Why Should We Homeschool?- Part 7- Focusing on True Education Instead of Mass Instruction

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My kids love to help me make beef chips. They each line up at their own station prepared to do their part in creating the finished product. Our little assembly line looks something like this:

1st Station- Take a sirloin beef tip off the plate and bread it

2nd Station- Dip the breaded beef tip into the egg/milk mixture

3rd Station- Rebread the moistened, breaded beef tip

4th Station- Deliver the prepared beef tips to the cook

5th Station- Fry the beef tips until golden brown

In case you’re wondering, today’s post is not about cooking despite how things may look at first glance. This post is about the education, or should I say mass education, that is being provided in traditional schools.

You see, I’ve come to see this method of education as an assembly line, similar to our beef chip assembly line. From kindergarten on up, each grade has the goal of providing exactly the same thing to a very large and often very different group of students. As the years progress, the steps taken may look different, but they are all working toward achieving the outcome hoped for by the school system. What is that outcome? Well, the outcome we hoped for in our beef chip assembly line was to repeat the same steps over and over again so that each beef chip would turn out exactly the same.

All of American education has come to resemble Henry Ford’s assembly line. Students receive a standardized education. Teachers work as quickly as possible as the product moves by to put in those parts deemed necessary by the administration. Quality-control inspectors watch the workers to make sure they are doing everything as dictated by the owner’s manual. In the past decade, the line has been sped up, the workers are asked to add more bells and whistles, and the raw material at the beginning of the line has decreased in quality.– Washington Post

The problem with this idea is that our children are not beef chips. They are not automobiles, and they are not pairs of sneakers being assembled. They are individuals with different interests, different strengths, and different dreams.

Wouldn’t it make much more sense if we parents took the initiative to give our children the education suited for them? And, unlike the assembly line, this doesn’t look the same for every child, nor should it.

A true education is not about textbooks and worksheets and standardized tests. A true education will provide preparation for the real world- the actual real world, not the simulated version designed to fit within the walls of the school building.

It will be molded to best fit each child’s potential calling in the world they will one day be a part of are already a part of. A true education will approach life itself as the classroom- a classroom without boundaries or bells or timed tests.

Government education has two ultimate goals it aims to instill in every student- conformity and following orders.

If you ask me, that’s not much of an education at all.

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