PS I’m 27, made 30,000/year before taxes and regularly worked an hour and a half over the contract day – it’s a lot of work to not use workbooks! I recently moved to Portland OR – we’ll see if I teach again – it’ll be hard to find a public school prinicpal as smart as the one I left.
Well,
I have to say that the school system in the USA is lacking. Having done my middle school in Europe (France) and my High School int he USA, let me put it this way, the HS system made skip 2 1/2 grade in High School. Because of my skills in math, physics, and other like World and European history, even American Government, was at the level of University, much more elevated that the fellow students in my classes, besides English that is. Let it be known that I failed the year before I came and moved to the USA.
Where does the idea that a kid has to be in a school setting to to be socially adept?
To have an idiot but socially adept child does not appeal to me as much as a child less adept socially but actually inquisitive and scientifically minded. I guess it would depend on what you prefer for your kid to be Paris Hilton or Einstein.
The USA system education pre-univeristy has been ranked somewhat in the lower part of the bracket of the countries surveyed ( math, language , and history for criteria), of the the industrial 1st world nations the USA is ranked almost last. That is a recent development, in 1960 we were 7th, why? What happened?
To help a child inquisitive nature to blossom should one of the biggest role of a parent. The attitude of questioning everything, authority included, is a great gift from a parent and society to children. That is the how and the why that made this country the greatest.
To focus on form only like this bad teacher and not the content is a great example of what destroys our children minds.
If you don’t do exactly like shown you fail, if your presentation is not perfect, you fail, why do we focus so much on appearance and not once again on the content?
If we had always followed these practices we probably would still not be capable of domesticating fire.
So I command the author for the doing the right thing and I am saddened for the Colorado school system for the loss a someone with a scientific and reasonable mind like the author.
Whilst I know a fair amount about space exploration, I could not list a date for the first lunar landing, or the second, or the third. I know where and how to look it up, however, and, as Einstein said, never memorize something you can easily look up when you need it.
I do, however, understand special relativity and the principles of general relativity, quantum interaction in atoms and bulk solids, classical electromagnetism, light diffraction, momentum, energy, and atomic spin. I have my bachelors in physics and intend to get my masters in education. I have held jobs in both fields, and my mother was a graduate of CU and the Boulder public education system. (Her background in programming and biology allowed her to provide the main income for my house growing up).
The above is not meant to brag, but to say that I feel reasonably qualified for the opinion I am about to present.
I wonder what field of science you might work in where it’s possible or even practical to neglect a daily lab notebook. I also wonder about your comments about lack of college preparation in relation to this. It seems to me that one of my most important skills in college was my ability to keep and maintain an effective notebook which allowed me to review and retain new information. Learning to keep a good notebook and learning to set up and solve problems are both more valuable to science than the ability to retain historical data. They are skills your son needs.
I find it interesting that you brag about your son’s ability to take tests and then complain about spending part of the year teaching for the state test, but also complain about the emphasis on keeping a notebook. I’m not sure what it is you want the teacher to teach. Hopefully the teacher includes some hands on demonstrations and labs, and I find it probable that some amount of “out of book” homework is important, but the proof of students having done and maintained labs, homework, and understanding of class lectures and demonstrations is probably all in the notebook. That, to me, makes it well worth the 80% weight.
I’m not saying this teacher is completely in the right. You should have been called into conference a long time before this to discuss the fact that your student was struggling despite apparent mastery of the material. In an ideal world, the teacher would have found the resources to set her students up to shadow a wide variety of science professionals, perhaps doing original research or helping perform technical analysis in a real world setting. Sadly, this is hard to do on a pay-check that’s less than most fields requiring comparable education and only a few hours a week to entice children who are often more worried about their next meal. Of course, the school also has to worry about liability and money for classrooms (which are never large enough or comfortable and always force children to sit, an almost sure way to disengage brains, but which parents insist on because you never know what’s OUTSIDE the class room).
Of course, your son should have brought this up with you as well, and the fact that you had to go see the teacher to understand this means that perhaps your son needs to learn some communication skills. At very least, you should have had an honest dialog about this before it made it to the report card.
I wish you the best of luck with your son and his friends: they will surely benefit from nearly one on one education. I also commend you for your willingness to allow your son to continue in school for the most part: he will learn important social and problem solving skills there. Since you are taking the time and energy, I hope you spend some time at the college, do hands on demonstrations, and spend time introducing your students to a wide variety of industry professionals. If you get your students excited enough, maybe some of the other students will decide it’s worth worrying about something other than their stomach as well.
Knight obviously didn’t read the part where you son goes to school EXCEPT for the science class. More parents should get involved in their children’s education. That is the whole premise of the Head Start program, and is why the fedral gov’t funds Head Start. Without parental involvement, kids just “get sent” to school instead of mindfully attending. And there is no certifiable link between homeschooled kids and social pariahs…only kids who go to school and have these “great social interactions” come into school one day and start killing people.
That’s great, and good luck to you. Don’t forget to also teach them about Evolutionary Biology, because they won’t get that in this school either, I suspect.
… but really, it would not hurt to also work just a little bit on notebook skills… :)
I applaud your initiative. And to Knight, you should read what he has to say more closely. He’s not isolating them, he only takes them out for an hour to teach them science.
Education, like most everything else, has become a way to garner money from the government as opposed accomplishing goals such as the education of our youth. Don’t be surprised if your children tell you one day about *their* child’s insipid teachers.
“Organizational skills” is the excuse of choice for the modern teacher to put as little effort as possible into the education of his or her students, with other curriculum items consisting mostly of lengthy filler such as taking notes from state-provided materials that the teacher need only put on a projector.
Home-schooling’s not going to be an easy task, but your child will thank you for it later when he’s not an incompetent office drone that stamps paperwork and redirects phone calls to a never-ending hold line.
Personally I think you should report her for failing the children and the system.
No-one needs educators like that.
Nice work; the way our public education seems to be headed I wouldn’t be surprised to find myself homeschooling my kids someday (I’m in college right now). The only reason I was prepared to enter one of the most difficult engineering institutions in the country was because I was able to teach myself in high school while ignoring the actual curriculum. It was a waste of time, really, and don’t even mention those standardized tests!
Have fun giving your kid and his friends a real education!
P.S. ^^knight, I’m willing to guess that you’re a liberal arts major at a state school :P
I recently (2006 grad) came out of the Colorado public school system. I noticed some of the same problems you mentioned, but I disagree with your assessment of their severity. “Teaching the test” occurs far more often with tests like AP examinations and their ilk. I didn’t really notice the same thing with CSAPs at all. This test did sometimes guide the classroom objectives, but I feel I received a good education that has served me well in my pursuit of an undergraduate degree. At the very least, my school district was staffed with well-qualified teachers that understood the difference between CSAP requirements and what should actually be taught.
And Armannd, please don’t try and compare compulsory education with war.
Thank you for this. Makes me feel like less of a freak homeschooling myself through middle school and high school.
Sad to see the state the public education system is in today.
I was sent to catholic school for 12 years by my mother, and although I no longer believe in god, I appreciate it because I feel I got a much better education than I ever could have gotten in a public school, especially in Philadelphia, which is where I live.
Boo hoo…life must be so hard for all you. Here’s your tissue.
Wow, I wrote this post months ago, it must’ve just gotten picked up by a social bookmarking site.
I just got home from picking up the boys from school and am about to watch one of Sean Carroll’s cosmology lectures (that’s what we do on Fridays). After class, I’ll respond to some of these very thoughtful comments.
Thank you all for commenting, I’ll do my best to respond to some of the ideas presented when I finish.
Knight –
Clearly you have no idea what homeschooling is like. Sure, there are some wacko types (you get them anywhere you go), but by far and away, homeschooled kids are MORE socially capable than public school types. They’re less concerned with fitting in, and thus more likely to actually open up to people. That’s my anecdotal experience, anyway.
You’ve also missed the point. Tony is more concerned about knowledge than being another cog in the wheel. Obviously BVSD did you good if you think that’s the point.
Tony,
you are right about social sites. I saw it on reddit: http://reddit.com/info/2×10a/comments, but it’s also on digg: http://digg.com/general_sciences/Why_I_m_Homeschooling_My_Kid_in_Science_Next_Year :)
What you are doing is great. Best of luck!
I left Parker last year (south suburbs of Denver, for those unfamiliar) and if it weren’t for open enrollment and a good charter school in Lone Tree, we’d have been homeschooling as well. Tony, you are spot on, and “Knight” is an apologist for the hearty dysfunction that exists in Colorado schools.
Also, Knight, if you read these follow up comments, you should be feeling “badly” for his kids. Also, Tony is male- making it REAL unlikely that he’s a “crazy Boulder mother”. In the English language, we end interrogative sentences with one of these: “?” It’s called a “question mark”. Also note how I capitalized the “B” in “Boulder” because place names are proper nouns- that’s another rule of the language you are attempting to use for your rebuttal. Perhaps you should go back to those quality schools you are embarrassingly inclined to defend?
I can only assume your claim “I never had one class that just focused on the CSAP” means that you were in Boulder schools recently (the CSAP’s started in ‘97), and if that’s true, then you make Tony’s point in a beautifully ironic manner. Dumb ass.
Kudos to you, sir. Kudos.
As a science teacher, hopefully I can shed some light on this situation.
1: NCLB is a terrible law based on a terrible premise making terrible teachers do terrible things.
2. 80% of any grade for any single thing is way out of line.
3. Grades distort the practice of teaching in many ways.
I agree with Mitch completely, but solipsist is quite funny
Way to go! It’s refreshing to see someone take it upon themselves to better a bad situation instead of merely complaining about it. I’m sure these kids will probably enjoy your classes, too. I bet one or more of them ends up walking on Mars one day.
I know what you mean, science classes suck, so far in the toughest classes in high school I have slept and have good grades. As of now i am considering teaching physics. I don’t mean as a profession i mean as a way to stop my friends from failing because the teacher has no idea what is going on.
I am an undergraduate student at UC Boulder and was homeschooled for most of grade school and part of high school (I spent what would have been my junior and senior years of high school at a community college getting an A.S. and A.A.).
My experience in Colorado public schools was of getting beaten down by teachers who didn’t like that I asked questions and who wanted only for us to copy what they wrote on the board. There was no joy of learning, nor any true interest in teaching the students. I remember receiving candy in class for “standing in line to get our worksheets.”
Children in public school aren’t learning anything about science, math, or even English (have you seen what gets published now? Even American adults can’t speak their native language!). I admire Tony for being willing to devote the time to ensure that his kid not only learns about science, but is interested in science and understands how important it is.
My parents wanted me to get a good education and not become burned out before I graduated high school, so they homeschooled me. My mother put in hours every day doing research into curricula and finding books for myself and my sister to read. I taught myself math all the way through advanced algebra (at which point I went into college and took trig and calc), and my mother made sure that we never lacked for “social contact.” Homeschooling was wonderful for me — I have a very high GPA and an active social life. (I have also paid for almost my entire tuition bill for two years in a row through grants and scholarships, because my grades are so high.) Homeschooling, if done properly and for the right reasons, can be incredibly beneficial and a real leg-up for kids who want to go farther in school.
By the way, I found this through StumbleUpon. I’m a big fan of the astronomy articles, this one just caught my eye.
I hate to disagree, Aidan, but my experience is exactly the opposite. People who were exclusively homeschooled (So not these kids) are much more socially inept (Also based on anecdotal evidence) than public school lifers. I entered college at a school that basically forces relationships with classmates, and I’m always surprised at how easy it is to pick out the homeschooled students. They are often louder, more annoying attention-grabbers than anything else.
Also, I believe because of the fact that their experience has been exclusively with academics, they tend to be more obviously “nerdy,” which in and of itself is hardly a bad thing, they seem to focus only on schoolwork, avoiding social interaction in favor of homework.
I’ve also noticed that some homeschooled students grow out of this pretty quickly.
This is a cool thread. I know Tony’s only talking about one class, but I was home schooled for several years as a kid so I just have to add in my two cents. :) After I bombed first grade, my parents pulled me out (much to the horror of the school district). When the time eventually came, I went to public high school. I really loved my high school experience and did not have “social isolation” problems at all. There are many ways to educate a child. Our current way may or may not ultimately prove to be the best (35 kids in a class all born within 10 months of their peers). It’s a relatively new invention in the history of education, after all. Providing public schooling to all children is a wonderful advancement of human societies, but not every kid who is home-schooled is alone in a shack in the woods somewhere “learning” creationism, for goodness’ sakes. ;)
At any rate, it’s only one class. Good for you, Tony.
FYI stumbleupon is where i linked in from, then i dugg it :)
Great entry, same shi* here in germany.
I am a teacher in Canada. One of my teaching areas is science and it disgusts me that a school teacher can get away with this. Some of the smartest kids I know have disorganised notebooks! I don’t understand giving 80% of their grade based on the order of the papers.
I can’t even speak to the CSAP test – we don’t have anything like that in our schools. Science is all about inquiry and teaching critical thinking – all education is about critical thinking!
I totaly understand why you would pull your child out of school for science, I’d do the same thing if I were in your situation.
YOU GO DUDE! The world needs more take charge people like you!
It’s sad that some schools have resorted to those methods. Kudos to you for providing those kids with a meaningful education. As an engineering major I can agree with the importance of science. I personally think (my opinion here, I could be wrong) is that you should teach them a balance of general science, basic chemistry, basic physics, and basic astronomy. If they pick that up well, go more advanced. What do you think the school is gonna say when your kid is doing quantum physics in 10th grade! :)
Why do people make the “socially adept” argument with regards to homeschooling? American public school systems are brutal and soul-crushing atmospheres that do nothing but encourage bullying, exclusion, bigotry. They take any self-confidence your child may have had and grind it to dust.
I suppose in a way this would “prepare you for the real world.” Except, not really. In the real world you have the power to separate yourself from this sort of bullshit, even when it surrounds you utterly.
Public schools are nothing but indoctrination camp + babysitter for anti-intellectual social climbers. And if you can’t climb, they teach you to suck it up and stay in your place. Education has NEVER been a primary focus of our public education system.
I am a high school student in Oregon, and I must say that throughout my years as a student, I have come to realize one thing about public school teachers: all they care about is getting their paychecks. I began to realize this in elementary school, where most teachers were idiots. Just like this article, they cared only about one thing at a time. In my second grade class, all they cared about was getting me to read. That is when they pushed the reading, but for the rest of my days there, they had this stupid AR system. This “system” was where you went to the library, picked up a book that they had there, read it, and took a test about it on the computer. This was stupid because there were only so many books that you could read and take the test on. You couldn’t actually read a book you liked, just a book that they had. Don’t get me wrong, they did have some good books to read, but most of them were crap. The ones that I did want to read were never there, and they MADE you choose a book that was there in their little library. Just to ‘make sure’ you were reading, every week they would go through a list of students making sure that they had books from their library. I remember once wanting to read a book from the library that looked cool (though now I know how decieving book covers are), and when I brought it to the desk to get it, the teacher said,
“You can’t read this book. This is a fifth grade level book!” And so I had to argue with them that I could very well read a fifth grade book. So finally I opened the book and began to read outloud from it. Sorely disappointed, they let me have the book. I never really liked the book, but the point is that they wouldn’t let me borrow the book because they thought that I couldn’t read at a fifth grade level (I was in fourth grade). For teachers who sure wanted you to read, the libarians didn’t seem to think that way.
I have many more stories of all the bad experiences I have had in public school, and all the great experiences I had during homeschooling, and private schools. And those will be posted later.
I do hope that this helps people at least begin to understand how stupid the public school system is. I will also explain later why I believe that teachers only care about thier paychecks.
You are missing the point.
The main purpose of school is to teach obedience. Science, bedyond the most meanless lowest common denominator has nothing to do with school.
Why else is school organized in classrooms with only one authority figure and all others dependent on them? That is why your childs teacher was smirking, she knows and you don’t
I disagree with Charles. I am a research mathematician and mathematical physicist–and I never was able to keep a notebook or take notes.
I never needed to, though, because I have an eidetic memory.
I had a similar “teacher” in 7th grade. About ten years later, I sent him a note on Institute for Advanced Study letterhead that said: ” I still don’t have a notebook!”
The world is full of semibright people who make it on their notetaking skills and are always trying to force people to follow a plan–which for them has been successful. But, the most important lesson in teaching the bright ( aka future researchers) is that ” One size doesn’t fit all.”
Charles asked for an example of a science which doesn’t require a lab notebook. I will give two:
Theoretical Physics and Mathematical Physics.
Most theoretical types avoid labs–our skills lie elsewhere.
Penny
P.s. In the same way, linear study skills were always worthless for me. I learn things by thinking hard in a nonlinear order about them.
Honestly, I have no sympathy. If the kid is that smart then organize a notebook. Shouldn’t be that hard if the “lesser” kids can do it.
If at your job you knew the material but just handed in whatever you wanted would you get that far.
The most important thing to teach in a science class is ” to question”. After every fact, the student should say: ” How do we know this?”
” What are the limitations and assumptions on how we know this?” ” What is still unknown here?”
” How might I find out the answer?”
Much of what is taught in “science” classses in elementary school is not SCIENCE. Certainly, a talk by an astronaut is not science–at best, it is engineering. In the same way, learning the history of science is not SCIENCE–it is history.
I recall elementary school “astronomy” classes where we were taught names of stars and constellations and legends about them. That is NOT SCIENCE. It is liberal arts.
Building a go cart–as mentioned here, is NOT SCIENCE. It is engineering. Engineering is based on science, but it is NOT science.
Penny
In this vein, I don’t care if students know we went to the moon, but I do care that they have some idea of any science we learned from that, and what the limitations on our interpetation of the data are.