Another One For SMemmett

[Ponca Dan]

Curious about your thoughts.

https://fee.org/articles/in-the-wake-of-mass-shootings-parents-reconsider-mass-schooling/

 

[OKSTATE1]

Curious about your thoughts.

https://fee.org/articles/in-the-wake-of-mass-shootings-parents-reconsider-mass-schooling/

We home schooled one child. She was very small and late developing physically because of an illness when she was young and she was getting bullied, this was several months after Columbine. Her classmates on their own signed a document requesting for the principal to stop it, that is when we knew it was really BAD, what kids do that?

One day she tried to push our daughter down several flight of stairs. We met with the school and it was the same old BS and they would do NOTHING. We had met previously a couple of times.

I told the school I was going to take my daughter home and I would train her to defend herself, told them she had a right to defend herself if they would not. They called me a bad parent and explained suspension, etc..

I trained her hard for 2 months, taught her one simple trick (when you step forward to punch, step on the front foot of the person you are punching so they fall and you can get on top and pummel their face). I worked her hard mentally and told her most bullies when confronted are really surprised but that if she was going to defend herself she had to be all in, no fear, and no doubt she was going to win and she had to have some toughness and willingness to inflict some hurt. Taught her when they cried for you to stop to not stop and inflict some real hurt to teach them never to look her way again and to never bully again. We knew our daughter would eventually snap, we could see that frustration building, and we wanted her to be able to protect herself.

So one day this bully punched her and spit on her and this girl was a grade ahead and almost twice her size but my daughter put a real @zz whipping on this girl. When I came down to the school to pick up my daughter, they started to lecture me and I gave them the hand and I said I know, you told me if she got in a fight she would be suspended for 3 days, said my daughter would be on vacation and back after 3 days and they had nothing to say to us of value.

She want back to school and had no problems after that with that girl and no one else as well.

We went ahead and decided to home school a few years later. Home schooling is not for everyone, you miss some of the social interaction, but the child actually covers more academic ground each day because you do not have all the class room interruptions.

 

[SMemmett]

@Ponca Dan

Thanks for the link! An interesting read. I think there are dozens of ways that schools could be better and less "coercive" and more individualized, but I think like a lot of things between the two of us, we probably have a fundamental disagreement on potential outcomes.

If it's binary choice between rigid, coerced, compulsory schooling and being home schooled, I don't doubt that most children would get more educational benefits from the latter. However, how many children in this country is home schooling/private school unrealistic? Socialization, rightly or wrongly, is a very important part of attending public schools as well.

I believe public education needs to be reformed, but I don't feel like chipping away at it as an institution will only have positive results.

My response was a bit disjointed and all over the place hopefully you can grab some semblance of reason out of it!