I haven’t seen this movie yet, but I plan to get a copy of it and watch it. This is a demonstration of why I homeschool my son and allow him to determine how he learns and what he learns most of the time. This is how school is, and it is tearing our kids apart:

This is how school should be:

It’s okay to learn by playing when we’re little, but not when we get older? Bull-pucky! One-third of our teens drop out of high school today. The kids aren’t broken, the schools are. If we plan to fix education in this country, we’ve got to do some radical rethinking of what schools should be, make changes and implement those changes.

One change that would make the biggest difference in kids lives right now is to split academics from vocational/technical interests starting in 9th grade. Kids know enough about reading, writing and math to stop studying it in school if their interests are aligned with a vocational or technical career that they would learn by being an apprentice. In other words, learning by doing.

Leave the academic high school stuff to the those who want be immersed in academic life. There should be multiple ladders of academics as well: one for math and science types, another for business, another for social and political sciences and the like, and another for liberal arts.

Stop forcing kids to learn physics when they want to teach kindergarten! Allow non-science kids to take science appreciation for what they need to know to get along in the modern world and leave it at that. Don’t make them learn how to work free body diagram kinematics problems or balance chemical equations! They need to know those subjects exist and are useful, but they shouldn’t have to become proficient in them.

I would prefer they were proficient at reading, comprehending and keeping up with their personal finances and staying out of debt. Advanced math does not teach anyone how to balance a checkbook, a far more useful skill than matrices and synthetic division. Unless you need advanced math skills for your career, you shouldn’t have to take advanced math.

Everyone should have to take a life skills class (or classes) where they learn how to manage a household, live within their means, understand credit and know who to ask for help when considering borrowing money, and how to manage intimate relationships (especially listening skills and that movies are the exact opposite of real life; love and peaceful co-existence require compassion, communication, compromise and hard work to maintain). Cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, laundry, and lawn care would also be good lessons.

What would you suggest to improve our schools? What do you think is wrong with them? Please leave your thoughts and ideas in the comments.

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