Astronomy Buff

262 opinions for Why I’m Homeschooling My Kid in Science Next Year

• Astroprof
  Jun 28, 2007 at 4:58 pm

  Unfortunately, this is not an unusual tale. It is science teachers like this who are the reason that some of my college students who have always made A’s in science can’t pass the introductory sciences courses in college. Most likely the problem is that the teacher who is teaching the science class is not a scientist, but rather was an education major who took science for education majors in college. I’d dare say that your son probably knows more science than she does.

• Tony
  Jun 29, 2007 at 12:18 pm

  Yes, this is an excellent point. I’m sure this teacher got the job because of a couple of classes she took while getting her teaching certificate.

  You know more than most how poorly prepared our kids are for college, I too was woefully unready for college just out of high school, I had to go through much to get myself ready.

  There is no way in hell my kids won’t be getting a good science background before they apply. Even more importantly though, they need to be taught HOW to do science. They need to know how to ask questions and look for answers; what questions are worth pursuing, and to recognize bad analyses when they see it.

  I want kids who grow up to be adults who think for themselves…

  Thanks for the feedback AstroProf, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you and what you do for your students.

• Shannon
  Jun 29, 2007 at 9:37 pm

  I think this is a great idea, and one more parents should consider. So many parents leave it up to the public school system to dictate what their kids should know and the best way to go about teaching them. Parents know their kids far better then a teacher ever could. Unfourtently, many parents are happy with the cookie cutter education system, many parents are happy letting their kids learn just enough to get a decent job and barely get by in life. Sorry, I guess I’m hitting rant stage. I should really consider switching to decaf. Just wanted to let you know that I think you’re doing a very valuable service not only for your kids, but for the extra ones you’ll be taking on as well.

• Corey
  Jul 2, 2007 at 2:53 pm

  I work with people very much like this teacher and they really make you want to jump off a cliff some days.

  I can build elaborate and elegant software and correct the mistakes of a half-dozen other programmers, but some chair warmer three cubicles over can tell me my project isn’t completed because I didn’t fill out a form that isn’t even relevant to my project? “Just put N/A for all the fields on the form.” I have to fill out the GUI form for a piece of software that runs strictly on the server with no UI?

  Yup.

  I know exactly how you feel. Too bad that’s the way it is. Maybe your kid should be in that class AND learning from you, since he needs to know how the real world works, eh?

• George Wade
  Jul 6, 2007 at 1:04 pm

  How the real world works was brought into the Physics class by a superb teacher who had us all doing experiments: UK, Grammar School, 1952-7. Real experiments: 1954-7.

  You must be planning experiments; measuring errors; relating to theory and virtual experiments… Good homeschooling.

• Getting School District Permission to Homeschool Science
  Aug 17, 2007 at 11:05 am

  […] I’ve written before about my disappointment with the science class my seventh grade son had last year. I was so disappointed that I decided I would teach him science my self this year. I have found Boulder Valley School District science education to be amazingly sub-standard considering the number of scientists and engineers living in the area. There really doesn’t seem to be a correlation here in Boulder between the population of scientists and the quality of the public school science curriculum. […]

• Astrolink [Global Edition] » Getting School District Permission to Homeschool Science | Latest astronomy news in 11 languages
  Aug 17, 2007 at 1:08 pm

  […] I’ve written before about my disappointment with the science class my seventh grade son had last year. I was so disappointed that I decided I would teach him science my self this year. I have found Boulder Valley School District science education to be amazingly sub-standard considering the number of scientists and engineers living in the area. […]

• Not All Teachers Are Heroic
  Sep 24, 2007 at 4:53 pm

  […] He gets C- grades in science because he doesn’t have all of his pages properly inserted in his binder. Never mind that he knows more about general relativity that I do (not really, but he’s pretty darn good). […]

• The New HomelyScientist
  Oct 4, 2007 at 11:48 am

  […] homeschooling my son in science this year. One of the main reasons I thought I could write for HomelyScientist was that I plan to […]

• sollipsist
  Oct 5, 2007 at 6:35 am

  You’re all missing the point. Schools are preparing our children to enter the real world, which is all about pointless bureaucracy and pleasing authority- or, at least, avoiding the attention of said authority as much as possible. Kudos to this science teacher for effectively conditioning a whole new crop of semi-conscious rule-followers!

• ANON
  Oct 5, 2007 at 6:39 am

  I think with the recent decline in anything valuable to the growth of society and escalation of greed.This has caused the areas responsible for providing youth with the skills and knowledge to improve society to no longer be available. Wouldn’t surprise me if the Government was some how involved what with recent happenings. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

• Mitch
  Oct 5, 2007 at 7:07 am

  I won’t even address this teacher’s problems, but I would like to address something in the original post that sparked this conversation:

  I don’t care if students don’t know who landed on the moon, or even when or if it ever happened. Actually, I do care, but I see it as a Social Studies issue rather than a Science Education issue. I suspect that the teacher described has colleagues that would be happy if their students knew all kinds of “Jepordy!-style” information, but couldn’t form or identify an investigable question. This may be an even bigger problem in science teaching and, sadly, it is a problem that exists among teachers who actually have degrees in science and not in teaching — i.e. many High School teachers.

  What we need –because everyone is not capable of supplying their own children with the science learning that they don’t get in school–is a partnership between scientists and educators that will provide the education community with priorities, approaches, strategies, techniques and rationales for effective science teaching and learning. This has been started in the National Science Education Standards (NSES) that were meant to inform state and local bodies as they develop standards, benchmarks and guidelines. Unfortunately the NSES often gets lost in the translation if local education authorities are not enlightened.

  We all have to do what is best for our own children, but I hope that doesn’t mean a withdrawal of all of the voices of reason from the debate.

• knight
  Oct 5, 2007 at 11:24 am

  You are one crazy boulder mother. I do mean that literally. I am also a product of the BVSD and unlike you I found my time in high school very beneficial to my college experience. And your comments about the CSAP could not be any farther from the truth. Teachers do not just teach students material that is on the test, in fact I never had one class that just focused on the CSAP. If you think that home schooling is the best alternative to public school, then have fun when you children are socially isolated when they get to college. You think that you have all the right answers but what makes you think that you are above the school system that statistically has one of the highest graduation rates as well as placing more students into college then any other district in the state.

  I feel bad for your kids

  Knight

• Armannd
  Oct 5, 2007 at 11:28 am

  I completely agree to your points here. In fact, I would dare to go even further and say that all the compulsory schooling is doing that - destroying young lives.

  It’s a shame that many people consider school to be a necessary step in a child’s life…

  For me, events like this don’t even look exceptional anymore, because I’ve completely understood the basic philosophy and target of compulsory schooling: to control people through formulaic means.
  Going to school is like going to war. Only that the damaging effects of school are much greater.

• Fred
  Oct 5, 2007 at 11:48 am

  Dare I point the following 20/20 report on education:

  http://bestdocumentaries.blogspot.com/2007/10/stupid-in-america-full-2020-documentary.html

• Awol
  Oct 5, 2007 at 11:57 am

  @Knight

  Serious did you read the full post. The author is talking about taking their son out of 1 class at school at the end of the day 2 times a week. Hardly creating a socially isolated child. Also I see this home school argument all the time and quite frankly its false. Parents who care enough to home school their children care enough to make sure they also get plenty of social interaction. School isn’t the only place one can get social interaction.

  I wish the author all the best.

• chris
  Oct 5, 2007 at 12:01 pm

  the major issue as far as i can tell, is the drive for “standardization”. the only skills that are worth a damn that you are even exposed to in school, are critical thinking, and synthetic thinking. but how the heck do you _test_ for that? heck, you cant even JUDGE the thinking ability of someone else, unless yours is markedly superior.

  the real budding luminaries will find a way to their calling regardless of how the system is designed to their disadvantage. the system really does (coarsely) correspond to “the greatest good for the greatest number”… it is unfortunate but true that this greatest good equals “maximize the odds of a second generation imbecile getting a job”. as evidence for this, i point you in the direction of our university experience, which despite the positional advantages it enjoys over public education, again spews the overwhelming majority of its graduates into the world without the most rudimentary training in actual independent thought.

  sorry for the length of the diatribe :)

• Darien B
  Oct 5, 2007 at 12:08 pm

  This kinda mentality in the my teachers was what led me to drop out of highschool. 6 years of the Bullsheet was enough for me. I’m now getting my GED and going on to college after.

• Steve
  Oct 5, 2007 at 12:11 pm

  When I read that you son loves science but got barely-passing grades, I first thought it was an “impedance mismatch” problem. The easiest way to flunk a multiple-guess test is to know the subject better than the author of the test and spend a lot of time trying to guess which wrong answer the author believes.

  Sorry to hear that his problem was even worse. That Notebook crap is nothing new. Throughout middle and high school, I was bedeviled by teachers who would spend most of the class period filling the chalkboards with an outline of the textbook, then grade you on how pretty a copy you made. I have dysgraphia, so writing continuously for more than a minute or two is literally painful. I escaped from high school only by dint of three sessions of summer school. Not because I didn’t understand the material, but because I just couldn’t grind out the required volume of writing. This was in the mid-sixties, so even if I’d had a portable typewriter, I wouldn’t have been permitted to use it in class. Needless to say, college was right out of the question.

• Keri
  Oct 5, 2007 at 12:16 pm

  I taught 3rd grade for 4 years and majored in science - BA in anthro, Master’s in elem. ed. Our school did amazing things when it came to science teaching; one teacher built a working go cart with his class, another took walks to a nearby pond to get samples of water to look at under microscopes, we had a teacher who organized a young astronauts club and Carolyn Shoemaker and Harrison Schmidt were key note speakers at different meetings. This is a public elementary school in Albuquerque, not a city known for amazing funding of anything. Here’s why this worked:
  1) The teachers were all nerdy and LOVED science themselves and constantly self educated.
  2) The principal “looked the other way” when it came to using some prescribed science text from the district. ONE teacher relied on it and used workbooks. We were all allowed to teach science and other subjects in our way, just in accordance with the published district standards.
  3) We cared and weren’t burnt out, and kids could see our own enthusiams for science, math, literature, world events, etc and enthusiasm is contagious, as is apathy, in your son’s teacher’s case.
  So good things are happening in public education, but I agree that teachers who aren’t educated on what’s important or correct, for that matter, need either more education or a different line of work.

  PS I’m 27, made 30,000/year before taxes and regularly worked an hour and a half over the contract day - it’s a lot of work to not use workbooks! I recently moved to Portland OR - we’ll see if I teach again - it’ll be hard to find a public school prinicpal as smart as the one I left.

• YoDaddy
  Oct 5, 2007 at 12:22 pm

  Well,
  I have to say that the school system in the USA is lacking. Having done my middle school in Europe (France) and my High School int he USA, let me put it this way, the HS system made skip 2 1/2 grade in High School. Because of my skills in math, physics, and other like World and European history, even American Government, was at the level of University, much more elevated that the fellow students in my classes, besides English that is. Let it be known that I failed the year before I came and moved to the USA.

  Where does the idea that a kid has to be in a school setting to to be socially adept?

  To have an idiot but socially adept child does not appeal to me as much as a child less adept socially but actually inquisitive and scientifically minded. I guess it would depend on what you prefer for your kid to be Paris Hilton or Einstein.

  The USA system education pre-univeristy has been ranked somewhat in the lower part of the bracket of the countries surveyed ( math, language , and history for criteria), of the the industrial 1st world nations the USA is ranked almost last. That is a recent development, in 1960 we were 7th, why? What happened?

  To help a child inquisitive nature to blossom should one of the biggest role of a parent. The attitude of questioning everything, authority included, is a great gift from a parent and society to children. That is the how and the why that made this country the greatest.

  To focus on form only like this bad teacher and not the content is a great example of what destroys our children minds.
  If you don’t do exactly like shown you fail, if your presentation is not perfect, you fail, why do we focus so much on appearance and not once again on the content?

  If we had always followed these practices we probably would still not be capable of domesticating fire.

  So I command the author for the doing the right thing and I am saddened for the Colorado school system for the loss a someone with a scientific and reasonable mind like the author.

• Charles
  Oct 5, 2007 at 12:30 pm

  Whilst I know a fair amount about space exploration, I could not list a date for the first lunar landing, or the second, or the third. I know where and how to look it up, however, and, as Einstein said, never memorize something you can easily look up when you need it.

  I do, however, understand special relativity and the principles of general relativity, quantum interaction in atoms and bulk solids, classical electromagnetism, light diffraction, momentum, energy, and atomic spin. I have my bachelors in physics and intend to get my masters in education. I have held jobs in both fields, and my mother was a graduate of CU and the Boulder public education system. (Her background in programming and biology allowed her to provide the main income for my house growing up).

  The above is not meant to brag, but to say that I feel reasonably qualified for the opinion I am about to present.

  I wonder what field of science you might work in where it’s possible or even practical to neglect a daily lab notebook. I also wonder about your comments about lack of college preparation in relation to this. It seems to me that one of my most important skills in college was my ability to keep and maintain an effective notebook which allowed me to review and retain new information. Learning to keep a good notebook and learning to set up and solve problems are both more valuable to science than the ability to retain historical data. They are skills your son needs.

  I find it interesting that you brag about your son’s ability to take tests and then complain about spending part of the year teaching for the state test, but also complain about the emphasis on keeping a notebook. I’m not sure what it is you want the teacher to teach. Hopefully the teacher includes some hands on demonstrations and labs, and I find it probable that some amount of “out of book” homework is important, but the proof of students having done and maintained labs, homework, and understanding of class lectures and demonstrations is probably all in the notebook. That, to me, makes it well worth the 80% weight.

  I’m not saying this teacher is completely in the right. You should have been called into conference a long time before this to discuss the fact that your student was struggling despite apparent mastery of the material. In an ideal world, the teacher would have found the resources to set her students up to shadow a wide variety of science professionals, perhaps doing original research or helping perform technical analysis in a real world setting. Sadly, this is hard to do on a pay-check that’s less than most fields requiring comparable education and only a few hours a week to entice children who are often more worried about their next meal. Of course, the school also has to worry about liability and money for classrooms (which are never large enough or comfortable and always force children to sit, an almost sure way to disengage brains, but which parents insist on because you never know what’s OUTSIDE the class room).

  Of course, your son should have brought this up with you as well, and the fact that you had to go see the teacher to understand this means that perhaps your son needs to learn some communication skills. At very least, you should have had an honest dialog about this before it made it to the report card.

  I wish you the best of luck with your son and his friends: they will surely benefit from nearly one on one education. I also commend you for your willingness to allow your son to continue in school for the most part: he will learn important social and problem solving skills there. Since you are taking the time and energy, I hope you spend some time at the college, do hands on demonstrations, and spend time introducing your students to a wide variety of industry professionals. If you get your students excited enough, maybe some of the other students will decide it’s worth worrying about something other than their stomach as well.

• windy
  Oct 5, 2007 at 12:36 pm

  Knight obviously didn’t read the part where you son goes to school EXCEPT for the science class. More parents should get involved in their children’s education. That is the whole premise of the Head Start program, and is why the fedral gov’t funds Head Start. Without parental involvement, kids just “get sent” to school instead of mindfully attending. And there is no certifiable link between homeschooled kids and social pariahs…only kids who go to school and have these “great social interactions” come into school one day and start killing people.

• greg laden
  Oct 5, 2007 at 12:46 pm

  That’s great, and good luck to you. Don’t forget to also teach them about Evolutionary Biology, because they won’t get that in this school either, I suspect.

  … but really, it would not hurt to also work just a little bit on notebook skills… :)

• Ed
  Oct 5, 2007 at 1:01 pm

  I applaud your initiative. And to Knight, you should read what he has to say more closely. He’s not isolating them, he only takes them out for an hour to teach them science.

• M
  Oct 5, 2007 at 1:22 pm

  Education, like most everything else, has become a way to garner money from the government as opposed accomplishing goals such as the education of our youth. Don’t be surprised if your children tell you one day about *their* child’s insipid teachers.

  “Organizational skills” is the excuse of choice for the modern teacher to put as little effort as possible into the education of his or her students, with other curriculum items consisting mostly of lengthy filler such as taking notes from state-provided materials that the teacher need only put on a projector.

  Home-schooling’s not going to be an easy task, but your child will thank you for it later when he’s not an incompetent office drone that stamps paperwork and redirects phone calls to a never-ending hold line.

• Nickster
  Oct 5, 2007 at 1:33 pm

  Personally I think you should report her for failing the children and the system.

  No-one needs educators like that.

• Kevin Brennan
  Oct 5, 2007 at 1:43 pm

  Nice work; the way our public education seems to be headed I wouldn’t be surprised to find myself homeschooling my kids someday (I’m in college right now). The only reason I was prepared to enter one of the most difficult engineering institutions in the country was because I was able to teach myself in high school while ignoring the actual curriculum. It was a waste of time, really, and don’t even mention those standardized tests!

  Have fun giving your kid and his friends a real education!

  P.S. ^^knight, I’m willing to guess that you’re a liberal arts major at a state school :P

• Steve P.
  Oct 5, 2007 at 1:57 pm

  I recently (2006 grad) came out of the Colorado public school system. I noticed some of the same problems you mentioned, but I disagree with your assessment of their severity. “Teaching the test” occurs far more often with tests like AP examinations and their ilk. I didn’t really notice the same thing with CSAPs at all. This test did sometimes guide the classroom objectives, but I feel I received a good education that has served me well in my pursuit of an undergraduate degree. At the very least, my school district was staffed with well-qualified teachers that understood the difference between CSAP requirements and what should actually be taught.

  And Armannd, please don’t try and compare compulsory education with war.

• Jenny
  Oct 5, 2007 at 2:01 pm

  Thank you for this. Makes me feel like less of a freak homeschooling myself through middle school and high school.

• Phil E. Drifter
  Oct 5, 2007 at 2:03 pm

  Sad to see the state the public education system is in today.

  I was sent to catholic school for 12 years by my mother, and although I no longer believe in god, I appreciate it because I feel I got a much better education than I ever could have gotten in a public school, especially in Philadelphia, which is where I live.

• GD
  Oct 5, 2007 at 2:04 pm

  Boo hoo…life must be so hard for all you. Here’s your tissue.

• Tony
  Oct 5, 2007 at 2:11 pm

  Wow, I wrote this post months ago, it must’ve just gotten picked up by a social bookmarking site.

  I just got home from picking up the boys from school and am about to watch one of Sean Carroll’s cosmology lectures (that’s what we do on Fridays). After class, I’ll respond to some of these very thoughtful comments.

  Thank you all for commenting, I’ll do my best to respond to some of the ideas presented when I finish.

• Aidan
  Oct 5, 2007 at 2:15 pm

  Knight -

  Clearly you have no idea what homeschooling is like. Sure, there are some wacko types (you get them anywhere you go), but by far and away, homeschooled kids are MORE socially capable than public school types. They’re less concerned with fitting in, and thus more likely to actually open up to people. That’s my anecdotal experience, anyway.

  You’ve also missed the point. Tony is more concerned about knowledge than being another cog in the wheel. Obviously BVSD did you good if you think that’s the point.

• Eugene
  Oct 5, 2007 at 2:23 pm

  Tony,

  you are right about social sites. I saw it on reddit: http://reddit.com/info/2×10a/comments, but it’s also on digg: http://digg.com/general_sciences/Why_I_m_Homeschooling_My_Kid_in_Science_Next_Year :)

  What you are doing is great. Best of luck!

• True Vulgarian
  Oct 5, 2007 at 2:32 pm

  I left Parker last year (south suburbs of Denver, for those unfamiliar) and if it weren’t for open enrollment and a good charter school in Lone Tree, we’d have been homeschooling as well. Tony, you are spot on, and “Knight” is an apologist for the hearty dysfunction that exists in Colorado schools.

  Also, Knight, if you read these follow up comments, you should be feeling “badly” for his kids. Also, Tony is male- making it REAL unlikely that he’s a “crazy Boulder mother”. In the English language, we end interrogative sentences with one of these: “?” It’s called a “question mark”. Also note how I capitalized the “B” in “Boulder” because place names are proper nouns- that’s another rule of the language you are attempting to use for your rebuttal. Perhaps you should go back to those quality schools you are embarrassingly inclined to defend?

  I can only assume your claim “I never had one class that just focused on the CSAP” means that you were in Boulder schools recently (the CSAP’s started in ‘97), and if that’s true, then you make Tony’s point in a beautifully ironic manner. Dumb ass.

• Chris
  Oct 5, 2007 at 2:40 pm

  Kudos to you, sir. Kudos.

• jeff devlin
  Oct 5, 2007 at 2:50 pm

  As a science teacher, hopefully I can shed some light on this situation.

  1: NCLB is a terrible law based on a terrible premise making terrible teachers do terrible things.

  2. 80% of any grade for any single thing is way out of line.

  3. Grades distort the practice of teaching in many ways.

  I agree with Mitch completely, but solipsist is quite funny

• Rick
  Oct 5, 2007 at 3:01 pm

  Way to go! It’s refreshing to see someone take it upon themselves to better a bad situation instead of merely complaining about it. I’m sure these kids will probably enjoy your classes, too. I bet one or more of them ends up walking on Mars one day.

• Ben
  Oct 5, 2007 at 3:06 pm

  I know what you mean, science classes suck, so far in the toughest classes in high school I have slept and have good grades. As of now i am considering teaching physics. I don’t mean as a profession i mean as a way to stop my friends from failing because the teacher has no idea what is going on.

• C
  Oct 5, 2007 at 3:08 pm

  I am an undergraduate student at UC Boulder and was homeschooled for most of grade school and part of high school (I spent what would have been my junior and senior years of high school at a community college getting an A.S. and A.A.).

  My experience in Colorado public schools was of getting beaten down by teachers who didn’t like that I asked questions and who wanted only for us to copy what they wrote on the board. There was no joy of learning, nor any true interest in teaching the students. I remember receiving candy in class for “standing in line to get our worksheets.”
  Children in public school aren’t learning anything about science, math, or even English (have you seen what gets published now? Even American adults can’t speak their native language!). I admire Tony for being willing to devote the time to ensure that his kid not only learns about science, but is interested in science and understands how important it is.

  My parents wanted me to get a good education and not become burned out before I graduated high school, so they homeschooled me. My mother put in hours every day doing research into curricula and finding books for myself and my sister to read. I taught myself math all the way through advanced algebra (at which point I went into college and took trig and calc), and my mother made sure that we never lacked for “social contact.” Homeschooling was wonderful for me — I have a very high GPA and an active social life. (I have also paid for almost my entire tuition bill for two years in a row through grants and scholarships, because my grades are so high.) Homeschooling, if done properly and for the right reasons, can be incredibly beneficial and a real leg-up for kids who want to go farther in school.

• Steve P.
  Oct 5, 2007 at 3:53 pm

  By the way, I found this through StumbleUpon. I’m a big fan of the astronomy articles, this one just caught my eye.

  I hate to disagree, Aidan, but my experience is exactly the opposite. People who were exclusively homeschooled (So not these kids) are much more socially inept (Also based on anecdotal evidence) than public school lifers. I entered college at a school that basically forces relationships with classmates, and I’m always surprised at how easy it is to pick out the homeschooled students. They are often louder, more annoying attention-grabbers than anything else.
  Also, I believe because of the fact that their experience has been exclusively with academics, they tend to be more obviously “nerdy,” which in and of itself is hardly a bad thing, they seem to focus only on schoolwork, avoiding social interaction in favor of homework.
  I’ve also noticed that some homeschooled students grow out of this pretty quickly.

• Sara
  Oct 5, 2007 at 4:02 pm

  This is a cool thread. I know Tony’s only talking about one class, but I was home schooled for several years as a kid so I just have to add in my two cents. :) After I bombed first grade, my parents pulled me out (much to the horror of the school district). When the time eventually came, I went to public high school. I really loved my high school experience and did not have “social isolation” problems at all. There are many ways to educate a child. Our current way may or may not ultimately prove to be the best (35 kids in a class all born within 10 months of their peers). It’s a relatively new invention in the history of education, after all. Providing public schooling to all children is a wonderful advancement of human societies, but not every kid who is home-schooled is alone in a shack in the woods somewhere “learning” creationism, for goodness’ sakes. ;)

  At any rate, it’s only one class. Good for you, Tony.

• windy
  Oct 5, 2007 at 4:05 pm

  FYI stumbleupon is where i linked in from, then i dugg it :)

• Hendrik G.
  Oct 5, 2007 at 4:05 pm

  Great entry, same shi* here in germany.

• Erin
  Oct 5, 2007 at 4:31 pm

  I am a teacher in Canada. One of my teaching areas is science and it disgusts me that a school teacher can get away with this. Some of the smartest kids I know have disorganised notebooks! I don’t understand giving 80% of their grade based on the order of the papers.

  I can’t even speak to the CSAP test - we don’t have anything like that in our schools. Science is all about inquiry and teaching critical thinking - all education is about critical thinking!

  I totaly understand why you would pull your child out of school for science, I’d do the same thing if I were in your situation.

• Torvald
  Oct 5, 2007 at 4:46 pm

  YOU GO DUDE! The world needs more take charge people like you!

• Joe
  Oct 5, 2007 at 4:46 pm

  It’s sad that some schools have resorted to those methods. Kudos to you for providing those kids with a meaningful education. As an engineering major I can agree with the importance of science. I personally think (my opinion here, I could be wrong) is that you should teach them a balance of general science, basic chemistry, basic physics, and basic astronomy. If they pick that up well, go more advanced. What do you think the school is gonna say when your kid is doing quantum physics in 10th grade! :)

• cj_
  Oct 5, 2007 at 5:02 pm

  Why do people make the “socially adept” argument with regards to homeschooling? American public school systems are brutal and soul-crushing atmospheres that do nothing but encourage bullying, exclusion, bigotry. They take any self-confidence your child may have had and grind it to dust.

  I suppose in a way this would “prepare you for the real world.” Except, not really. In the real world you have the power to separate yourself from this sort of bullshit, even when it surrounds you utterly.

  Public schools are nothing but indoctrination camp + babysitter for anti-intellectual social climbers. And if you can’t climb, they teach you to suck it up and stay in your place. Education has NEVER been a primary focus of our public education system.

• Alex
  Oct 5, 2007 at 5:04 pm

  I am a high school student in Oregon, and I must say that throughout my years as a student, I have come to realize one thing about public school teachers: all they care about is getting their paychecks. I began to realize this in elementary school, where most teachers were idiots. Just like this article, they cared only about one thing at a time. In my second grade class, all they cared about was getting me to read. That is when they pushed the reading, but for the rest of my days there, they had this stupid AR system. This “system” was where you went to the library, picked up a book that they had there, read it, and took a test about it on the computer. This was stupid because there were only so many books that you could read and take the test on. You couldn’t actually read a book you liked, just a book that they had. Don’t get me wrong, they did have some good books to read, but most of them were crap. The ones that I did want to read were never there, and they MADE you choose a book that was there in their little library. Just to ‘make sure’ you were reading, every week they would go through a list of students making sure that they had books from their library. I remember once wanting to read a book from the library that looked cool (though now I know how decieving book covers are), and when I brought it to the desk to get it, the teacher said,
  “You can’t read this book. This is a fifth grade level book!” And so I had to argue with them that I could very well read a fifth grade book. So finally I opened the book and began to read outloud from it. Sorely disappointed, they let me have the book. I never really liked the book, but the point is that they wouldn’t let me borrow the book because they thought that I couldn’t read at a fifth grade level (I was in fourth grade). For teachers who sure wanted you to read, the libarians didn’t seem to think that way.
  I have many more stories of all the bad experiences I have had in public school, and all the great experiences I had during homeschooling, and private schools. And those will be posted later.
  I do hope that this helps people at least begin to understand how stupid the public school system is. I will also explain later why I believe that teachers only care about thier paychecks.

• rolf
  Oct 5, 2007 at 5:11 pm

  You are missing the point.

  The main purpose of school is to teach obedience. Science, bedyond the most meanless lowest common denominator has nothing to do with school.

  Why else is school organized in classrooms with only one authority figure and all others dependent on them? That is why your childs teacher was smirking, she knows and you don’t

• penny
  Oct 5, 2007 at 5:29 pm

  I disagree with Charles. I am a research mathematician and mathematical physicist–and I never was able to keep a notebook or take notes.
  I never needed to, though, because I have an eidetic memory.

  I had a similar “teacher” in 7th grade. About ten years later, I sent him a note on Institute for Advanced Study letterhead that said: ” I still don’t have a notebook!”

  The world is full of semibright people who make it on their notetaking skills and are always trying to force people to follow a plan–which for them has been successful. But, the most important lesson in teaching the bright ( aka future researchers) is that ” One size doesn’t fit all.”

  Charles asked for an example of a science which doesn’t require a lab notebook. I will give two:
  Theoretical Physics and Mathematical Physics.
  Most theoretical types avoid labs–our skills lie elsewhere.

  Penny

  P.s. In the same way, linear study skills were always worthless for me. I learn things by thinking hard in a nonlinear order about them.

• Ian
  Oct 5, 2007 at 5:32 pm

  Honestly, I have no sympathy. If the kid is that smart then organize a notebook. Shouldn’t be that hard if the “lesser” kids can do it.

  If at your job you knew the material but just handed in whatever you wanted would you get that far.

• penny
  Oct 5, 2007 at 5:37 pm

  The most important thing to teach in a science class is ” to question”. After every fact, the student should say: ” How do we know this?”
  ” What are the limitations and assumptions on how we know this?” ” What is still unknown here?”
  ” How might I find out the answer?”

  Much of what is taught in “science” classses in elementary school is not SCIENCE. Certainly, a talk by an astronaut is not science–at best, it is engineering. In the same way, learning the history of science is not SCIENCE–it is history.

  I recall elementary school “astronomy” classes where we were taught names of stars and constellations and legends about them. That is NOT SCIENCE. It is liberal arts.

  Building a go cart–as mentioned here, is NOT SCIENCE. It is engineering. Engineering is based on science, but it is NOT science.

  Penny

  In this vein, I don’t care if students know we went to the moon, but I do care that they have some idea of any science we learned from that, and what the limitations on our interpetation of the data are.

• Alexi
  Oct 5, 2007 at 5:42 pm

  Hallo, science teacher here. From Canada.

  This caught my interest:

  What this teacher really wanted was the students to do all of her work for her. She didn’t want to have to search through reams of paper to try and figure out what the student knew. She just wanted to open the notebook and start checking off the existence of items, each containing the proper words so she could get through the grading as fast as possible.

  It’s about the only thing I can disagree with you on… If you have 160 or 200 students, the teacher’s life is all about efficiency. And, for better or worse, that includes an organized notebook.

  Hell, I even go further - my students use a specific colour duotang for every one of six units. After they submit the unit, I hold onto them until final exam review time. Unless of course a paren t writes in to say that they can handle the storage duties, and like to review past units with their kids.

  Amazing how little that happens, though.

  Anyhow, yes, we do. We do impose certain procedures on our students so that our (teachers’) lives are a bit easier. And it does, as you point out, also teach organization.

  A lasting skill, arguably more important than memorizing who Clyde Tombaugh was.

  (OK, I just threw that in to bug you. I am an amateur astronomer, so please, no flames!)

  Anyhow, you’ve done well grasshopper, and nothing short of what I would do. Well, I might call the Pricnipal and see what she had to say about the 80% thing.

  My guideline is that no line item on a report card will be responsible for a significant drop in grades (we don’t do letter grades hereabouts, but equivalent to a letter grade drop) should that item be bombed. Except for quizzes and exams, that is.

  80% for notes is clearly stupid. I salute you for not going Islamic on that teacher’s ass.

  Regards!

  Teacher With a Bad Attitude

• Kath
  Oct 5, 2007 at 6:00 pm

  My mom was a 7th grade science teacher for almost 30 years. Before that she had actually worked for Dupont for a few years. She was a great teacher, and I learned so much more from her than I did in my own school. My mom brought home extra frogs to dissect & took me and my friends to museums and on “field trips” all the time. It was the most wonderful feeling in the world to sit next to my mom as we’d watch NOVA & Nature on PBS together, discussing what we each learned.

  But as she got older, she was paid much more than the school district would have to pay a fresh-outta-college teacher, and so they started to move her around, teaching different grades each year, until she felt forced to retire.

  It’s such a shame that the system is set up so that it’s so easy to discourage good teachers, and yet so hard to get rid of the truly bad ones.

  I hope you cherish the time you have with your son; your story has reminded me how much I have to thank my mom for.

• cyber_rigger
  Oct 5, 2007 at 6:27 pm

  Two words.

  Teacher’s Union.

  You can’t fire them.

• Blake
  Oct 5, 2007 at 6:54 pm

  I was homeschooled, and am currently a Freshman in college.

  All I can say is, I’m blown away by how easy “real” school is in comparison to homeschooling. As long as you allow your kid to have an adequate social life, I highly recommend homeschooling.

  I loved being homeschooled, I was allowed to progress so much faster without being slowed down by other students.

  It’s an incredible learning experience for both the student and the parent. Go for it!

• AndreaSue
  Oct 5, 2007 at 7:39 pm

  I happened upon your blog from reddit, and I must say I agree with you. When I was in junior high, we learned all the important stuff and there was no CSAP or anything (I live and grew up in Queens, New York). But I admire your ability to weed out bad teaching behavior from merely a student saying “my teacher hates me” because they don’t want to admit the bad grades are their fault. My parents would ALWAYS agree with the teachers NO MATTER WHAT, until now that I’m an inch away from being 26, now they’ll admit that a lot of my teachers were idiots. Gee thanks guys, but that would’ve been more helpful when I was, oh I don’t know, seven?!
  Go you.

• name
  Oct 5, 2007 at 7:39 pm

  You complain that the teachers and administration are selfish, and only care about finishing grading as fast as possible, getting good test scores, getting their money… all valid points.

  Then, rather than try to fix the system, you — selfishly — just pull out your own kid and his friends?

  Moral of the story — the teachers only care about themselves, and you only care about yourself. Good lesson for your son.

• Dark-Star
  Oct 5, 2007 at 7:40 pm

  I feel for your kid, and I can relate VERY much.

  I graduated this year, class of 2007. I’ve survived public schooling for about half of my educational career - left a private school in fifth grade over a parents issue with a new principal.

  Since then, I’ve run up against the old ‘copy this exactly the way we show you’ so many times it made me want to scream. I’ve been exposed to several new-fashioned methods of note-taking, each more complicated than the last and less useful. Fortunately in high school the staff didn’t yet subscribe to this nonsense.

  80% of the kid’s grade for neatness is utter B.S. Thomas Edison’s invention factory at Menlo Park was probably an utter mess - and look how he turned out.

  This overemphasis on organazation could have two root causes:
  1. An excuse to have very little actual content to teach and just have tons of busywork.
  2. An attempt by the powers that be to drill your kids to follow to the letter what the person in charge says, whoever that may be.

  As much as I hate to say it, both of them may be to blame. Our public educaiton system is a national embarassment and so #1 wouldn’t surprise me at all. As for the second, companies from Mcdonald’s to the myriad telemarketing places place high value on low-skill employees who do exactly what they’re told, over and over and over.

  It’s all quite frightening, really.

• Craig
  Oct 5, 2007 at 8:41 pm

  Maybe I missed the boat here?
  Why did you wait until the end of the year to find out why your child was getting a poor grade? There are progress reports and report cards throughout the year?

  I don’t mean to offend, but if/when my child comes home with a grade that is not the norm, my wife and I immediately get involved to find out why and what we can do to correct the problem.

  Also, at the seventh grade level I’m sure your child was well aware that this notebook was a big part of his grade - - why didn’t he take responsibility for this?

  I hope my comments didn’t offend you - - just thought I’d offer a different view.

  I think all parents need to be very involved with their child’s development because it’s obvious some school systems are not and we can’t expect the system to ensure each child is properly educated - - sad but true.

• spanky
  Oct 5, 2007 at 8:47 pm

  apply some of your science to the moon landing videos and u would know y they dont teach that crap in school

  its like teachin the kids we attacked iraq cuase it was right thing to do

• Michael
  Oct 5, 2007 at 8:58 pm

  My freshman year science teacher put it best…

  “In college they don’t care how you organize things, that is left up to you. You are the ones who need to be able to organize information in which ever way works best for you, and because I am preparing you for college, I am going to prepare you for that and NOT care.”

• Michael Kautzman
  Oct 5, 2007 at 8:59 pm

  It’s very comforting to meet parents that do care and take action.

  I wish you the best of luck with your en devour and hope that other’s will see what is really going on and follow suit.

  Lets face facts, the US’s public school system is a joke at best.

• Truth Teller
  Oct 5, 2007 at 9:03 pm

  http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/

  Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt was a top official at the Department of Education. She wrote a book exposing how the whole purpose of the Department of Education is to dumb down the kids of america so the elite can have an easily fooled group of sheeple. She thought this is so important that the books is a free download on her site. There is also a movie on bit torrent. Just go to pirate bay and type in Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt. The book is huge and has documents galore that she took out of the department. If you know a teacher or someone in education go burn the video or download the book and get it to them. We got to wake people up to this criminality.

• Mike
  Oct 5, 2007 at 9:05 pm

  As someone interested in science yourself you should know first hand that keeping an organized notebook is an extremely vital skill to have in the science world. Without a notebook, any work you do as a scientist is entirely meaningless. The maintenance of a notebook is necessary for publishing papers and, if need be, reproducing your results.

  Your rant about the notebook is quite insane to be honest. Yes, sure, if you do poorly on your notebook there is no way to do well in the class. But if you look at it the other way, and you do well on your notebook, its very easy to do well in that class. Why is maintaining a notebook so difficult?

  Organization is also an important life skill. If your son cannot keep a notebook organized how do you expect him to keep track of bills and other important tasks?

  And a curriculum heavy in astronomy? That is worse than having a teacher with crazy notebook demands. Your son is going to suffer as a result of your terrible overreaction to a bad teacher experience. How can you just try to mix in all the sciences and then focus in on astronomy? Also, astronomy is useless at a high school level. Try chemistry or biology or physics… When was the last time you saw any standardized exam with astronomy on it? Never? That’s right.

  I cannot believe this article was written. What a terrible vent. Find something else to do. In the time you wrote this you could have been helping your kid organize his fucking notebook.

• Brodie
  Oct 5, 2007 at 9:09 pm

  I got so bored by the public school system here in CO when I was in JR high. This example of teachers here is only the start, and the school system could care less about the students. When I have kids, they will be home schooled.

• links for 2007-10-06 « Donghai Ma
  Oct 5, 2007 at 9:17 pm

  […] Why I’m Homeschooling My Kid in Science Next Year (tags: education science) […]

• John Edison
  Oct 5, 2007 at 9:19 pm

  Having been a science teacher my entire career (35+ years), I thought the essay was pretty accurate. Unfortunately, since all these tests have come down on teachers, and their survival in their jobs depend on students doing well on a test, they will naturally “teach to the test”. This is a very huge mistake because no real teaching could get done, and many “teachable moments” have to be passed by because if an administrator happens by a classroom where this is happening and the teacher is not “teaching the standards”, that teacher is in a lot of trouble! I know since I have been there.

  The teaching load is way too heavy for a teacher who wants to do a decent job. I challenge anyone to read 160 papers every day written in the terrible prose of the students! It is almost impossible to have less than 60-70 work weeks at a rate of pay which is always less than a “real job”.

  In additoin, too many parents don’t really care, or worse yet, blame the school and teachers when their child is the one who screws up. This is a HUGE change from when I first got into teaching.

  So, let’s see, the teacher has to please the students, parents, administrators, and most of all themselves. It is a very difficult job, and not no wonder 50% of all new teachers quit the profession within the first 5 years of geting into it!

  I wish I had answers, but clearly, hitting everyone with tests that must be passed, no matter what, is not the answer.

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• noisha
  Oct 5, 2007 at 9:34 pm

  I am all for home schooling. Recently I was assisting one of my friends daughters with her final major work sewing/art for the HSC (Higher School Certificate in Australia) and she had no idea how to cut out a pattern correctly, how to do darts effectively, how to even use a sewing machine correctly, had NO idea what different stitches were used and what they were called, no idea between the different machine needles and why you used one over the other and had never, in year 12 sewing, put in a zipper.

  I shook my head and when I met the teacher I realised why. The state of the Australian schools are about the same as above. very sad indeed.

• Dr.Phobius
  Oct 5, 2007 at 9:35 pm

  Sadly, this isnt a Colorado-specific incident. Michigan is no better, and I feel this is just what the education system has become.
  School is really just a day long “rinse and repeat” session… with an “A” student only needing to be able to memorize, understanding is not needed, nor is it rewarded.

  Memorizing facts may be enough to “learn” history, but is not enough for a person to be able to put mathematics or science to use. This is obvious in our colleges as Asian and Indian (by birth, not by race) students come out of our universities as doctors, researchers and the like, while those schooled in the U.S. predominantly choose a business major (welcome to mediocrity).

  Our school system is in ruins and we do not wish to face it.

  On a trip to Russia a few years back I saw high school aged children paint and sculpt, and so many exceptional pianists and violinists that the term prodigy isnt appropriate. More excelled at music than did not!
  Here we are dropping our music and art classes so that we can buy the athletic team new uniforms… so that 1 student in 50,000+ can have a slim shot at a career in sports.

• Cody Baker
  Oct 5, 2007 at 9:37 pm

  I completely understand what you mean and you are fully in right to teach your son yourself. I would go as far to encourage you to fully homeschool him although then he loses out on the social aspect of attending school.

  I’m a sophomore in college right now. I spent 7 years in the Colorado public system though. Ohh boy, do I remember CSAPs. How you explained it was exact to the point. The first 7 months of school was studying for that test. We all knew it was easy coasting after March. We didn’t get out of school for another 2.5 months although we could slack off after that.

  Similarly in my science class in 9th grade, I would consistently be marked down because I forgot to bring my daily planner to write down our homework. Unfortunately though, unless we do something to change the schooling system it’s not going to change itself.

• Bloggrrl
  Oct 5, 2007 at 9:41 pm

  You’re right on. I’m a public school teacher who works in a DEP (Disciplinary Education Program). I see so many kids in there who are bucking the system, and in my opinion, rightly so. The only reason I teach at this point is because I know what my replacement would be like.

  Your kiddo is fortunate indeed.

• mrmx
  Oct 5, 2007 at 9:42 pm

  I’m dropping a college course because, after student teaching, I realized that the most important thing about learning– reading books and coming to conclusions, was being done for me by the professor.

  i.e. I hope that you don’t “over design” your curriculum. i.e. I tend to like the idea that educators should follow the interests of the students because diversity makes our society tick.

  thus, at this point, I try to get away from professors and read and analyze the material myself; in general, my reading ability has improved tremendously.

• Charles
  Oct 5, 2007 at 9:46 pm

  Okay, I’m back, and I’m sorry this reads like a treatise. Maybe I just think that teachers really are one of the great underappreciated groups of people, or maybe I’m just too darn opinionated. I apologize in advance.

  Penny, I enjoyed your comment. I am not, however, sure that you indeed gave me two –separate- branches of science as examples (that was a joke, I very much recognize the importance and distinction of the two). :) I too am a nonlinear thinker. That’s exactly why I needed to keep a notebook: by the end of a lecture I was debating whether gravity was an effect of the uniform expansion of particles throughout the universe, and so I frequently had to go back and look at what had actually been talked about. Actually, the truth is, I only occasionally went back to look at my notes, but I had a much easier time staying on track while I was taking them. It was also very nice to have them on the rare occasion I needed them, even when they were not neat or orderly. Yes, I too experienced lower grades due to poor organization, but it encouraged me to understand that, in order to share information, I first had to organize it.

  I am not lucky enough to have an eidetic memory, though I understand how having a good multidimensional memory makes it difficult to re-organize notes on paper. Also, I admit that, because people think differently, note taking is not for all of us, and one style is certainly not for all of us. In part, what concerned me is that the student had to get past at least one report card before anyone brought up the issue of needing to try a different tack. I am glad that it was eventually discussed, and I just hope that another parent, reading this, has the chance to jump on a solution earlier. It’s unfortunate that the teacher was inflexible on this point, but then, how does the teacher know the kid who has trouble organizing from the one who slacks off all week and then crams for a Friday test only to forget it Monday? Yes, I am aware that there are solutions, but I also do not agree that this teacher is inherently lazy or misdirected in using this particular one. In fact, I would give this teacher kudos for attempting to do something other than simply “teach to the test”.

  I do think a notebook and the skill to use one are good tools, but I’m also not here to condemn people who have difficulty with “the box”- I know I did, and I think many good minds (notably Einstein) do. Sometimes a little adversity breeds genius. Nonetheless, good notebooks are a generally important life skill and certainly a good way to learn forms of organized problem solving, observation, information sharing, and record keeping that are extremely valuable to science. Perhaps the grading could have been reweighed, but I am not overall against using this as a guideline.

  Kath, you point out something important about your mom. I think all kids can learn a LOT from their parents, and I think all children are “home schooled” at least a little. I also think you make a good point about school systems having some bureaucratic flaws. Unions are both good and bad. I currently work under a union contract, and I chose this job because of that contract. I know that there are some bad apples where I work, who survive because of the union, but I also know that the vast majority are genuinely good, diligently hard working people, who have to deal with the scum of society on a daily basis and can still go home smiling. So do unions work? They do if they set a good example and provide burnt out workers with a good exit plan. They don’t if they force people out who should be there or let people in without proving that they are right for the job. They also have to work with, and not against, management unless it simply becomes impossible to agree.

  I’m not out against home schooling. I have some very good friends who were home schooled, and I can’t say they are particularly different from my other friends (we are all “different” but it’s hard to separate the weird from the weird, and the weirdness is a product of the selection process, not necessarily the home schooling). I do think the home-schooled have a potential to miss out on learning from their peers, and that is usually a shame. Smart kids will often learn valuable things from their peers. That does not mean that a home classroom can’t be set up for peer involvement though, and I have certainly seen many set up that way.

  I will say that the one aspect of my home-schooled friends that is anecdotally consistent is that often they are almost unconsciously and unintentionally elitist. They describe me as being one of the few people “smart enough to be worth talking to” (I have them very cleverly fooled) or mention how grateful they are that they were not “held back by the other students”. In all of my time working with students, I rarely found that there was not something that one student could not learn from another. In my time as a student, I learned at least as much directly related to the course through peer interaction as I did from the course material, and this was not the fault of the material. While at least one of my home schooled friends is very near brilliant, at least three of my close high school friends were certifiably brilliant, and I was the one so touchingly described here as “holding them back”. Fortunately they didn’t see it that way.

  Yes, there were idiots in my high school. One of my friends was once induced to say of a classmate “I just want to go beat my head against the wall, until I can be as stupid as him and understand”. There were also bad teachers. At least one of them was more or less forced to retire the year after I had her class, as was another excellent teacher who was just in the wrong program. Another probably is still teaching, despite being utterly inept. There were teachers I loved that my classmates hated. There were teachers I disliked that my classmates adored. For every bad teacher or student, though, I had at least two that truly inspired me and brought a subject to life even if I was terrible at it. The truth is that the worst of my teachers were not terrible; they were simply mediocre, but I am not against your judgment that your this “bad apple” isn’t working for your son, and I congratulate you in managing to work with the school to the extent you have. Don’t put the weight of one teacher on the whole system, though, and I hope you make an effort to seek out good teachers (and teach this to your new students) and work with them in the future.

  I say this because I believe in teachers. The best of mine were exemplary both as teachers and as people. They encouraged me to think outside of the box, to do research on my own time, to ask questions and, yes to think critically. They also taught me to take good notes, set up equations, learn tricks for mathematical expansions and memorize a few things that I would need over and over again. They did not prepare me to follow blindly, nor did they encourage me to criticize blindly (I learned that from craigslist… oops). They often gave me information that was unpopular but true, and asked me to take it in the larger picture. They occasionally let us lick slugs. They appreciated our lame jokes, and opened up their classrooms for discussions during their break times. One even gave her class her home phone number, as if grading and teaching a few hundred kids wasn’t enough. This year in Beaverton, Oregon, I was witness to a team of middle school students led through a school program who were doing college graduate level research. (See ORTOP, National Competitions- I can proudly say this team won first place and it was no easy match.)

  Of my friends who wished they had found a better path through life, it was often a strict community outside of school that they blame for their lack of foresight, usually not the school. I, however, learned a lot in school that I simply would not have learned otherwise.

  That said I have learned a lot more being involved in the teaching process. I think it is good for everyone to teach, and I think you are giving your son and his fellow students the opportunity to share a great wealth of knowledge with their peers. I hope that you don’t forget to teach the basics of the scientific process, and spend some time on problem solving (be it the kind that happens in the lab or the kind that happens on paper), and I am glad to hear that you will spend time with the telescope- I hope you find other hands on demonstrations (a lot of university and museum web sites have some excellent ideas for these). Also, don’t neglect community outdoor programs and regional innovation competitions. Spend some time talking about ethical science. Lastly, make sure your students are responsible for helping a few of the people who were “dragging them down” catch up a little. You never know, they might learn something. :)

• Leo Bricker
  Oct 5, 2007 at 9:47 pm

  I find it disappointing that such an interest in the development of the students as scientists isn’t matched by an equal concern for their development as people who don’t blaspheme, even when it could be argued it’s deserved as in the case of the notebook.

• Chris
  Oct 5, 2007 at 9:50 pm

  I wish I had the ability to do this. My son has to do the similar damned test and I raised hell with the school over the exact same issue. The fact that the teachers, and school, are ONLY focused on getting the kids ready for that test, forsaking anything they don’t think will be on that test. No child left behind is leaving our nation behind, we will woe the day when we realize what this test is doing to our entire countries children.

• Daniel
  Oct 5, 2007 at 9:54 pm

  As a recent student of the California public school system, let me say THANK YOU!

  I was always one of the smartest in most of my classes, but am very poorly organized and forgot to turn in quite a bit of homework, so I was getting very low grades (despite acing every test put in front of me)

  I decided to skip the whole high school scene all together because of that. After my sophomore year I took the California High School Proficiency Exam (like a GED) Took a year off to plan the next few years of my life, and am not in a JR college with goals to transfer to UCSC.

• Chris
  Oct 5, 2007 at 9:56 pm

  From what penny was saying, I just have a question on note-taking skills. Since you have a eidetic memory, doesn’t mean everyone else in the class has it. In elementary, it is to prepare everyone who has all kinds of different learning style to practice the idea of note-taking and organizing notes. I agree with what the teacher has done in her position, for the students in her class would not care if it wasn’t for marks. Forget the idea how the teacher wanted to get through it as fast as possible, it is also in student’s best of interest. If the student doesn’t like the teacher, tell their parents, get a new teacher, simple.

  Interesting enough, the teacher that taught that grade 8 class is probably new to teaching. I don’t blame that at all. And I think the idea of having you pull out the kids out from last period is a good idea. Well, in my old high school, we got to choose what kind of course to take, didn’t have to take all the mandatory courses required. If I wanted to, I could have taken all sciences, physics; chemistry; biology. And later in the years of high school, I could even go into deep concentration if I was really interested in science.

  Chris

• dsnchntd
  Oct 5, 2007 at 9:59 pm

  I’m a high school student from Texas. We’ve had to take a standardized exam like the CSAT since…well, as far back as I can remember. It is the most mindless, idiotic thing I have ever been forced to undertake, year after year after year.What you say is true here as well. Teachers spend the majority of the school year teaching to the lowest common denominator, the pointless babble for the TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and skills) It’s material that in other countries would equate to several grade levels below. Why? Because some parents prefer that rather than admitting that their child is slow in certain areas and requires some special education. They take it as an insult for their child to be classified as challenged, not even necessarily mentally retarded. This ignorance passes down to their children also, producing the stigma that there is something ‘wrong’ with them, which only makes it harder on those kids.
  The inadequacy of the government funded educational system, my parents lack of proper education to homeschool me with has forced me to teach myself whatever I can, however poorly as it may be taught. Autodidacticism is great, but it shouldn’t have to be a last resort because the government didn’t keep their responsibility to properly educate me.
  Here’s to you, your kids, and more parents realizing the same.

• Chris
  Oct 5, 2007 at 10:02 pm

  Welcome to a Republican America! At least they’re being exposed to “science” and not taking Sunday school classes. I wish you well and hope your sons succeed in college.

• Abraham
  Oct 5, 2007 at 10:04 pm

  I truly understand what your son was going through. In my first computer class in High School, I lost 20% of my mark because my binder was considered incomplete. Apparently, I was totally at fault for not keeping and taking every single handout and note. Every time a handout was given I wondered, why would I need to write it down and have 4 hand outs about how to copy a file. This was a class where my teacher had to ask me for answers and clarifications on the materials she was teaching. In fact I probably could have taught that class myself.

  Unfortunately after my mother argued with the teacher, we were forced to photocopy another student’s entire binder and then place it in mine. Something that was absolutely a waste of time and gave no indication that about my knowledge of the materials.

  I hope you continue to post on the progress of your home schooling. My wife and I are expecting and I am seriously beginning to worry about what my child will be taught.

• William Boller
  Oct 5, 2007 at 10:04 pm

  The education problem is a nation-wide issue. Teachers are being taught to teach on the strictest levels instead of teachers being hired as lovers of knowledge who are able to spread the love of knowledge. I would not be the college student I am now without the guidance of the one teacher (out of about 50-some). I owe my mind to this woman who had the uncanny ability to make me excited about discovery, intellect, argument, and problem-solving. Besides her, I nearly flunked out of high school because well… I never did any homework and I only took tests and wrote essays (and only because ‘that’ teacher was an English teacher, and actually gave me challenging essays to write about, but was still somewhat restricted by the inaptitude of my peers). I was frustrated in high school, and I’m now frustrated with college because the general education classes I’m required to take are being slowed by the same the same kind of peer who never was taught how to love learning, but only taught how to ‘get a grade’ and ‘go through the motions’. I’m actually glad that, most of them don’t have what it takes to maintain actual knowledge in college and are forced to drop out because it’s ‘too hard’. I’m not glad because they’re misfortunate; I’m glad because they are no longer a burden in a class to ‘baby’ and take care of.

  I’m very glad, Tony, that you are taking the initiative to make sure your children have the necessary skills that are required to excel in college and not be a burden to a college class, or be a waste of college tuition (weather it be from your pocket, hard-earned scholarships, or student loans). I just wish that more schools would employ teachers who actually cared about the minds they were responsible for maturing and looking at education as a joy that needs to be paid forward.

• glenn
  Oct 5, 2007 at 10:05 pm

  You have my full agreement and sympathy. But you are too generous on one point.

  Like your son I always loved and excelled in science. I am a National Merit Scholar, have a post-graduate degree and in the last IQ test ever administered in a US elementry school had a score of zero (explained to me that the test they used was insufficient to measure my IQ). Yet throughout my public elementry schooling I received not just mediocre but failing grades. When my mother came to meet my teachers, among the many behavioral problems cited were reading my own books in class instead of paying attention and writing essays that deviated from the assigned material.

  As to the point where you were too generous? Your sons teacher was not so lazy that she wanted everything laid out for her. In fact, the organization of the notebook is the only thing she could possibly offer a grade on. She doesn’t have any idea of science beyond what she can read out loud from the primer. Nor is any such knowledge a requirement for her job. Likewise, my reading teacher was illiterate. Also not a prerequisite.

• Homeschooling your kid | Pussy Can't Code
  Oct 5, 2007 at 10:10 pm

  […] With several public schools caring more about stats than actually education, it’s no wonder this mom wants to home school her kid and his friends. […]

• Hrishikesh Muruk
  Oct 5, 2007 at 10:17 pm

  I totally understand the intentions behind your move to home school. But dont your think changing schools might be a better idea? Science in school should cover a broad set of disciplines - Physics, Chemistry, Biology. Do you have the expertise to teach all of these?
  My experience in school (India) was pretty good. Compared to what I have seen in the US, I came out of the K12 equivalent system very well prepared for college. That would not have been possible without teachers with in depth knowledge in what they were teaching. At the very minimum a school teacher should have atleast an MS in the area he/she is teaching.

• Ian Monroe
  Oct 5, 2007 at 10:26 pm

  There is something to be said for learning organization in a science class. In college labs your lab notebook organization is at least supposed to be important.

  In general middle school sucks. I was like your son and had organization problems. In high school my chemistry class also had a notebook that we had to keep track of all the worksheets, I didn’t do so well on it, but it didn’t matter since the grade was mostly based on the tests. Middle school is all worksheets, notebooks and posters, which can put your son at a temporary disadvantage.

  My main suggestion would be to on the lookout for the good science teachers. I had an awesome biology teacher in high school. I’m sure you could get some fetal pigs and dissect them at home, but do you really want to? ;)

• Steve
  Oct 5, 2007 at 10:28 pm

  I’m in highschool an I have never had a good science teacher. The one’s I’ve had in high school can’t teach. They may know the stuff, but they can’t teach at all. One teacher gave us worksheets to do every class, another did nothing and another just read us the textbook everyday. They are absolutely terrible.

• rhomel
  Oct 5, 2007 at 10:36 pm

  I am a high school drop out, from a Colorado High School. I am also a college drop in. If you don’t know what that is I am not certain I can explain it satisfactorily .

  During my years in the public education system I found myself driven further away from school. During my elementary school years I was extremely interested in science. I read books on astronomy, geology and any other branch of science which caught my fancy.

  It’s amazing what a book report will do to a young mind when faced with a question such as who were the main characters, the book was on geology. My teacher surely thought that igneous and sedimentary were people.

  The years were good to me however, in junior high school notebooks were an important part of our grade as well. I was thankful for having a teacher who knew a great deal about science, public education was not her first career field. Years later I find myself thanking her still for making me think about science and it’s methodology. In her class I learned much about the fundamentals of chemistry. Many of the skills she taught me I still find useful.

  My high school was not much different from most I suppose. My chemistry class had a total of three students for the quarter and the school would have drop it had I not applied. My math skills were not of a level to admit me to the class yet the teacher intervened to admit me to the class. I still hold that teacher in the highest regard.

  College was a real learning experience. My knowledge of science was often greater than my educators. I had during the years I was away from school learned a great deal. I visited colleges and Universities around the country often sitting in on a lectures which interested me. I talked to the students read their text books and learned to learn. I learned that all math devolves into the math which preceded it. Calculus becomes algebra, algebra become arithmetic. I can do arithmetic. :-)

  I have met Clyde Tombaugh and discussed telescope making with him. Spent many an evening under the stars with friends talking about astronomy. One of my best friends of a days gone by today teaches physics at a University. He believed in me for a long time, I always hope to see him one more time again.

  Science allowed me the opportunity to expand my world to encompass the Universe. Education at a public school level taught me that education comes from the mind as well as the heart.

  The idea of being able to question is fundamental to science so I will leave this with two questions. If the school fails the student who is at fault? How does the teacher decide who is to fail?

• TL
  Oct 5, 2007 at 10:39 pm

  Fantastic that you knew to take your child away from the profoundly stupid — how else would they (the gov’t employees) ever have a chance to learn? Meetings? Conferences? Letters to the school board? A friendly chat with a bureaucrat? I know parents who have tried to do things the “right” way, but they always wind up either withdrawing their kids or hiring a lawyer.
  Organization and planning ARE useful (Stacks-Of-Paper-Everywhere-Girl is here to tell you), but when the structure itself is the ultimate goal, what are you learning? My, but you have a tidy sock drawer!
  Sadly, cj is quite correct about our public schools. My own twelve years were sheer misery for the most part. Mom taught me to read when I was a toddler, though, and I taught my sister, who was a VERY skilled reader by age 3. She described the G.E.D. as “The most pathetic test I’ve ever taken”. Our education didn’t take place on any campus! I recall spending my grade school years reviewing the exact same material, learning the exact same information, and taking the exact same tests, because the teachers started with the lowest test score in the class and went from there. By age 11, I was completely glazed over and tuned out. There was nothing new to learn. One adult classroom assistant in 6th grade “corrected” a writing assignment (in red ink), so that I would understand that “horse” should be spelled “hourse”. There were literally NO challenges, except for trying to hide from the kids who didn’t like white people, and who wanted to make me bleed for the crime of having light skin.
  In Junior High, I begged to take placement tests to attend the local community college, but that just wasn’t DONE back then. They wouldn’t even let me take shop, though I had abundant proof that I could already cook and sew (Thanks, Mom!) with no one looking over my shoulder. Girls weren’t allowed to do that in the mid-70s. I spent my time answering cries of despair as other girls struggled with their projects in an overcrowded classroom.
  There was ONE math instructor whose teaching made sense to me — I would stand in his doorway during my lunch hour. If the school had allowed me to study in this man’s algebra class, I would probably have had some math skills when I graduated, BUT…..my last name started with the wrong letter. Second half of the alphabet got the OTHER teacher, who was a virtual zombie. I graduated knowing only how to add, subtract and multiply (have since aced the algebra, but it happened in college).
  There are MANY home schoolers in my town, and their children are, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, far more civil