I am expecting and hoping that this will get some interesting reactions...
Wolf has been doing Independent Study for three years now. He's been in Cub Scouts the same amount of time. I am a Den Leader and the Chairperson for his Cub Scout Pack. We know a bunch of kids both in homeschool/charter school situations and many more in traditional schools.
My observations of the children who go to traditional school vs alternative options have started to lead me to feel that traditional schooling has become a socially accepted form of cruelty to children.
The children in alternative education never seem overly stressed out. The children from traditional schools nearly always seem wound so tight they could snap. Alternative kids know how to play and are able to focus their attention when asked politely. Traditional school children, once they are out of school, always seem hard pressed to focus on anything other than physical movement of some kind.
Parents tell me horror stories of hours of homework in third grade, of fighting their children to get it done when they are already exhausted from school and a myriad of structured activities, of it taking three times as long because the children just can't handle anymore work or structure.
In addition I am now reading articles about how universities are having to deal with children spat out of the traditional school system who don't know the basic interpersonal concepts that are learned mainly through unguided group play.
All of this is really pushing me into the opinion that traditional school, as it stands now, is socially accepted cruelty. Someone looking in from the outside would be hard pressed to see it as anything else, but because that is how our world works, people just don't notice. The status quo is "normal" so it can't be wrong.
Comments?
