Educational Schools of Thought

The two schools of thought I would categorize as Tiger Mom on the one hand and infinitely Creative on the other. And then there are infinite variations among people on how all this is applied in real life.

If we analyze how education began we can see that public schools arose out of early Catholic Schools in Europe in regard to western civilization. Home schooling came from living on a farm in the country when transportation wasn't available to go 50 or 100 miles to school everyday.

As time went on public schools were created by nations to have an educated electorate but also to create factory workers and soldiers. Public schools create regimentation or unflinching obedience among most. But the do not necessarily foster creativity or innovation. The other problem with Public schools is that when children rebel against regimentation for one reason or another, they create criminals.

Then we move to the Creative School of Thought that mostly came originally from living on a farm too far away to go to a school of regimentation to create factory workers and soldiers. From living on a farm one must learn (to follow in a parents footsteps) to become a "jack of all trades including a farmer". One must be ready literally for any weather situation, any medical situation. In other words to be able to think for yourself no matter what happens from a very early age. This creates a "Responsible survivor". In other words a child who thinks on their feet and tends to survive anything.

So, these days parents who live in cities because both have to work or parents who don't care about teaching their children at all send their kids to public schools. Governments tend to institutionalize public schooling in cities now have made public schools a sort of required "reformatory" where children often are bullied, beat up, emotionally traumatized etc. It is my premise that all this trauma is basically unnecessary in life and not particularly useful except to scare most kids into blind obedience that doesn't serve them at all in their adult lives.

The other alternative to  public schools is private schools and especially prep schools or (college preparatory schools) I now have a child in one of these. However, then the child usually has about twice or more the homework of a public school and unless you want your child to be head of a corporation and an A student at one of the best universities in the land and an elitist you may or may not want your child going to such a school.

I, myself since 1980 have advocated a "Creative" form of education in the form of home schooling. My oldest son was home schooled using "Oak Meadow School" independent study from Kindergarten through 5th grade. Then he went to 6th grade through high school and then through college and now got his Bachelor's of Science in Nursing last December. His step brother became a Fire Captain and his step sister became a lawyer. His step brother also was home schooled from ages 8 to 12 and his step sister from 6 to 11.

Home schooling came for our family at that time in 1980 when the grade school and Junior high combined in our country town and within the first month an 8th grader broke a 4th grader's jaw. In outrage we simply withdrew all our kids from school and moved further outside of our country town onto our 2 1/2 acres of land and began home schooling our kids on "Oak Meadow School" independent study. And this worked quite well from 1980 until about 1985 when we moved back to the California Coast and bought another business because our oldest, my stepson asked to return to public school. The other two weren't as happy about it but realized it was time to go back to school.

However, because our kids weren't in public school or a private institution at one location, it allowed us to travel a lot all over the western United States and to incorporate our interests and our children's interests into their overall education process. Also, all our kids became self starters. They could all cook, wash dishes, make their beds, deal with the trash by the time they were all 8 or 9. So we made all these jobs on a rotational basis as their jobs depending upon the week. So they each had one or more chores every day.

My son who became a nurse now at that time was dyslexic but we didn't know it because testing wasn't as available then as now. So, because he was having trouble learning to read we let him have books he wanted on Dungeons and Dragons and he taught himself to read because he wanted to know what the pictures were. So because he kept coming and asking his mother, me, his sister and brother questions he began to be a really good reader. However, because of dyslexia English composition still was a problem, so when he went to college English composition still was a problem for him. However, he always got A's in science and computer programming and anything to do with computers so in his 20s he became a computer tech and software expert. At about age 29 he said, "I want to help fix people rather than computers and went back to school. His wife then made him take an IQ test and he came out at about 150 IQ. So he realized how smart he was at 29. (We had been telling him this for years but he hadn't believed me up until then). So in December he won an award for perseverance over all the graduating nurses in his class and had so many honors that he was one of the top 5 students in his whole class of nurses.



So, if one of the parents has the time, think about home schooling if you live out in the country or are traveling the world or just want your kids to become entrepreneurs and become rich and help create a whole new and better society and world.

So, for me it is "Do you want your kids to think like slaves or do you want your kids to be able to create a better world for everyone by thinking for themselves?"