How Schools Help Turn Children into Coddled Young Adults

People are complaining that the milennials won’t grow up, and in many cases they’re right. But who’s at fault? Their parents for coddling them, and the schools for treating teens like children.

This article points out what limited freedom today’s teens have. Even working is seen as inferior to going to school. Back in the 1970s, teens who didn’t want to go to college could go to school until noon and then leave for work. Now, if they work, they’re dragged back to the waste of time that is modern high school. Never mind that those first few jobs get young people on the road to eventually supporting themselves by giving them a taste of earning their own money.

While you’re there, scroll down and check out the chart in that same article, the chart showing the growth in students, teacher and administrators since 1950. There hasn’t even been 100% growth in the number of students, but we’ve gained 252% in the number of teachers, and a whopping 702% in the number of administrators.

Clearly public education has become a cash cow for many people, while preparing teens for adulthood takes a back seat. Savvy parents will put their teens’ needs first and help them get ready for adulthood without waiting for permission from the school, while homeschooling parents have the freedom to make the teen years a launching pad into adulthood, which is as it should be.

(Prepare your teen for adulthood with my book, Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers, now available in an expanded third edition, and also newly released as an eBook.)

Why Homeschooling Can Be Very Good for Women

Tuesday, the day after Labor Day, marks the 30th anniversary of my first official day of homeschooling our children. Later this year, I will mark my birthday; my new age is a very round number, one of those numbers that makes you look back on your life, and think.

Hence the contemplative mood I find myself in today. I think back on how I’ve spent my life, and I realize I spent the majority of it homeschooling. If you count my eldest child’s first five years of life, before the day we first sat down at the kitchen table, sang “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” (because that’s what we did when I was in kindergarten) and opened a fresh new workbook from A Beka, I actually began homeschooling 35 years ago.

When I was a teen, I never knew homeschooling existed, much less that I would spend the bulk of my “career years” doing so. I never really had much career guidance from my family or teachers. But I grew up when feminism was in full bloom, so the one thing I was certain of was that only a career would make me happy, not staying home to raise children. That’s what all the women’s magazines I read told me.

Back then, people still believed that all the “good” careers required a college degree, so off I went to college. I got the degree, got the job in the corporate office working with the CEO and other head honchos of a large company, and spent my days writing articles and publishing a newsletter to motivate the sales force of 500+ men to sell more product.

I got to wear the cool corporate wardrobe that was in vogue back then: wool blazers, pencil skirts, silk-lined slacks, pantyhose and high heels. I got to leave the office for lunch meetings (on the company) in fancy restaurants. I was quoted in industry magazines and attended national trade shows.

I lasted 2 ½ years.

I was bored silly doing the same old things all the time, and I hated being locked up in an office every day from eight to five. Most importantly, I learned that I did not want to spend my life trying to raise sales numbers. I didn’t really care how much money the company made; increasing its profits wasn’t a goal worth giving up my time, literally my daily life, to achieve.

The feminists kept telling me that I would find happiness in a career, but they were wrong. I had to find something meaningful to do with my life; being paid money to do something that looked glamorous (but was, in reality, monotonous) was not the answer.

My husband and I solved this problem in the time-honored way: we had a baby. I took to motherhood like a duck to water. My baby was six months old when I first read about this amazing concept called homeschooling. We left her with her grandparents for a day so we could go to a seminar by a couple named Dr. Raymond and Dorothy Moore, and we were soon sold on the idea.

Looking back, I realize that I had been listening to the wrong voices when it came to determining my vocation. I see now that God put the concept of homeschooling in my path at just the right time in my life. He spent a few years teaching my husband and me about it, and then, when it came time to put our little girl on the school bus, we kept her home. We never sent a child to school until years later, when we sent one to college.

I’ve written many times about what a blessing homeschooling was for our family. But it was also a blessing for me personally. I got to run my own show: no more sitting in meetings, listening to the bosses drone on about their plans for the next fiscal year. I planned my own days, made lesson plans, bought supplies, set up art projects, and arranged field trips. I loved working with my kids each day, and especially the independence of it all.

After I’d been homeschooling for a few years, I got more creative. I began writing my own curriculum, designing my own unit studies, and coming up with ideas that would help my children learn what they wanted to learn, in addition to the reading, writing and math that their dad and I required them to study. As my children grew older, I learned to become more of a facilitator than a teacher, obtaining whatever materials and experiences they needed to explore different areas that interested them.

During these very busy years, I had to put my own interests and hobbies on the back burner because there just wasn’t time. But that was alright because I was immersed in helping my children learn what they wanted and needed to know.

Once my eldest two kids left home, I had more time on my hands, and that’s when I finally began to enjoy using the gift of writing that God gave me. I published a couple of newsletters about homeschooling, wrote books and articles about homeschooling, and even began selling some of the curriculum I designed for my kids.

These days, I continue to enjoy writing and publishing (Cardamom Publishers, the company my husband and I started, celebrates its 15th anniversary this year.) Thanks to the Internet, we both work from home, so I not only get to enjoy being in charge of my own schedule, but also being with my husband instead of being apart every weekday. And I’m happy to say I’ve never had to work in some corporate office again.

Professor and cultural critic Camille Paglia once referred to homeschooling mothers as being “formidable and capable personalities whom feminism has foolishly ignored.” It’s true:

  • It takes guts to go against the flow by keeping your kids home instead of sending them to school like most parents do.
  • It takes brains to keep smart children challenged.
  • It takes emotional strength to live with your children day in and day out, year in and year out, something most mothers never do (whether they work outside the home, send their kids to school, or both.)

But there are rewards. We have the freedom to use our gifts in a meaningful way. We also have the freedom to decide how our days will go, where we will work, when we will work. Instead of being parked in a cubicle, I spent my days:

  • On the sofa reading aloud
  • At the table teaching algebra
  • In the kitchen showing a child how to cook
  • In the yard inspecting the root system of a garden plant
  • In museums, at plays and touring places of business, to name just a few field trips we took.

Being a homeschooling mother means being able to choose how you spend your days, and your life. I’ll take that over the feminism I was sold back in my youth any day.

 

Useful Learning for Teens

This week our local paper published an article about the increase in truancy rates among students of all ages in the local schools.

What interested me the most is that the rate of truancy increases as children get older, so that by the time they reach 12th grade, well over 40% of them miss at least ten days of school per 176-day school year, and a quarter of them miss 20 days or more per school year.

Some of this can be explained by the fact that 12th graders often have cars and can easily take the day off, drive around town, and no one will notice because they look like the young adults they are, not students. It’s a lot easier for them to play hooky than it is for your average first-grader.

But I wonder if there isn’t another reason so many teens skip school. My memory of the last two years of high school can be mostly summed up by the phrase “relentlessly boring.” Each semester, when I set up my schedule, I squeezed my class requirements into the tightest time period possible, skipping lunch and putting study hall at the end of the day, so I could be out of there as early as possible.

However, I didn’t spend that extra free time loafing. For most of my junior year, I had a job in a hardware store, working from 2:30 to 9 most days. So I needed to get out of school early. But I also had a life, one that extended beyond what was going on in my high school.

Most of my classes were dull, not very useful for the future, or both. There were some useful classes, like typing, home ec and industrial arts, but those of us who were college-bound knew better than to court the possibility of wrecking our GPAs by risking a B or C in those subjects. So I did my best to stay awake through classes that were not very interesting or not very useful: World History via lectures and textbooks, Literature via lectures and textbooks, Sociology via silly games and fake wedding ceremonies. Snore.

However, I took one class during my senior year that was excellent, and I loved it. It was designed and run by one of the school’s social studies teachers, and it was called Public Service Practicum.

The teacher, a highly regarded educator named Richard Chierico, designed the course to help students understand what goes on in local government. He worked out agreements with local government entities, including the village board, the public library board, public works, etc., to allow each of us to work within the system as volunteers, and to shadow various employees so that we would get a firsthand look at how local government operates.

I worked with the public library board, which meant I had the chance to work at all the stations in the library so that I understood just what went on. Then I attended library board meetings after being filled in on the issues by the head librarian. I even attended a gathering of head librarians from all over the region. Having long been a bookworm and regular visitor to the library, I found it all fascinating.

As much as I enjoyed the course, I think what made it extra special is that Mr. Chierico treated us as young adults. He trusted us to go out during the school day to our different posts in local government and to arrange future appointments with our supervisors. He didn’t treat us as other teachers did, as students in need of repetitive instructions and orders. He just expected that we would do what we needed to, and so we did.

I think that’s the problem with high schools, and why there’s such a high truancy rate among older students. What teens do in school is not relevant, it’s not interesting, and it’s too much of what they’ve been doing for all their lives: sit still, raise your hand, you need a pass to go to the bathroom, no you can’t leave campus for lunch. We all know the drill.

Teens are too old for that kind of school. They need to be challenged, trusted and freed. Will some of them bolt if given freedom? Sure, but you can’t imprison everyone because some will run.

Teens are smart enough to know when something’s useful or of value. They’re also smart enough to know when they’re being warehoused. Instead of trying to figure out how to reduce the truancy rate by imprisoning teens further, parents and teachers need to consider other alternatives.

I think this is why so many teens have done well in homeschooling. It gives them the time and the freedom to explore their interests and to consider what they need for their futures. Not to mention, they never need a pass to go to the bathroom.

(For ideas on what useful things teens can do, check out the video below.)

Mandatory Service Requirements for Youth

Ok, class, time for a quick current events pop quiz:

Which country just approved a $6 billion initiative that includes the following, directing its legislative body to determine:

“….whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed, and how such a requirement could be implemented in a manner that would strengthen the social fabric of the Nation and overcome civic challenges by bringing together people from diverse economic, ethnic, and educational backgrounds.”

Your answer, please.

Russia? No.

China? No.

Sorry…..the correct answer is the United States of America.

I’m not kidding. HB 1388 passed in the Senate today. This is scary stuff. The fine print includes descriptions of young people wearing uniforms and being trained on campuses (the term originally used was ‘camps’ but they changed that, I wonder why?) It’s even been suggested that middle schoolers and high schoolers should be included.

Ironically, despite the use of the word ‘mandatory,’ the name of the bill is GIVE (Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act). Isn’t ‘mandatory volunteerism’ an oxymoron?

If there was ever a time for homeschoolers, as busy as we are, to pay close attention to the quickly changing agenda of our government, it’s now.

Learn more from:

San Francisco Examiner

Spectator (UK)

American Thinker

Michelle Malkin