Alternatives in Education

Alternatives In Education

We are a home schooling family. I feel that after my experiences growing up in public school and my experience at having my son in public school, we are better off doing our own thing.

I was not allowed to learn what I wanted to learn and that was very upsetting to me. My son was not allowed to learn what he wanted to learn and that was upsetting to him. He was distracted and getting in trouble for not following the teacher’s instructions immediately.

My son's behavior changed drastically. We used to be really close and he was so well mannered. a year and a half in public school changed him. He was no longer the caring respectful person I was trying to raise. My parenting suffered as well. I forgot how to relate to him at all. Maybe I just forgot. I don't know for sure, I just knew we were fighting all the time and neither of us was happy with each other.

He has been home schooling for just a short while, but he is getting much better. We are learning to respect each other again. He is remembering how to respect others. He is doing multiplication tables. He is 7 years old. He does what he wants. All I do is make sure he does something.

There are kids in the neighborhood that he can play with. They bring out the qualities I am trying hard to retrain. They all go to public school.

The problem with public school, as I see it, is they are too busy trying to get them to all sit still--not easy when there is 30+ kids and 1 or 2 adults. They have 1 or 2 ways to teach a subject. The method cannot work on all kids. My son will do his math and science and reading very well as he is doing them in regards to all things mechanical. Yes, at 7 years old, I can see this is his passion. He was bored in the public school because he was not allowed to follow his passion.

The way my son is learning is much the same way that I learn. Our interests are different so I cannot answer all of his questions, but that is where teaching him how to use a library, books, and the Internet comes in. He learns how to find information for himself, the same way I have learned now how to find information that are all over these pages. He will know how to read it and understand what it means. He will learn to trust in himself to realize that he can decide if someone's truth is right for him. After all, truth as we know it is only a matter of opinion. The truth I learned in textbooks in my public schools was only one side of the story. I was always told by my father to listen to both sides of the story and the truth was always somewhere in the middle. When someone tells stories he/she has a vested interest in the way a story ends. So, their version is always biased based on their view. It is my job, as a human interested in the facts, to figure out what the storyteller’s interest in the subject might be and take a little bias out of the story. If I can get the other side, better still.

We all should learn this way, and can. We all have an inner wisdom that will help us decide what our truth is. We all have Internet access (library lets you surf for free) so we can find anything we want to. There are book stores we can go to for browsing, some even have little coffee shops right inside!!

There are no excuses at all for everyone to not learn about everything important to their situation.

For more information on home schooling:
Home School Legal Defense Association
Unschooling Site
Another Unschooling Site
About Socialization

A Resource About Education At All Levels
Education from Life in the USA: The Complete Guide for Immigrants and Americans

It is really easy to find what you need on the Internet. All you have to do is type in the box anything you might want to know about and click the button. A whole world of information will open up to you and you will get more than both sides, you'll get every side. Every possible side that has been written is there for you to find and read and decide for yourself if it is truth. Try it out:

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