Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Why fix a system designed to destroy individual thought?

Interesting article by John Taylor Gatto, former teacher of the year in NY. Do schools foster original thought, or do they destroy it?

Here is the first paragraph of the article:

I want you to consider the frightening possibility that we are spending far too much money on schooling, not too little. I want you to consider that we have too many people employed in interfering with the way children grow up--and that all this money and all these people, all the time we take out of children's lives and away from their homes and families and neighbourhoods and private explorations--gets in the way of education.

Read the rest by clicking on the title above....

---Katie

3 comments:

Victor Antonio a.k.a. Soldado De Oracion said...

Excellent, excellent post. I'm a proud father of two homeschooled kids. They could not have acquired the strength I now find in them, intellectually and spiritually, had my wife and I not decided to pull them out of school. We saw how the school system was systematically destroying in them the values we held dear and took pains to teach them. Thank you for calling attention to the monopoly that the US public school system has deteriorated into. Yes, good old free-enterprise and laissez faire would be very helpful. A nation's future is at stake.
Found you, by the way, through Nick Queen's "Out Of The Wilderness" New Christian Blogs. You have a great site. God bless you and your blogging.

Katie Kilcrease said...

Thank you very much!

We have been homeschooling for thirteen years, and I am very pleased with the results, academically, yes, but also in the way that my kids have been able to find out what their passions are and how they have been able to develop strength of character without being perpetually consumed with fear of what their peers will think.

Two in college, two to go!

---Katie

Anonymous said...

This was a great post. Thanks for calling it to my attention. I knew much of this, but it was great to see it organized and articulated so well. We started our two girls in a private Christian school that used the Principle Approach philosophy and curriculum that emphasizes reasoning and writing skills - even for math. This was very good and we liked the results but ultimately came to believe it was our own responsibility to educate our children and we've been home educating for 3 years. It's been wonderful. People comment on how "lucky" we are to have such well-spoken, sweet-natured and fun-to-be-around kids!