Discouragement and Isolation in the Name of Education

As someone in the homeschooling community who is very vocal in my criticism of the public education system, there are pretty many comments I hear time and again.

One of these comments is the notion that parents may, indeed, be capable of homeschooling elementary age children, but they just couldn’t possibly be equipped to homeschool high school.

I beg to differ. 

You see, when it comes to high school, there is one common theme I see throughout public schools at this level – the practice of teaching discouragement and isolation through education.

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Not sure what I mean? Here’s an illustration from a pretty popular Disney movie, Teen Beach 2.

In case you aren’t familiar with this movie, let me just give a brief introduction to the two main characters, Brady and Mack.

Brady and Mack are a couple of teenagers in love who happen to be heading into their senior year of high school. After a blissful summer romance, reality kicks in when it’s discovered that Mack, being ever the studious type, is obsessed with getting into college, extracurricular activities, and has no interest in anything but school, school, school.

Brady, on the other hand, is extremely laid back and is more concerned with surfing, which irritates Mack to no end. After Brady misses some “extremely important” school events, he sheepishly admits to Mack what he’s been up to all along – designing and building his own custom-made surfboards.

As it turns out, Brady has been hiding this fact because he feels his endeavors aren’t as worthy as his girlfriend’s more mainstream (aka, school-friendly) ambitions, so he’s just plain embarrassed about the whole thing.

Did you notice a familiar theme? 

This fictional situation perfectly describes what millions of teenagers are going through in high school each and every year. The school system is designed to create a mass population of worker bees, and in order to do this, certain subjects take precedence over others.

Some students work very well in this situation. Others, not so much.

Rather than schools redirecting the students who aren’t cut out for in-the-box learning, the school system instead isolates them into “lower” groups where they begin to feel inferior to their more moldable peers.

That’s the whole reason that tracks exist. Students are observed, categorized, and then slapped into specific tracks, out of which they may rarely escape. It’s all done for the “good” of society. After all, schools know best, don’t they?

My personal experience with the “track” system:

Growing up in the public education system, in 4th grade, I was placed in the gifted/honors program.

I’ll admit, it seemed to work for me at the time. It did wonders for my self-esteem, as I was fully aware that my classmates and I were “smarter” than everyone else.

At the end of 11th grade, however, something happened that brought to light the fact that I was pretty much “trapped” in this group.

I was speaking with my guidance counselor over what classes I’d like to take the following year when he brought up math. Since I already had all three math credits completed, technically, I didn’t have to take a math course at all. Knowing this, I informed my counselor that I was interested in taking accounting and bookkeeping, as I knew these would be helpful in my planned profession of owning a dance studio.

After hearing my request, he simply replied, “You can’t take accounting and bookkeeping. Those are business courses, and you are college prep.”

He then went on to ask me what my future plans were, I told him, and he kind of snickered and said, “You want to be a DANCE teacher??”

I was crestfallen, and to be honest, I was never quite as excited about my plans after that, so I never made much of an attempt to make them happen.

And they never did.

How many students does this have to happen to?

How many teenagers today have to be discouraged and laughed at by those who are supposed to be their mentors because they have no interest in what the school system recognizes as being worthy vocations?

This is where homeschooling comes in.

So now we’re back to that question of whether parents are qualified to oversee the home education of their high school age students.

The answer is a big, resounding YES.

If anything, they are more qualified because parents can take their children’s God-given talents and interests and use them to give their kids a streamlined education, something that no high school can do.

It’s time we take our children back from this social engineering experiment called “school” that has done more harm to society than any good it could possibly ever do.

It’s time we encourage our teenagers by actually listening to them, rather than discouraging them by trying to fit square pegs into round holes.

It’s time we realize that there are no superior and inferior subjects. The arts are just as important as math, science, and – dare I say it – football.

It’s time we start equipping our children for entrepreneurship, and not servitude, because that is where the future of this country lies.

It’s time to start now. Save your children. What’s stopping you?

 

Homeschooling and education are my passion. It is my fervent hope to one day devote more time to creating content for you. If you’re interested in helping to make this a reality, consider supporting me on Patreon.

Thank you so much. I appreciate each and every one of you!

 

 

 

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